Knife & Spoon at the Ritz-Carlton and Capo at the Four Seasons Orlando are cited cited in a Robb Report article titled “The 11 Best Steakhouses in the World, According to Michelin.” Both restaurants recently received a Michelin star for the second year in a row. Also noted in the article were Cote in New York and Miami; Beefbar, Hong Kong; The Kitchen, Macau; and Kitashinchi Fukutatei, Osaka, among others.

Orlando is the only city in the article with two restaurants. Pretty impressive, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Beard?

Photo: La Luna

Two of the newest additions to the Florida Michelin Guide, Otto’s High Dive (Bib Gourmand) and Kaya (Michelin recommended), have collaborated on a co-branded mezcal de pechuga from La Luna Mezcal, a Michoacán artisanal distiller. The two restaurants will unveil the final product at a release party on Kaya’s patio Wed., June 14, from 6 to 10 p.m. The $45 tickets are sold out but you can join a waitlist here.

The project was spearheaded by Otto’s co-owner and bartender, Justin LeVaughn, and Jamilyn Salonga Bailey, Kaya’s co-owner and general manager, and that restaurant’s bar manager, Renate Spurlock.

Linda’s Winter Park Diner will cease to be the last week of July. Owner Linda D’Auria has been the owner of the Fairbanks Avenue favorite for 35 years and decided it was time to retire. She has sold the property and would not say who the buyer is but did say it will no longer be a restaurant. “I feel like I served the community for a really long time,” D’Auria said by phone Tuesday, “I made so many great friends and I wanted to go out on top.”

The James Beard Foundation handed out its chef and restaurant awards Monday at a ceremony in Chicago. As in years past, Central Florida left awardless, though at least we had a dog in the fight this time – and a Michelin Guide-recommended dog at that. Henry Moso, the chef and owner of Kabooki Sushi, was the first Orlando chef to ever advance to the final round. He was nominated for the Best Chef: South region, which also includes Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Puerto Rico and New Orleans. I mean Louisiana. For a change, a New Orleans chef did not walk away with the medallion. Instead, Natalia Vallejo, the chef at Cocina al Fondo in San Juan was named the winner.

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What’s going on with valet parking?

Reports have come in that two cars were stolen from the valet parking station at the recently-opened Norman’s at Dellagio Town Center on Restaurant Row Friday evening. The cars are said to be a Rolls Royce and a BMW, so at least the thieves aim big. Exact details from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office were not immediately available, but a spokesman at Norman’s confirmed Saturday that two incident reports were filed.

This follows another theft two weeks ago at Ava Mediterragean restaurant in Winter Park where a Mercedes G-class wagon was also stolen after parking with the valet.

Neither restaurant provides its own valet service – Norman’s parking is through the Dellagio Town Center and Ava uses a third party. A person reached at Dellagio’s offices Saturday was not aware of the thefts and did not know details of the parking service. A spokesman for Riviera Dining Group in Miami, which operates Ava, did not know the name of the valet company that restaurant uses.

In a third recent incident, a prominent Orlando resident who requested anonymity said that the valet parking attendant at a local luxury resort lost the key to his car. He had to have the car towed to the dealer to get a replacement key.

It all seems a little too coincidental, no?

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The Curry Ford West District F&D Woodfired Italian Kitchen is set to reopen, perhaps as soon as June 12, The freestanding, newly constructed building sits on the corner of Curry Ford Road and Primrose Drive. It replaces the original FDWIK that was near the corner of Bumby Avenue and was closed a little over a year ago because the block it was on was scheduled for imminent redevelopment. Apparently imminent doesn’t mean within a year – nothing has happened on the site so far.

When the relocation was announced, an official with F&D said that when the restaurant reopened it would likely lose the word Italian from the name. As you can see from the photo above, that didn’t happen.

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Sponsored

Grande Lakes Orlando, the 500-acre luxury resort that is home to the Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott hotels – and their top-of-the-line restaurants – is celebrating its 20th anniversary with GLO Summer NIghts all season long.

