With six Orlando chefs nominated by the James Beard Foundation as "Best Chefs in the South" semifinalists, an abundance of new restaurants, four growing seasons unique to Central Florida's climate and a plethora of new craft breweries, Orlando's dining scene is growing strong and emerging as one of the most innovative in the Southeast.  Some tasty tidbits about the region's chefs and restaurants:

The couple who cooks together, stays together - Or so it would seem in Orlando, where several of the city's top kitchens are presided over by husband and wife teams:

• At the venerable Ravenous Pig and the new Southern gastropub, Cask & Larder, both in Winter Park, husband and wife chefs James and Julie Petrakis cook up New American cuisine.  They both grew up in Orlando, but didn't meet until they attended the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in New York.  The two, who have been twice nominated by the James Beard Foundation as best chefs in the south, returned to their hometown in 2007 to open the Ravenous Pig and have been cooking to rave reviews ever since.  

• Tyler Brassil and Loren Falsone both graduated from Johnson & Wales and met while working at her restaurant, Empire, in Rhode Island where he was hired as the sous chef.  They moved to Orlando in 2003 to work as instructors at Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School before opening The Table - an intimate, pseudo-secret, private dining experience – in 2011.  The 22-person table is available for one seating each Friday and Saturday, for an ever-changing meal that can last three to four hours.  The couple also just opened a new speakeasy, Pharmacy, located adjacent to The Table, but only access through a hidden door.

• Chef Henry Salgado and his wife, Michelle, run the Spanish River Grill in New Smyrna, FL and will soon open Txokos in Orlando at the highly anticipated East End Market.  While Spanish River Grill features Latin-influenced recipes, Txokos will be an entirely different concept focusing on food and wine specific to the Basque region of Spain. The couple met while both working at the Horseradish Grille in Atlanta, GA.  Chef Henry cooks up creative specialties using a blend of regional ingredients strongly influenced by the bustling barrios of Latino neighborhoods and the traditional Spanish countryside, while Michelle manages the restaurant. Salgado was a James Beard Award semifinalist in 2012.

• At Cress Restaurant, the top-rated Orlando in the new Zagat Orlando City Guide, Chef Hari Pulapaka creates innovative, globally inspired meals in an intimate setting, while his wife Jenneffer manages the restaurant, including developing  the award-winning wine list. Hari and Jenneffer's key to marital success may lie in the fact that both lead "double lives." He is a mathematics professor at Stetson University by day, while her day job is as a podiatric surgeon. Hari was also a James Bear Award semifinalist and named a top 100 Chef by Food & Wine Magazine.

Four Seasons of the Farm-to-Fork Movement - Chefs in Orlando are bringing fresh fruits and vegetables to the table, creating farms and gardens onsite and sourcing their ingredients.   With four growing seasons, local farms provide an abundance of fresh, seasonal products.

• In the fall of 2012, the Grande Lakes Orlando, home to the Ritz Carlton and JW Marriott, opened the new Whisper Creek Farm, a 7,000-square-foot fruit and vegetable garden.  Products from the farm are used throughout the resort. Whisper Creek joins the resort's onsite apiary, which produces honey used in dishes and spa treatments, and the PRIMO Organic Garden, a raised-bed garden that produces herbs and produce for Chef Melissa Kelly's PRIMO Restaurant at the JW Marriott Orlando.

• Chef Kevin Fonzo teaches what he eats.  Originally from New York City, Kevin is a graduate of CIA and was the chef at many notable restaurants in Atlanta and Orlando before opening K in 2001.  At the time, it was one of the first chef owned and operated restaurants in the city.  Kevin created an organic garden in the backyard of K Restaurant and uses the ingredients in his recipes.  He also uses the garden to teach local students as part of his work for the Orlando Junior Academy, a small school in the College Park neighborhood.  He began working in the school's cafeteria, creating healthy, fresh lunches and helped start the school's garden, earning it the award of "Best School Garden for the State of Florida” by the University of Central Florida.  It also earned Kevin recognition and an invitation to tour the White House garden by Michelle Obama as part of her "Chefs Move to School" initiative.  

