Here is the part that doesn't fit the press release version of this story. Mount Dora landed a No. 3 ranking in USA TODAY's 10Best 2026 Readers' Choice Awards for Best Small Town Food Scene, the kind of recognition that usually gets followed by a tourism push. Instead, the Mount Dora Area Chamber of Commerce spent late July and early August running its first-ever Restaurant Week, and when you listen to why the people running it say they did it, the reason has almost nothing to do with visitors discovering the town because of a national list. It has to do with July and August being slow, and restaurants needing their own neighbors to show up.
That's the actual story here, and it changes how you read everything else that happened around it this summer.
The Ranking Landed in the Slowest Month of the Year
National food recognition tends to arrive with an assumption baked in: outsiders will come find you now. But Salt & Ember general manager Michelle Konish, whose restaurant had only been open since about April 21, put it plainly when a Spectrum News reporter asked about timing. She'd been told "it gets a little slower here in July and August for the summer." That's not a complaint about the ranking. It's a description of what actually happens to Mount Dora's dining rooms once the seasonal visitor traffic thins out and the heat sets in.
So the timing of Restaurant Week wasn't a victory lap. It was a response to a gap. Eden Abbey Brewing Community co-owner Eve Passmore described the pattern most owners already know: summer means you "tighten your belts," and getting through it depends on local habit, not national press. As she put it, restaurants "really need to depend on your locals to keep things going."
That's worth sitting with if you live here. The ranking is a headline. The thing that keeps Fifth Avenue Streatery's kitchen running in late July is somebody from three blocks over deciding to grab dinner on a Tuesday instead of cooking at home.
Whose Idea This Actually Was
Restaurant Week wasn't a Chamber initiative that restaurants were invited to join after the fact. It started as a suggestion from inside the industry. Konish said she and her team approached Chamber President Rachel O'Ryan directly: "We should do a Mount Dora Restaurant Week in July when it's slow going into August." O'Ryan said yes, and from there it grew into a nine-day event running Saturday, July 25 through Sunday, August 2, open to Chamber member restaurants across Mount Dora, Eustis, Tavares, and Howey-in-the-Hills.
The structure was simple: lunch menus capped at $30, dinner menus capped at $50, offered alongside each restaurant's regular menu rather than replacing it. O'Ryan framed the goal in resident-facing terms too, calling it a chance to "try a restaurant without breaking the bank." More than two dozen restaurants, cafes, breweries, and dining spots ultimately took part, spanning four towns rather than staying contained to downtown Mount Dora alone.
What Was Actually New to Try
If you were looking for a reason to work through your own list of nearby restaurants this summer, here's what showed up in the lineup, along with a few details worth knowing before you go:
- Las Palmas Cuban Restaurant, on the corner of Donnelly Street and 3rd/4th Avenue downtown, has been a fixture long enough that regulars know Executive Chef Luis Gonzalez by name. It's one of the longest-running participants in the event and stayed on the list this year alongside newer names.
- Fifth Avenue Streatery, at the corner of 5th Avenue and Highland Street, is owned by Tim Habjan and Deborah McGann, who bring more than 60 years of combined food service experience to a Southern fusion menu built around scratch-made sauces and dressings. The Drunken Steer sandwich shows up in enough reviews that it's clearly become the thing people order first.
- Highland Street Cafe is the uptown breakfast spot locals point newcomers toward, home to the Nell Burger and open for dine-in seven days a week.
- Eden Abbey Brewing Community and Salt & Ember both represent the newer wave of openings filling in Mount Dora's dining map this year, with Salt & Ember only a few months old at the time Restaurant Week ran.
- Botánico Tacos & Tequila, Back Porch Pizza, Shadrach's Fiery Furnace Pizza Co., Whiskey Kitchen, The Troff, The Salted Fry, Beirut Bites, and The Mount Dora Bistro rounded out a lineup that covered French-inspired dinner service, Lebanese lunch counters, and everything between.
Chick-fil-A also opened a second Mount Dora location this summer, Chick-fil-A Golden Groves at 19360 US Highway 441, on June 11. It's not part of the Chamber's independent food scene story, but it's a data point in the same direction: this is a town where restaurant square footage keeps expanding, on the highway corridor and downtown at the same time.
If You're Actually Going Out This Week
One detail from the coverage is worth carrying with you even after Restaurant Week wrapped on August 2. Mount Dora Mayor James Homich addressed the town's perpetual downtown parking complaint directly, pointing diners toward the public lot at the Methodist Church as a one-block walk from most of the restaurant strip, where he said "there's parking there, almost guaranteed." If you've been circling Donnelly Street looking for a spot on a Friday night, that's the fix.
And if you're reading this on the weekend it publishes, the Florida Highwaymen Art Show and Sale is running Saturday and Sunday, August 15 and 16, at Donnelly Park Pavilion, which makes for an easy pairing with a Las Palmas lunch or an early dinner at Fifth Avenue Streatery before or after.
The Part That's Easy to Miss
A No. 3 national ranking is the kind of thing that gets repeated in every roundup and press mention for the next year, and it should be. But the actual mechanism keeping Mount Dora's restaurants open through the slow months isn't tourists chasing a USA TODAY list. It's the same thing it's always been: people who already live here deciding where to eat on an ordinary Tuesday. Restaurant Week wasn't built to capitalize on national attention. It was built because the people running these kitchens know exactly who keeps the lights on in July, and it isn't visitors.
If you've been meaning to try Salt & Ember since it opened in April, or you haven't been back to Highland Street Cafe in a while, this is as good a nudge as any. The ranking got the headline. Your reservation is what actually matters.
Mount Dora keeps adding reasons to love living here, and staying current on what's opening, what's changing, and what's worth your Saturday is part of what Kara Wisely does for clients and neighbors alike. If you've got questions about the area, whether you're settled in or just curious what else is around the corner, Let's Connect.