Today we visit Kai Asian Street Fare in Winter Park.
Oh goodie, another “street fare” restaurant. How did eating foods sold on the street become the hot trend for off-street restaurants? And, more importantly, when will it finally fizzle?
I suppose it won’t as long as there are restaurants that do the street thing as well as Kai does.
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When we talk about the top chefs in the Central Florida culinary community, the name Justin Plank rarely comes up, and I don’t know why. I may be as much to blame as anyone.
It’s not that he hasn’t been around a long time or that his cooking hasn’t been critically received. And it isn’t that his name hasn’t been bandied about. You may recall that in the early 2000s, Park Plaza Gardens actually changed its name to Chef Justin’s Park Plaza Gardens to celebrate the hiring of Plank as its new head chef.
Following a stint at Lake Port Square in Leesburg, Plank joined the Levy Restaurants team as the executive chef at Disney Springs’ Portobello, handpicked for the position by Tony Mantuano, the Chicago chef who advises and directs the Disney restaurant. Portobello then promptly closed so that it could be remodeled and rebranded.
It’s now Terralina Crafted Italian and Plank has stayed on at the helm. While much of the menu was initially developed by Mantuano, Plank says that his suggestions for changes have all been given the go ahead. I stopped in to sample some of the menu recently and to see how the restaurant has developed. Everything I tasted — some of which was offered to me and my guest to try — was really quite good.
Watch the video version of this review:
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