Unique Dining Experiences Abound at Signia by Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek and Waldorf Astoria Orlando
Don’t miss their next must-do event, Epicurious: Sip & Savor, happening Saturday, December 9. Tickets are on sale now, but they will sell out.
Above: Get into some Monkey Business at Mixology; think Hamilton Pot still black rum, banane du Brasil, cocchi Americano, Demerara and lime clarified in Garam masala coconut milk. Courtesy of Signia By Hilton.
As a big-boned gentleman in the food writing industry, moderation is key to not only surviving a night out on the job but also in making sure your life isn’t cut short from all of the rich foods you’re exposed to on an almost daily basis. I’m certainly not complaining, but it can be a lot. I say this because I just attended one of the most excessive food orgies of my entire career, and you have the opportunity to buy a ticket and do it yourself for their next amazing experience.
Signia by Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek and Waldorf Astoria Orlando co-rang a dinner bell in September and invited me to attend one of their new Epicurious Progressive Dinner Tours on their Disney-adjacent campus, along with a gaggle of local influencers and food writers. To make it a little bit sexier, the tour even came with a free night in their fancy hotel so I signed right up.
The 14-person guided tour includes stops at multiple restaurants on property ranging from Italian and sushi to pop-up Southern-inspired food trucks and farm-to-table cuisine. It takes a whopping four hours to complete. It’s a crash course in the award-winning talent the hotels have on-site, and I’ll be honest, it was impressive. Your group makes its way from destination to destination over those four hours, which should give you enough time to digest a bit and make some room, but by the end of my own food adventure, I was fit to burst.
La Luce
The first stop on the tour is La Luce, the signature restaurant for Signia by Hilton. The modern Italian country kitchen is open to guests and off-site visitors alike and features a menu of wood-fired thin-crust pizzas and homemade pasta so fresh it’ll curl your toes.
The first dish was a decadent flatbread with seasonal fruit, burrata and prosciutto, which was so good I went back for seconds. Which was a pretty rookie mistake given the scope of the evening. It was followed by a risotto al tartufo with porcini mushroom and shaved black truffle — basically, a welcomed vehicle to shovel black truffles into my mouth with reckless abandon.
Zeta Asia
The hotel’s second signature restaurant is modern and hip and serves a variety of pan-Asian dishes that really highlight the skills of Chef Jesus Pinto, with innovative sauces and pairings like a kimchi chimichurri that made me wish I could order extra in a to-go mason jar to bring home with me later.
Zeta’s tasting menu included some Hotate Yuzuyaki (seared scallops with a yuzu parmesan foam), bulgogi beef with roasted eggplant miso and the aforementioned kimchi chimichurri, and a Makizushi Duo of crab salad and avocado-topped tuna.
Vibe Kitchen Food Truck
At this point, I was starting to feel a little uncomfortably full. That extra piece of flatbread had wedged itself into my gullet and wasn’t leaving much room for the aforementioned bulgogi beef, but I saddled up at the food truck like a champion (very) heavyweight, ready for the next match.
And of course, it was a double meat platter. The overwhelmingly cheerful crew of the Vibe Kitchen Food Truck rolled into the party like a rowdy group of sailors, with plates piled high with house-smoked pulled pork and brisket, coleslaw, house-made pickles and the best cheddar biscuit I’ve ever had in my life. I actually bundled up three biscuits that my co-tour-goers had neglected and packed them into my pockets to nibble on later. One of them even made its way home and I gobbled it up three days after and it was still delicious.
Bull & Bear
The storied Bull & Bear restaurant at Waldorf Astoria Orlando is currently under renovations but rather than just closing up shop and sending that staff somewhere else on property, the hotel simply moved the restaurant into a temporary home at sister restaurant, Oscar’s, for a few months. Here we were greeted with dishes of braised rabbit accompanied with chestnut spaetzle, seasonal wild mushrooms and winter vegetables and pomegranate. And we finished it all off with a crispy frozen pavlova made with smoked Madagascar vanilla bean ice cream, strawberry sorbet and red berry emulsion.
Bull & Bear is the consummate resort dining experience with top-notch service from professionals who have honed their craft over decades, offering farm-to-table seasonal dishes, in an un-stuffy atmosphere and the tour was a great way to dip my toe in their dining room without fear of a massive bill and I can’t wait to go back now that I’m not afraid of commitment.
Book Now!
Tickets to the next progressive dinner on December 9 are $210 per person, plus gratuity and taxes and since you’re dropping that much on the experience, I can’t recommend the hotel stay add-on enough.
If I had been expected to drive back to College Park after downing all of that food and tasty booze, I would have ended up in a ditch. You can book a room at $195 per night as part of a fun staycation package at Signia by Hilton and the rooms are super cute and the ideal place to sequester and drift off into dreamland after all that deliciousness.
And perhaps the best part; the Epicurious Sip & Savor event will feature even more tastings. It’ll be taking place in the Bonnet Creek Ballroom in Signia by Hilton, with everything in one room to save on all of the walking I did.
