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Wilson Santos has been thinking about opening a French fry-centric restaurant for years.
“This concept is like decades in the making,” Santos said. “To be honest, I went to Amsterdam, the first trip was in 1994. I was doing a study abroad program in England and on the weekends, I would try to take a trip around Europe. And I just took a trip with some friends that I met in England, went to Amsterdam and I saw these fries.”
The fry shops became a common snack for Santos during his visits.
“I just thought, ‘Why don’t we have this in the U.S.?’” Santos said.
He got his first chance to try the concept when his first restaurant concept, Vinyl Arts Bar was undergoing a rebranding during COVID. Vinyl Cafe served as Santos interpretation of an Amsterdam coffee bar, but instead of marijuana, he offered hemp. He also offered fries.
“So I put about six different sauces on the menu, I did the cone fries, and then you have the hemp,” Santis said. “Now people are smoking hemp They’re eating the fries and they get the whole Amsterdam experience.”
Santos sold the space about six months later. That was in 2020.
In March, he was finally able to open The Fry Shoppe at 489 N. Semoran Blvd.
“We’re a few blocks up from Full Sail University — just light up from University Boulevard to Aloma (Avenue) so we’re right on the corner of Semoran Boulevard and Aloma (Avenue) — really high-traffic intersection for us,” Santos said.
The business owner truly believes in the concept and is taking a big gamble on himself to get The Fry Shoppe up and running.
“I was looking for investors for a long time, I had presentations and meetings and nobody wanted to invest. Nobody believed in it. You know, people said I was asking too much,” Santos said. “I’m glad I didn’t get any investors at the end of the day. It would have been a mistake. So things happen for a reason. I ended up — I couldn’t get funding for it and I didn’t have the money. I just — I’m a risk taker, I sold my house.”
Santos is now renting a place near his restaurant. He believes the concept is ripe for a franchise.
“I’m not gonna stop until we have multiple locations. I’m persistent,” Santos said.
He believes The Fry Shoppe could find itself in mall food courts, food halls, or at airports. However, he needs to get this original location firing on all cylinders first.
I know that in the next month, we’ll be at 100%. We have to add delivery — so we have to add DoorDash UberEATS are the two big ones. We haven’t even marketed heavily to the student population right down the street at Full Sail They have over 20,000 students. This is affordable food for students,” said.
On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Santos talked more about his trips to Amsterdam that inspired his restaurant. He also gives Candace Campos a rundown on his most popular sauces.
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The pandemic was a trying time for people across the food service industry, but Jay and Johnny Nartowicz and their partner Colton O’Dwyer ended up opening the right business at the exact right time.
They opened Ghost Kitchen Orlando in February 2020, just weeks before COVID-era restrictions started taking effect.
“It was very strange timing because it was almost like we were building this business just for COVID because all the restaurants were shutting down,” Johnny Nartowicz said. We were planning the idea back in October of 2019. So, yeah, four or five months later COVID hit — all the restaurants shut down and we were planning this delivery pickup-only restaurant for five months.”
Ghost Kitchen Orlando went on to be a success during the pandemic, especially with its heat-and-eat meals, but as the world began to reopen their lunch and catering business became the focus. Because of that, the team decided to expand into a brick-and-mortar location.
The first Bricks & Bowls location opened in the Mall at Millenia in 2022.
“The way people are eating is changing and there’s a lot of really bad processed food out there,” Jay Nartowicz said. “And so we want it to be wholesome, nutritious — we don’t want to come across as super healthy. We have a really good balance. We have a lot of superfoods and then we have a lot of indulgent foods and wholesome foods.”
The restaurant offers sandwiches served on focaccia bread along with a variety of bowls featuring proteins, grains and vegetables. The Millenia location has served as a testing ground for the concept and now it is going to expand.
“We had to go from pickup and delivery only to now having a full storefront with staff interacting with customers,” Johnny Nartowicz said. “It’s completely different. So it’s definitely been a learning curve but we feel it’s been (a) proof of concept over the past two years and we’ve really kind of nailed it and are excited to open this new store in Winter Park.”
For Johnny Nartowicz and O’Dwyer, opening a store in Winter Park is something of a homecoming, as the pair met while attending Rollins College.
