Where to Eat in Clermont Right Now: The Food Hall, the Gastropub and the Main Street Rotation
No rankings have scored Clermont yet — so this is a researched map instead: The Crooked Spoon by the tower, the Montrose Street Market food hall, Pepe's Cantina, Crafted's steakhouse room and the Sunday market crowd.
3 minute read
First, the honest framing: our magazine’s rankings have not scored Clermont yet, so this is not a ranked list and nothing below carries a score. What it is, is a researched map of a small, walkable downtown that eats considerably better than a town of Clermont’s size has any obligation to — built around one food hall, one destination gastropub, a brewery with staying power and a main street that still feeds its own neighbors. Everything sits within a few blocks of the Clermont hub‘s lakefront, most of it on or just off Montrose Street and Minneola Avenue.
The anchor: The Crooked Spoon
Clermont’s destination dinner is out by the tower. The Crooked Spoon, at 200 Citrus Tower Boulevard, began as a beloved Orlando food truck; after three years on the road, its chef opened this full-service gastropub in August 2013, adjacent to the Citrus Tower, and Lake County finally had a neighborhood restaurant of its own to argue about. The menu is chef-driven and unembarrassed about it — the burgers carry the reputation, from the 420 Burger to a blueberry-and-brie build on Florida Angus beef, with lobster grilled cheese and shrimp and grits for the table that wants more than pub food. Pair it with the tower itself and you have the classic Clermont evening; our Citrus Tower profile sets up the first half.
The decider-proof option: Montrose Street Market
Groups that cannot agree should be walked, gently, into the Montrose Street Market at 793 W. Montrose Street, downtown’s bi-level food hall. The vendor roster rotates, but the current lineup runs from Brave Burger and Daniel’s Cheesesteaks to Pinsa Fire’s Roman-style pizzas, Tuti’s Sushi Noodle and Bluedeepsea Coffee, with Sud’s Saloon pouring for the table. It is the downtown lunch that scales from solo counter seat to full family occupation, and on Sunday mornings it dovetails with the farmers market taking over the streets outside.
The rest of the downtown rotation
Pepe’s Cantina brought its Winter Park Mexican kitchen west to Minneola Avenue, next door to the brewery, and it is the reliable margarita-and-queso stop of the district. At 801 W. Montrose, the room many locals still know as The Southern on 8th now trades as Crafted, a steakhouse format with live-music nights and a club room — the downtown splurge, and the reservation to make when the night matters. Cheeser’s Palace covers the breakfast-and-lunch shift downtown, the kind of café where the market crowd lands after the Sunday stalls. None of these are chains wearing local costumes; that is the district’s whole personality.
Drink: one street, two pours
Suncreek Brewery & Distillery, at 790 W. Minneola Avenue, has been Clermont’s own craft brewery since 2018 — the first in town — with a big covered patio, food on site and a family- and pet-friendly sprawl that fills on weekends; it gets a full profile in our Suncreek story. Two blocks away at 750 W. DeSoto Street, the former Clermont Brewing Company room has a second life as The Station, a restaurant, bar and live-music venue that kept a few of the old menu favorites when it changed hands. The city’s own pitch for downtown is “sip, shop and stroll,” and for once the slogan undersells it.
How to run the day
Breakfast downtown, the lake by late morning, the food hall for a grazing lunch, the tower and the Spoon to close. Clermont’s dining is compact enough that the plan survives contact with reality — which, in a town growing as fast as this one, is the real luxury. When our rankings reach the hills, this page is where the scores will land; until then, eat where the locals are already sitting. The wider region is mapped on the Orlando Top Spots Map.
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