Where to Eat in Ocoee Right Now

Ocoee does not have a restaurant row so much as three dining geographies: the chef-driven tables off Maguire Road in the southwest, the small independents gathering in historic downtown around Bluford Avenue and McKey Street, and the wide SR 50 corridor where the chains and the West Oaks Mall crowds eat. Know which geography you are in and Ocoee eats very well. This is the current map of the city’s best tables; for the wider picture, start at our Ocoee hub.

The flagship: RusTeak

RusTeak Restaurant & Wine Bar at 1681 Amazing Way is where Ocoee sends people it wants to impress. The kitchen describes itself as an American gastropub with a polished-casual room, and the menu backs it up: hand-crafted sandwiches, burgers and flatbreads at lunch; hand-cut steaks, seafood and pasta at dinner; a menu that changes monthly with daily features built on local produce and sustainable fish. The drinks program is the quiet headline — more than 150 wines from around the world on a Wine Spectator-awarded list, dozens of craft beers and a rotating set of handcrafted signature cocktails. Happy hour runs daily in the late afternoon, and reservations are strongly recommended. Our full take is in the RusTeak profile.

The surprise: Daniel Gabor’s Alpine Bar & Grill

At 1568 Maguire Road, chef Daniel Gabor — formerly of Schmankerl Stub’n — cooks German-Alpine food in a hunting-lodge dining room: schnitzel, gulasch, apple strudel, with nearly everything made in-house and a weekend brunch that has become a local ritual. It is the most distinctive dining room in West Orange County precisely because nothing else near it attempts this cuisine at this level of commitment. Note that it rests on Mondays, a pattern shared by several of Ocoee’s independents.

Downtown: tacos, trucks and a brewery kitchen that isn’t

Historic downtown is where Ocoee’s food energy is compounding. The Ocoee Taco Company at 40 Taylor Street serves the city’s benchmark tacos — al pastor and shrimp tacos, quesadillas, tamales and pupusas — in a cozy room a short walk from the lake; we profile the downtown cluster in our Taco Company piece. A few steps away on McKey Street, Antojitos Loco’s made the jump from beloved family food truck to permanent address, and Wine O’Clock Bistro pours wine alongside the coffee-and-lunch trade it inherited from Bike Life Café at 112 W. McKey Street.

Toll Road Brewing Company at 101 W. McKey Street has no kitchen of its own, which turns out to be a feature: rotating food trucks park at the biergarten most nights, so the menu changes with the truck while the 20 taps stay constant. It is the easiest group dinner in downtown Ocoee — order at the truck, drink at the picnic tables, stay for the live music. See our Toll Road Brewing profile for the details.

The group answer: The Backyard

On the north side, The Backyard at 2214 West Road solves the where-can-everyone-agree problem with an outdoor food-truck park: several trucks on rotation, a 24-tap self-pour wall for craft beer and wine, a covered patio, hammocks, lawn games and room for kids and dogs to roam. It is closed Mondays and built for lingering — the closest thing Ocoee has to a food hall, except the hall is a lawn.

And the everyday bench

Round out the rotation with the corridor regulars: longtime Bella Napoli Pizzeria on South Bluford Avenue for pizza night on the downtown edge, and the SR 50 strip’s deep bench of seafood boils, sushi and Tex-Mex for weeknight takeout. None of it requires a drive into Winter Garden or downtown Orlando — which, residents will tell you, is rather the point of Ocoee. Plot the stops on the Orlando Top Spots Map and eat in the order that suits the day.

Filed under Dining Guide · Downtown Ocoee · Maguire Road · Ocoee · Restaurants

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