“Winter Park is cool for us because where we’re opening is like 100 feet from where we graduated,” O’Dwyer said. “We’re going to have a couple exclusive offerings. We’re going to have focaccia pizza, which is baked actually using our focaccia bread, and we’re gonna have beer and wine, as well as some seltzers and things like that.”
The new restaurant is set to open at 331 S. Park Ave. by the end of April, no official opening date has been set.
On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, the trio talked about their plans to expand their businesses further. They also share their favorite sandwiches with Lisa Bell.
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Christina Hollerbach is carrying on her parents’ life-long dream.
“My parents always wanted to run their own restaurant and obviously my dad, being from Germany, wanted it to be a German restaurant,” she said.
That dream became a reality in 2001, when her parents bought Willow Tree Cafe. The restaurant was tiny then but has since ballooned with the success of the business.
“They actually bought the restaurant with 60 seats and six employees for $60,000,” Hollerbach said. “And of course, since then, we now have about 160 employees and see almost 10,000 guests a week between all of our businesses.”
Hollerbach’s German Restaurant has since taken over a large portion of the building it sits in. The family has also expanded to have a market, selling baked goods and imported meats, and an outfitter full of authentic German costumes and outfits.
In the more than 20 years since the restaurant first opened, Hollerbach has taken the reins of the business as its CEO.
Hollerbach said the businesses are selling more than just food. They are selling a feeling of warmth and friendliness expressed best by the German word gemütlichkeit.
“That’s what we’re trying to achieve all the time for these guests,” she said. “It’s why people like to celebrate special occasions here because you get that energy and like yes, the food is a huge part of it because it adds to that experience, but it is just one part of it.”
Part of that effort to provide a cozy experience is by offering something for everyone, including its main restaurant which mimics a German beer hall with live music, a lodge for more of a bar atmosphere and the upstairs restaurant, Uber Keller, which offers a more laid back experience and serves German tapas.
Hollerback feels as though the restaurant has helped to drive some change in Sanford — helping to take it from a sleepy suburb to a destination.
“I would definitely consider us as a catalyst of making people believe that Sanford had a nightlife and a future because, you know, (the restaurant) was lunch only and we used to open for dinner on just Fridays and Saturdays and we would have like 10 covers. Now, there’s a line out the door,” she said.
Hollerbach is very active in the community as well. She is an advocate for the city and works closely with the Sanford Main Street organization to push for improvements in the city.
“I can still pause and appreciate and be grateful for what is happening right now while still simultaneously going ‘Alright, well, we got to fix this,” she said.
On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Hollerbach shares more of her family’s history and how it is woven into the fabric of the restaurant. She also shares some of the food that can be found there with Lisa Bell and Candace Campos.
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Chef Jill Holland found her path later in life when she went into culinary school at age 36.
“It took a lot of soul searching to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up and now I just need to grow up,” Holland said.
Holland worked in retail, real estate and was even a swim instructor for several years, but she found a love for cooking when she went to a birthday party.
“I went to a friend’s birthday party who was doing like an in-home cooking class and it just really intrigued me,” she said. “A couple of weeks later, her sister had a birthday party with the same person and I, of course, went back and I’m like, ‘I think I could do this. Yeah, I think I could do this but I’m gonna need a lot more information.’ So I went back to college and graduated from Valencia in 2011.”
From there, Holland worked in several kitchens, but she found her true calling when she became an instructor with Second Harvest’s Culinary Training Program.
“Second Harvest actually started a catering company,” Holland said. “I came on to Second Harvest as a part-time instructor and six months later, I took over the position as head chef (of catering).”
The company, now called Plate Above Catering, offers full-service catering for large and small events with all of the proceeds going back to funding the culinary training program. Second Harvest said it costs about $7,000 to put a student through its intensive training program. The proceeds from Plate Above help to keep the classes completely free for those students.
“(It) is an amazing program — building up adults who have some sort of hardship in their background,” Holland said. “It could be as — and I use this term very loosely — it could be as simple as being underemployed all the way to the extreme of homelessness — we’ve had students who are living in shelters, living out of their cars, living on a friend’s couch — and everything in between those two scenarios.”
Plate Above offers pick-up and reheat menus for families during holidays, but it can also cover events of nearly any size.
“We’ve catered wedding receptions, we have a rehearsal dinner and a couple of weeks that we’re doing. We’ve done retirement parties, birthday parties, we’ve done some Bar and Bat Mitzvahs,” Holland said.