Through Labor Day, the resort will feature fireworks every Saturday (Fridays, too, on holiday weekends), so if you’re going out to experience Knife & Spoon’s special four-course menu in celebration of its Michelin star rating, make your reservation for a Saturday to end the evening with a big bang. In addition to the fireworks, the evening will include stilt walkers, fire dancers (would love to see those two combined), live music and a dessert trolley. GLO Summer Nights are 7 to 10 p.m.

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Big Fin Seafood, the elaborate restaurant at Dellagio Town Center on Restaurant Row, has been sold. Philippe Villain, who also owns Russell’s on Lake Ivanhoe and a new brand called Little Fin in the Villages, said he sold Big Fin last week to Estein USA, an investment company located on Apopka Vineland Road in Orlando.

In a phone call Tuesday afternoon, a spokesman for Estein said Big Fin will continue to operate the same with the current front- and back-of-house staff in place. Estein also owns and operates the private London House next door at Dellagio.

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Ace Cafe, the downtown Orlando mega bar and restaurant that emphasized loud motorcycles and louder music, announced its closing over the Memorial Day weekend. The restaurant, at 100 W. Livingston St., opened almost exactly six years ago in the former Harry P. Leu building.

The Orlando location was based, loosely, on a venue in London that became popular with young people during World War II who would ride their motorbikes to the remote bar to listen to one of the few juke boxes in England. (For my review, in June 2017, I visited both the just-opened Ace Cafe Orlando and the one in London, near Wembley stadium, within a week of each other.)

The Orlando Ace Cafe was the first of what was expected to be several that would open as part of a North America franchise. The Ace Cafe website lists no other North American locations; other Aces are in Finland, Beijing and Luzern.

In my review, I noted that the Orlando venue was huge and that a lot of money had obviously been spent on it, unusual for a business outside the tourist corridor. Unlike the London original – which opened in 1938, was destroyed in an air raid two years later, reopened after the war, closed again in 1969 and reopened in 2001 – the Orlando Ace was a full service restaurant with a large stage for live acts and a spacious dance floor.

No reason was given for the closing, which was announced on social media, but one might wonder if there might be new construction coming soon on the site that would make better use of the prime downtown space.

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Taste! Central Florida is Friday, Aug. 18, at Orlando World Center Marriott, and I’ll be there.

But right now I’m here – to save you some money.

Go to tastecfl.org and click on the link to Buy Tickets. You’ll see an option to “apply a promo code.” Click on that and type in SJO25. Update the amount and wah-la, you’ll see the purchase amount decrease by $25 for each ticket you’re purchasing. That doesn’t suck.

Taste!, of course, is the annual food and wine walkabout event that raises awareness and money for fighting childhood hunger. Proceeds benefit Coalition for the Homeless and Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida. And 100 percent of the monies raised stays in Central Florida.

As the event gets closer I’ll have more details on some of the participants and highlights of this year’s event. In the meantime, get your tickets now using the SJO25 code because it won’t last forever.

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The 2023 edition of Wine Quest, the annual wine tasting and auction benefitting Quest, Inc., will be Friday and Saturday, June 2 and 3 from 7 to 10 p.m. each night at Loews Portofino Bay Hotel.

Friday is the grand tasting event, a walkabout sampling of wines, hors d’oeuvres and craft spirits plus a silent auction.

Saturday is a sit-down, four-course dinner with pairings from Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars.

You can do one night or both. The Friday tasting event is $250 per person and the Saturday dinner is $350. You can get both evenings for $500.

Or you could choose one of the group-ticket levels, such as the Bordeaux sponsor package, which gets you 18 tickets to Friday and 24 tickets to the Saturday dinner for just $30,000. Not sure how you break it to the six people not invited to Friday night, but that’s your problem. And true, you could buy 24 tickets to both nights for just $12,000 but the sponsorship level gets you lots more extras.

And let’s not forget that the proceeds go to furthering Quest’s mission “to build communities where people with disabilities achieve their goals.” You can find more information and purchase tickets here.

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