Eating in Orlando: Restaurants, Fine Dining and Stocking the Villa Kitchen

Ask where to eat in Orlando and you will get a list of restaurants. That is the right answer for somebody in a hotel room. It is only half the answer for somebody in a vacation home, because a villa comes with a full kitchen, a proper fridge and a washing-up machine — and that changes the economics of a fortnight more than any single restaurant choice will.

So this guide covers both halves: getting the kitchen stocked before or as you arrive, and eating out properly when you do. The first is where most of the money is saved and where most of the avoidable mistakes happen.

Stocking the kitchen before you get there

The single best thing you can do for the first day of an Orlando holiday is to arrange a grocery delivery. A transatlantic flight, immigration, a hire car and a supermarket run in that order is a miserable way to start, and it is entirely avoidable.

Specialist villa delivery

There are grocery services built specifically around Orlando vacation rentals rather than around residents. Garden Grocer has been doing it since 2005 and delivers to any Airbnb, VRBO, private vacation home or resort villa with an Orlando-area address, and you place the order before you travel rather than after you land.

A minimum order applies and delivery is free above a certain spend. Both figures move — the company's own pages did not agree on the minimum on the day we checked — so treat the current basket page as authoritative rather than any article, this one included.

The catch nobody mentions

At a private vacation home, somebody has to be there to take the delivery. This is the difference that catches people out: Disney's own resorts will accept a grocery order and refrigerate it until you check in, so guests staying on Disney property can genuinely have food waiting. A villa has no bell desk, so the delivery has to meet you rather than beat you.

In practice that means booking the slot for shortly after your expected arrival, not before it, and building in a buffer for the airport. If the flight slips, the groceries are the thing you will be chasing.

If there is alcohol in the order

There is a fixed rule and it surprises people every time: any order containing alcohol has to be handed to you in person, between 12pm and 4pm, with valid photo identification. That window applies wherever you are staying — Disney resorts will hold your groceries but they will not hold alcohol either.

If you land in the evening, the simpler plan is to keep alcohol off the delivery and pick it up yourself once you have the hire car. Supermarkets here sell it and they are open late.

Or just go to the supermarket

Publix is the supermarket you will see everywhere in Florida — the largest employee-owned grocery chain in the United States, and the default for most Florida households. There are branches within a short drive of every resort community, along with the big-box alternatives. The major chains offer delivery and curbside collection too, though the terms vary enough that it is worth checking when you order rather than assuming.

If you would rather make the first shop part of the trip than a chore, The Loop in Kissimmee puts a serious grocery run next to dinner and a cinema, which is a more civilised arrival evening than a strip-mall dash.

Booking the Disney restaurants

If there is one date to put in your calendar before you travel, it is this one. Walt Disney World restaurant reservations open 60 days ahead, and the sought-after tables are gone within minutes of the window opening.

There is a wrinkle that specifically affects villa guests. Guests with a Disney Resort hotel booking can reserve for their entire stay at the 60-day mark in one go. Everybody else — which includes you, staying in a vacation home — books on a rolling 60-day basis, day by day. It is a real disadvantage and the only answer is diligence: new booking windows open around 6am daily, so set the alarm and book each day as it comes into range.

Plan this alongside the rest of your park strategy rather than separately — our Walt Disney World guide covers how the days themselves fit together.

Orlando is a better food city than you have been told

The reputation is theme-park food, and the reputation is out of date. Orlando has its own MICHELIN Guide selection, starred restaurants included, alongside a strong independent scene in the neighbourhoods away from the tourist corridor.

We deliberately do not name the starred restaurants here. The guide is revised every year and stars move, and a list in a travel article is wrong within twelve months of being written. Check the current MICHELIN listing for Orlando and book from that.

For a special evening that does not involve a park, the lakefront restaurants at Celebration run from taverns to Spanish cooking within a short walk, and Disney Springs concentrates a large number of sit-down options in one place if you want choice rather than a decision.

Eating in without cooking

There is a middle option people forget about, which is having somebody else cook in your kitchen. A private chef or a prepared-meal service turns the villa into the venue for a birthday or an anniversary without anybody driving, parking or negotiating a table for twelve.

It is worth considering for one evening of a longer stay, particularly with a large group where restaurant bookings get difficult. Our guide to home-style dining in your villa explains how that works and what to arrange in advance.

A food plan that actually survives the week

Most families arrive intending to cook and end up eating out every night, or arrive intending to eat out and end up resenting the bill. The pattern below is the one that holds up.

1. 1Book the grocery delivery for shortly after your arrival, and keep alcohol off it unless you land midday.
2. 2Set a calendar reminder for 60 days before your trip, and book Disney restaurants from 6am on a rolling basis from there.
3. 3Eat breakfast at the house every day. This is where the saving actually comes from — not from cooking dinner.
4. 4Carry your own drinks and snacks into the parks. Park prices are at their most punishing on exactly these items.
5. 5Plan two or three proper dinners out across the week rather than deciding nightly at six o'clock with tired children.
6. 6Keep one evening deliberately free for a chef or a takeaway at the villa, ideally after your longest park day.

The honest summary

The kitchen is not there so you can cook every night on holiday. It is there so that breakfast, snacks and the odd tired evening cost almost nothing, which is what buys you the good dinners out without the fortnight becoming expensive.

That only works if the fridge is full on day one, which is why the delivery is the first thing to arrange and the easiest thing to forget. If you are still choosing where to stay, every one of the homes we look after has a full kitchen, a washer and a dryer, which is the whole basis of the argument above.