Orlando's Deal-Closing Room
Every city needs a restaurant that does the work a boardroom cannot. Where the stakes of the meeting are acknowledged by the setting, where the food is serious enough to demonstrate judgement, and where the service standard signals that the guest is being treated as someone who matters. In Orlando, that restaurant is Knife & Spoon.
Chef Tyler Kineman operates the flagship dining room of the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes with the precision of someone who understands that the Michelin star he earned is not a destination but a baseline. The kitchen is built around a specific proposition: the best American beef, aged with discipline and cooked with technique, combined with Florida's remarkable seafood resources and a pasta program that refuses to be the filler course between the serious dishes.
The restaurant ages its beef in-house — 44 Farms beef from Texas, a producer whose commitment to quality is reflected in the depth of flavour that becomes available when the ageing is managed with care. The result is steak that carries the mineral complexity of properly aged protein without the funky aggression of commercial aged product. It is beef that rewards attention.
The Food: Beef, Seafood, and One Unmissable Pasta
The ube cacio e pepe is the dish that gets discussed first and deserves to be discussed last. The classic Roman pasta — cheese and pepper, nothing else — executed with noodles made from purple yam (ube), which turns the pasta a vivid violet and introduces a sweetness that sits in perfect tension with the sharp, aggressive bite of the pepper and the umami weight of the aged pecorino. It is an inventive pasta that works at the technical level, which is how you can tell it is a good idea rather than a clever one.
The steaks: the in-house dry-aged cuts are the primary event, and the kitchen's sourcing from 44 Farms ensures that the raw material is correct before any technique is applied. Florida's Gulf and Atlantic seafood makes strong appearances throughout the menu — the kitchen treats locality as an obligation rather than a marketing point.
The bar and lounge opens at 5:30 pm and runs until 11:00 pm, giving the evening a natural extension point for business conversations that need to continue after the plates are cleared. The wine program reflects the restaurant's dual identity — serious enough for the client dinner, accessible enough for the hotel guest who didn't plan for an education.
Best For: Close a Deal & Team Dinner
Knife & Spoon earns its position as Orlando's premier deal-closing restaurant through the combination of Michelin credibility, Ritz-Carlton service standard, and a menu designed for the kind of meal where the food needs to impress without demanding the attention a tasting menu requires. You can discuss business over a steakhouse meal in a way that a multi-course omakase does not allow.
For a team dinner, Knife & Spoon provides the logistics: ample room, professional management of large parties, a menu that satisfies every appetite at the table (steak, seafood, pasta, vegetable sides), and the infrastructure of a Ritz-Carlton property behind every service interaction. The private dining room accommodates groups that need separation from the main dining room.
The restaurant also serves strongly as an Impress Clients venue — particularly for clients arriving at Orlando's convention facilities (the Orange County Convention Center is nearby) who need to be shown that central Florida operates at a level they did not anticipate.