Florida’s Michelin Guide just updated its Orlando list, and the number is a surprise for a city best known for Disney and Universal: 61 restaurants now recognized, including six starred, fourteen Bib Gourmands and forty-one Recommended. Six spots joined the list for the first time in 2026: Italian restaurant Osteria Ester in Thornton Park, barbecue spot Smoke & Donuts in the Milk District, 1921 in Mount Dora, June in Thornton Park, Kappo Tsan in Southwest Orlando, and Sparrow in the North Quarter District.
At the top of the list, Sorekara, in Baldwin Park, holds two stars. Inspectors describe it as unlike anywhere else, a place that turns expectations on their head with every service. Five other restaurants hold one star: ÔMO by Jônt in Winter Park, an offshoot of chef Ryan Ratino’s Washington, D.C. restaurant Jônt; Soseki Modern Omakase, run by chef Mike Collantes with a menu that changes monthly based on local ingredients; Camille, where Tung Phan turned a former pop-up into a ten-course French-Vietnamese tasting menu; Kadence, for its Japanese omakase; and Victoria & Albert’s, long established inside Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort.
Gwendal Poullennec, international director of the Michelin Guides, sums up the inspectors’ surprise: Orlando has plenty to offer food and wine lovers, thanks to chefs and teams capable of matching the city’s theme-park draw. Chef Melissa Kelly, of Primo at the Ritz-Carlton Grande Lakes, agrees: in her view, Orlando has changed over the past eighteen years, and it’s no longer just a hub of chain restaurants but a genuine international city.
The rest of the list tells a different story, one of a deeply mixed local food scene: sushi counters, Ethiopian-Eritrean cooking at Selam, Spanish tapas at Toledo, hand-pulled noodles at Walala. A reminder that alongside the roller coasters, the city has quietly built a real dining scene of its own.