The Chef Tables: Disney Springs’ Best Restaurants Right Now
Morimoto, José Andrés, a Master Sommelier and the waterfront classic — several of the best tables at Walt Disney World need no park ticket. These are the ones we'd book first.
4 minute read
Here is the thing nobody expects the first time: several of the best restaurants in the entire Walt Disney World resort are not in a park, not in a hotel, and do not require a ticket to reach. They are lined up along the lake at Disney Springs, in and around The Landing, where a remarkable concentration of named chefs decided that a shopping district deserved serious cooking. This is our current short list — the tables we would book first, and what each one does better than anywhere else in the district. Every one of them takes reservations, and for dinner on a weekend, every one of them needs one.
Morimoto Asia: the showpiece
Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto’s pan-Asian restaurant is the district’s most dramatic room — two stories of glass, lanterns and open kitchen, with a menu that moves from dim sum and maki to a Peking duck carved for the table. It is the choice when the dinner itself is the entertainment: out-of-town guests, a celebration, a first night in Orlando that needs to feel like an occasion. Go with a group if you can; the menu is built to be attacked from several directions at once, and the upstairs lounge is a fine waiting room when your table runs late, as at this altitude of popularity it sometimes does.
Jaleo by José Andrés: the group dinner, solved
On the West Side edge of the district, Jaleo brings José Andrés’ Spanish cooking to a vivid, design-forward room: tapas that arrive in waves, paellas built for the center of the table, Spanish wines poured with enthusiasm. Of all the chef restaurants at Disney Springs, this is the one engineered for a table of six with different appetites — order broadly, share everything, let the gambas and the patatas bravas start the argument about what to order twice. It is also the district’s best answer to the vegetarian-at-the-steakhouse problem; the vegetable tapas are nobody’s afterthought.
The BOATHOUSE: the waterfront classic
The BOATHOUSE, on The Landing’s waterfront, is the reliable splurge: a big nautical room, a serious raw bar, steaks and seafood cooked with a confidence that comes from volume, and the lake rolling past the windows. It is the restaurant we send first-timers to when they ask for “the Disney Springs place,” and the Amphicar launch out front — vintage cars that drive into the lake for guided tours — gives the table something to watch between courses. Book the waterfront if the booking system lets you; sunset over the lake is this room’s best dish and it is not on the menu.
Wine Bar George: the grown-up’s favorite
Master Sommelier George Miliotes runs the only Master Sommelier-led wine bar in Florida, and it shows in the list: more than 140 wines by the glass, bottle or ounce at last count, curated to make a first-timer and a collector equally comfortable. The food is built to accompany it — small plates, shareable boards, a skirt steak that regulars defend like a sports team. This is the Disney Springs restaurant that feels least like Disney Springs and most like a wine-country estate that happens to have excellent parking. Weekend brunch here is one of the district’s quiet luxuries. Pair it with a pre-dinner drink at Enzo’s Hideaway and you have the backbone of our Disney Springs date night playbook.
Chef Art Smith’s Homecomin’: the comfort king
Chef Art Smith’s Florida kitchen is the emotional favorite of the district: fried chicken with a devoted following, buttermilk biscuits, deviled eggs, moonshine on the drinks list and a room that feels like the best version of a family reunion. It is not the most ambitious cooking at Disney Springs; it might be the most satisfying. Portions run generous, the welcome runs warmer, and it is the table we recommend when the group includes anyone who has had a long park day and needs dinner to be a hug. Expect a wait even with a reservation at peak times — the bar and the outdoor shine bar are the locals’ pressure valves.
Raglan Road and STK: the two energies
Every short list needs its loud room and its sleek room. Raglan Road, built in Ireland and shipped over, pairs a real Irish pub menu with live music and step dancing nightly — dinner as a night out, no separate entertainment required. STK Orlando does the modern steakhouse version: a DJ-leaning lounge energy wrapped around steaks and a raw bar, for the group that wants the evening to escalate. Between them they explain Disney Springs after dark better than any brochure.
How to choose
Occasion dinner: Morimoto Asia or The BOATHOUSE. Group of sharers: Jaleo. Wine people: Wine Bar George. Comfort, immediately: Homecomin’. Entertainment included: Raglan Road. All of them sit inside our Disney Springs hub‘s orbit and most appear on the Top Spots Map; for the undecided, Where to Eat in Disney Springs When Nobody Can Agree sorts the whole district by mood, budget and wait tolerance.
Photo: elisfkc, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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