Orlando

Orlando's documented restaurant record runs mostly through the postwar decades: La Cantina, a steakhouse opened on East Colonial Drive in 1947 and long operated as Linda's La Cantina, is identified by critic Scott Joseph as Central Florida's longest continuously running restaurant.

Migration shaped the table more than anything else. After 1975, Vietnamese refugees resettled around Mills Avenue and Colonial Drive; the restaurants, bakeries and markets they opened made the Mills 50 district the city's Little Vietnam, where Little Saigon, among the first, served nearly four decades before closing. Puerto Rican settlement, gathering from the 1970s, gave Orlando the largest Puerto Rican population in Florida — roughly 4 percent of the metro in 1980, 14 percent by 2019 — and a corresponding density of Boricua kitchens across Orlando and Kissimmee.

Independent fine dining is comparatively recent. James and Julie Petrakis, Winter Park natives trained at the Culinary Institute of America, opened The Ravenous Pig in 2007 in a market then dominated by chains, adding Cask & Larder in 2012 and Swine & Sons, and drawing repeated James Beard Best Chef: South nominations. When Michelin extended to Florida in 2022, Capa, Kadence, Soseki and Knife & Spoon received stars, with Bib Gourmands to The Ravenous Pig, Domu, Papa Llama and Z Asian Vietnamese Kitchen; Victoria & Albert's was starred in a later edition.