East End Market Arrives - For lovers of San Francisco's Ferry Terminal and Seattle's Pike Place Market, the urban public market concept is coming to Orlando in the summer of 2013.  Located at 3201 Corrine Drive in the Audubon Park Garden District, East End Market will house small, independently owned food enterprises and the exterior will be landscaped with edible and Florida-friendly varietals. The first of its kind in the Southeast, the Market will showcase some of Central Florida's top food entrepreneurs, trades people, artists, and chefs.  It will house 10 local, independently owned food enterprises, including a butcher, seafood merchant, produce vendor, florist, coffee roaster and baker.  It will also boast a test kitchen and catering facilities and be home to a farm-fresh restaurant called Txokos, a new culinary concept from the owners of Spanish River Grill in New Smyrna, FL. 

Tapping into Orlando's Craft Beers - Beer lovers are feeling at home in Orlando.  With the opening of Cask & Larder, Orlando has yet another stellar craft beer restaurant.  Cask Master Ron Raike is a certified cicerone (an expert beer guide and one of only a few in Florida) and a Gold Winner at the Best Florida Beer Championships. He is devoted to making beers that are as true to a specific region or country as possible, which he masterfully achieves by first creating water that replicates the mineral makeup of the specific region before even starting the brewing process.  Specialty brews include an oyster stout, Gratzer (extinct polish beer brewed with oak smoked wheat), and a Berliner Roggen (sour beer).  He always has one beer that has been cask conditioned and is served on a beer engine - the “old school” method in which beer was served before being available on tap.  Raike began brewing while earning a master's degree in computer engineering from the University of Central Florida. He soon translated this hobby into a career and was the brew master at Shipyard Brewing Company for a decade. In addition to Cask & Larder and Shipyard Brewing Company, Redlight Red Light, in Orlando's Audubon Park neighborhood, was rated the third best beer bar in the world by RateBeer.com; the Orlando Brewing Company in downtown Orlando is the only USDA-certified organic brewery in Florida; and the new Hourglass Brewery, in Longwood, FL, which opened in August, specializes in artisan, gourmet-style beers. 

All About the Pig - From bacon to pig tails, hogs are hot!  Chefs in Orlando are embracing the pork trend, serving everything from bacon-topped cupcakes to whole pig roasts.  At K Restaurant in Orlando's College Park neighborhood, Chef Kevin Fonzo makes his own bacon, which he also uses in bacon marmalade, peanut-bacon brittle, bacon broth, and warm bacon aioli. He also serves up a variety of creative pork dishes - a crispy pork belly taco, a crispy pig tail and broccoli dish with a sweet chili dressing, crispy pig trotters made with pig feet and a crispy pig ear salad, which was featured in the New York Times "36 Hours in Orlando."  One of Chef Kevin's top-selling dishes is ricotta gnocchi with braised pig head ragu. At Cask & Larder, guests can enjoy whole suckling pig dinners.  At its sister restaurant, the Ravenous Pig, they hold pig roasts the first Saturday of every month and cure and smoke their own bacon, which is even a featured element in their Ravenous Pig Old Fashioned cocktail.

Hotels Pave the Way for Stellar Chefs - As the top tourist destination in the country, with more than 55 million visitors every year from 292 countries around the globe, Orlando has an abundance of hotels, many with top-rated restaurants.  So, it's no surprise that many of the city's most innovative and celebrated chefs sharpened their skills at area hotels.  Star chefs like Kevin Fonzo first came to the region to helm the kitchen at the Peabody Hotel, before opening his award-winning K Restaurant.  James Beard Foundation-nominee Kathleen Blake worked at Primo at the Grande Lakes JW Marriott Resort before opening the Rusty Spoon and Pine 22. 

For more information about Orlando's restaurants and chefs, visit OrlandoDistricts.com.

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