Restaurant Review: Winter Park’s Ravenous Pig

Oh Piggy, Piggy.
I’ve made it my life mission to eat well. That means avoiding chains…unless, of course, I’m craving Chili’s Chicken Fajitas.
But thanks to shows like Top Chef, I’ve gotten a little more adventurous with my food. I’ve heard about this amazing Winter Park restaurant for some time now, and finally, got to experience it for myself.
My first thought…I’m truly shocked that this restaurant is in Orlando.
Seriously.
For a second, I felt like I was back in Chicago, which has become ridiculously popular for it’s amazing non-chain restaurants.
The Ravenous Pig is a restaurant in Winter Park, a suburb just north of Orlando.

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The only thing I don’t like about their website, their menu opens in a PDF – I find that annoying.

BUT, that is my only complaint at all about the restaurant.

We started with drinks – and you almost cannot go to this restaurant without ordering this:

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This is The Ravenous Pig Old Fashioned: bacon infused buffalo trace bourbon, vanilla maple syrup, orange bitters.  Yes, bacon in a drink.  It’s strong, and it’s delicious.

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Next, an order of the Tacos for an appetizer.  The Tacos are fernandina beach rock shrimp with cilantro, avocado, pickled jalapeño, cabbage slaw.  First of all, the pickled jalapeño was served on the side…which made me very happy.  It almost scared me off of ordering them in the first place.  And I’m so very glad I did, because they are serious contenders for the “best food I’ve had in my mouth” award.

I will be back just for these tacos – and next time, I may order 20 and just sit there for a few hours eating.  And I will be happy.

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We also ordered the Gruyere Biscuits which are served with smoked sea salt butter.  Not a lot to say about them except amazing.  They were served warm and the butter melted and it was heaven.

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There were so many great options for dinner and we just couldn’t decide.  But after reading so many great reviews online about the Pub Burger, I decided to give it a go.  Next time I will try something else, or I’ll just get 20 tacos.  Either way, it was a good burger that included caramelized onion, buttermilk blue cheese and truffle fries.  And let’s talk about those fries…perfection.  My husband and I almost had to have an eating contest of who could shove them in their mouth faster.  It was sad really.

On the burger scale – it gets 4 out of 5 buns for me.  A good burger – but I’ve had better.

While there were many food options that I also wanted to try, I also felt the need to save room for dessert.

I decided since I really didn’t eat a lot of ‘pig’ that I had to go with the ‘Pig Tails’ for dessert.

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The Pig Trail are warm cinnamon-sugar tossed fritters with chocolate espresso sauce.  They were delicious and adorable.

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My husband decided to order dessert, which is so rare, but he couldn’t pass up the cheescake made with a beer sauce!
Mascarpone cheesecake, pistachio crust, masumoto peach salad, dogfish head festina peche sauce. That was so amazing that i may get that next time. The crust was crunchy and tasty. A perfect combination with the mascarpone.

I have nothing but amazing things to say about the restaurant, and I cannot wait to go back.

It makes me so happy to see more original and amazing restaurants filling up Central Florida.

5 thoughts on “Restaurant Review: Winter Park’s Ravenous Pig

  1. Love Ravenous Pig and their fries and everything really! Next time you go, you need to get some of the appetizer pretzels…amazing!

  2. My mouth is watering just reading about all of this. (Except the bacon drink…that just sounds odd to me.) What is it about truffle on things that is so appealing? I swear, they could put truffle on Twinkies and I’d be like “I’ll take a dozen please.”

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