Restaurants and food fascinate me. They have since I was eating at Alfoccino’s in Farmington Hills and marveling at the parmesan cheese they grated on my pasta right in front of my five-year-old eyes. Or Chili’s when the waiter sent over queso dip because the kitchen was backed up. Bourbon Steak when I first tried Wagyu beef on my 21st birthday.
I watch shows about cooking and restaurants and have since I was shouting Bam! along with Emeril. I love to cook and bake myself. My tastes have changed over time, but my love of preparing my own food and going out to eat to connecting with people has not.
Though I have my favorite restaurants in Orlando, the food scene here is booming in ways that are hard to imagine. There are so many restaurants I want to try. Restaurants with menus that are out of my comfort zone. Restaurants with unique and beautiful style, focused but sometimes overwhelming tasting menus and Michelin recommends and stars.
I finally checked one restaurant off my list: Omo by Jont. Similar in concept to its Michelin two star sister restaurant in Washington D.C., it is in fabulous downtown Winter Park and offers several different tasting menu options.
My friend and I opted for the smallest tasting menu. It was still plenty of food and allowed me to enjoy everything. I was a member of the clean plate club for the majority of the dishes. During the meal, diners move from the lounge where snacks are served along with a complementary glass of champagne to the main dining room with counter seating and an open kitchen to the dessert room. This worked incredibly well, something that really surprised me.
The snacks were a pastrami steam bun, foie gras brioche doughnut hole, A5 tartar crostade, and nori tart. Though all were tasty, the foie gras and A5 are the ones I am STILL dreaming about. My friend also had the caviar add on which included one more fish appetizer served on crisp pastry flavored with seaweed. It tasted almost like fish skin and was a culinary marvel.
In the dining room, we began with buckwheat noodle soup. I enjoyed the noodles but I don’t love cooked tomatoes, so I struggled with the broth and gel at the bottom. My friend loved it, I’m sure it was tasty, just not my thing.
The other dishes in the dining room were totally my thing, including the chawanmushi with uni and pumpkin. I have never had anything like it, but I would be so happy to eat it again.
My favorite dish by far was the crab rice with a heaping helping of truffles shaved on top. This dish reminded me of my former favorite restaurant dish of all time: the crab pasta at Parc in Detroit. This crab rice replaced it as my new favorite dish, in part because it was unbelievably good and comforting. Mostly, I loved it because it took me back in time to eating that crab pasta but shined a new light on my memory not just in flavor but also in experience. That is exactly what the best foods do.
I cannot complain about the A5 with seaweed and cucumber ketchups and cucumber salad, but I would have traded it for more rice. I would trade any meal at any time for more rice.
The dessert room is such a lovely way to end the evening. I happily tried crown melon and the strawberry mochi bite, but the strawberry almond tea and kakigori stole the show. I’m not an herbal tea fan but this delight from a local shop changed my mind forever. The shaved ice and ice cream kakigori with crunchy hazelnuts ruined all ice cream for the rest of time, but I will never complain because I got to try it. Though I made room for a couple of the warm vanilla madeleines (I mean they are basically impossible to resist), the rest of the little treats came home with me, a remnant from what just might have been the best meal I have ever had.
Perhaps even more impressive than the food is the team at Omo. They are the ones who make the evening seamless and enjoyable. We struck up conversations with several people, which is always one of my favorite things about dining out. The food is important, so too is the ambiance, but ultimately the people are the ones who make a restaurant out of this world.
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