ORLANDO, Fla. — The fanfare of prestigious culinary awards, says Orlando Meats chef/owner Eliot Hillis, is something chefs are groomed to strive for, but few earn.
In the wake of the Michelin Guide’s first-ever Florida selection, in which his Winter Park eatery was among the 34 Orlando restaurants included, he’s still somewhat stupefied. Orlando Meats, after all, is best known for Hillis and partner Seth Parker’s maniacally high-level iterations of stoner food and one of the city’s most lauded hamburgers.
“Yeah, it’s real bizarre,” he says, chuckling. “It’s an incredible honor, but it’s almost so surreal that it lacks any tangible meaning.”
Hillis stops short of the word ‘fetish’ in describing his desire for Michelin’s acknowledgment — about which he went on-record just before the June 9 reveal, “but I really do romanticize the entirety of it, from the judgment and selection process to the secrecy of the inspectors. I love the weirdness of it all.”
It’s too early to tell if Orlando Meats’ inclusion will prove profitable, says Hillis “but on so many levels,” he says, “Michelin matters.”
Chef/owner Amit Kumar of the Bib Gourmand-awarded Bombay Street Kitchen would likely agree. Kumar says not only has the number of customers in the restaurant increased, but their caliber, as well.
“They are very well educated, very aware of the food and the work that goes into it,” says Chef/Owner Amit Kumar of the new faces at his colorful OBT eatery. “They want to try new, different things. They’re open-minded.”
Creatively, says Kumar, it’s given him the confidence to be more experimental in the kitchen.
“From the moment [I] left the ceremony,” he says, “I’ve been thinking about the next things I’m going to do to be more creative. For the chef, it’s a different feeling when you get recognized. You work in the back. It’s hard. But the reward of that acknowledgment, it’s one of the best moments of your life.”
And it extends to the front of the house, where Kumar’s team has been reignited, motivated by a leveled-up sense of pride in their collective accomplishment.
“It’s really lifted our morale... All the employees, they are so happy, so delighted to be a part of the company. They’re feeling high about it.”
A post-Michelin meeting, Kumar reports, saw employees expressing a desire to do even better.
“Our manager, he’s worked 20 years in this career. Having the Michelin recognition is very rewarding. He feels proud. The servers are proud. And any pressure we feel from the award is the good kind.”
Juliana and John Calloway aren’t just the proprietors of the Michelin-selected Black Rooster Taqueria, they are precisely the consumers tourism officials cite when they tout a Michelin guide’s power to draw visitors to their city.
“It’s one of the things we check before we go on vacation,” Juliana Calloway told the Sentinel. “We base a lot of our choices on where we can eat at a Michelin-starred restaurant. So just knowing we were going to be in the guide was a huge deal for a little taco spot.”
And since that’s happened, they’ve seen a lot of new faces, in particular in their original Mills 50 location.
“On social media alone, in the first couple of days, we had a couple hundred new followers. Visits to our website went up 30 percent. Our Google page visits went up 300 percent.”
For Kevin and Maria Ruiz, Papa Llama’s Bib Gourmand award “reinvigorated our spirits in a way we really needed at the time because things were not good,” citing an uncertainty they faced after many years of trying to work their unique Peruvian concept without a strong enough response in the market. “We’d been sticking it out, trying to make things work,” says Maria Ruiz.
Emotionally and physically exhausted, they shuttered for a few months. It was a time of reflection, of rest.
“We had started putting together the pieces to rebuild the kitchen and reopen before the event. Michelin was the last little push. It was a huge acknowledgment. It felt like somebody was saying, ‘We see you. We see that you’re doing something really good’.”
Though closed at the time of the announcement, they received an impressive influx of callsand requests for reservations. “It was comforting to know they were seeking us out.” Papa Llama is now open for dine-in.
“When you’re in a situation like ours, where you’re doing things a little bit differently, I think that customers sometimes need that extra bit of reassurance that coming to your restaurant and spending money with you, developing that relationship, taking that leap of faith is a good idea ... I think Michelin does that for a lot of people.”
Calloway believes the partnership with Michelin should be celebrated rather than criticized.
“So many people complain that all anyone talks about when they talk about Orlando is Disney, but those same people are now complaining about [Visit Orlando] doing this. If you want people to talk about something else, you have to invite them here and give them something to talk about.”'
Having Michelin in Orlando, says Ruiz, “is an incredibly validating thing for everyone here trying to make moves in food. When you’re elevated to that platform by an internationally recognized organization that seeks out the best of the best, it gives a stamp of approval that says there is more to explore in Orlando other than the attractions.”
For Hillis, Orlando-born and raised, there is an arc to the story of the city’s validation as a food destination, of Florida’s on the whole.
“We’re probably every bit as weird as everyone thinks, but we turn out some good food. We have a society here,” he says, citing the birth of the state’s culinary voice with the rise of Norman Van Aken, who showed the world a region with ingredients that could be transformed in ways fantastical and magical, a torch he says was further carried by the likes of “Orlando cuisine founding parents” Kevin Fonzo, Kathleen Blake and Brandon McGlamery.
“From those three you have the birth of the entire scene as we now see it. Everybody who’s working now was touched by something they did and how they led the way.”
Impressive in such an inhospitable environment, he observes.
“But inhospitable environments breed much more robust creatures. We built this whole nonsense on a swamp and we took all this tourist money and we turned it into something beautiful and amazing.”
Michelin, he believes, is a confirmation of this fact that the whole world can see.
“It matters to me as a chef. It’s a validation of my work, but on a larger scale it’s a validation of Orlando.”