She added that the company is willing to work with customers to offer up nearly any kind of menu they like.
On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Holland shared more of long and varied resume. She also sampled some delicious candied bacon, cookies and a frittata for Lisa Bell and Candace Campos.
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Olivier Saintemarie was raised in Paris but he has spent a portion of his career bringing the flavors of the City of Light to Central Florida.
Saintemarie has spent time working Chefs de France in Epcot but is now in the process of opening his own business in Orlando’s newly expanding Packing District — La Maison Du Macaron.
“I’m really happy to bring all these exciting products here,” Saintmarie said.
As the name implies, the bakery specializes in macarons — which are a small cookie made by combining meringue and almond flour to create shells that are then sandwiched around a filling.
“It’s one of the favorite things I make,” he said. “I mean, it’s very popular. All the times I go to a party it’s like, ‘Hey, where are the macarons?’”
The chef and his team plan to deliver a variety of macarons for people to enjoy, including coffee, coconut lime, caramel with sea salt and back currant, among others.
“In each box, we’re gonna have a description of all the flavors so it’s depending on your on your taste,” Saintemarie said. “I’m pretty sure you can find something you’re gonna like.”
The bakery is not open to the public as it is focused on volume, but customers can order boxes of macarons online.
“We’re gonna have different collections — we’re gonna have a classic collection with the caramel, the spice, the coffees the vanilla. We’re gonna have a fruit collection,” the chef said. “We’re gonna have 100% chocolate. So we’re going to have a fudge we’re gonna have a regular chocolate, chocolate passion (fruit), chocolate orange.”
Saintemarie’s operation is still being built out and he is planning to expand into making chocolate candies. For now, the chef is focused on his macaron operation.
“I want people to really taste the macarons like we have them in France,” Saintemarie said. “It’s something I grew up with, macarons. I learned to make macarons a long time ago.”
The chef is ready to introduce his taste of Paris to a lot of people. He said his operation can produce 10,000 to 12,000 macarons every day.
On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Saintemarie shows off his operation and goes deep on how macarons are made. He gives Candace Campos and Lisa Bell a lesson on how to fill the cookies.
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Pine & Oak Tavern sits inside the newly renovated Rio Pinar Golf course, but despite its new look, the walls are covered in history.
“Arnold Palmer’s trophy is on the wall behind us and Lee Trevino is a champion here and Hal Irwin and a lot of the great old golfers. The history is just priceless. That’s one of the reasons why the property is purchased. You can buy a golf club, but you can’t buy the history,” said Greg Allowe, the president of Delaney Hospitality, which owns Pine & Oak.
Allowe partnered with the new owners of Rio Pinar to bring Pine & Oak to life. The golf club had been mothballed for several years before it was purchased, so it was in need of an update by the time Allowe came to it.
“So we had to start from the beginning and the vision was not to be a stodgy old country club,” Allowe said. “We wanted to modernize it — make it more relevant with keeping some of the traditions in place. So if you look in the main part of the restaurant, you’ll see the artwork is not typical for for a golf club. We wanted to build a restaurant that was a restaurant that just happened to be located at a golf club, not a golf club restaurant.”
Allowe was not a stranger to restaurant ownership. He also owns Delaney’s Tavern, inside the Delany Hotel, in downtown Orlando. The businessman brought in Anthony Albino, his corporate chef who had helped to develop the menu at Delaney’s Tavern.
“Some of the flavors of (Delaney’s Tavern) are here but we wanted also make this property a little bit more unique so, the menu is tailored a bit more for this market,” Allowe said.
Albino came to the culinary world following a career change. Previously, he worked as a mortgage broker until 2008.
“That’s when I put myself through college,” Albino said. “I went to attend Le Cordon Bleu.”
Albino said he got his passion for cooking from his family, especially his grandmother.
“I grew up with a single mom. So every year she sent me down to Puerto Rico to live with my grandma,” the chef said. “And my grandma cooked every day, no matter who was coming by, or who was who was in the house. She cooked every day and people just stopped buy to eat — so I just got a passion and love for cooking from her.”
On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Allowe shares more of the history behind Rio Pinar and Pine & Oak, while Albino shows off some of the menu.
Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”
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