DINING Art Smith is equal parts celebrity chef, educator, and force of nature. As he bustles around his latest restaurant, Homecominʼ: Florida Kitchen & Shine Bar , at Disney Springs® , he greets customers like old friends, poses for photos, and signs books with inscriptions like “Food is love.” It’s evident that this place feels like home to him. In fact, Homecominʼ looks like it could be his home, with its wood-frame Cracker-style architecture, high beamed ceilings, butcher block tables, airy dining-room and porch, and a turquoise “backyard” pool that’s reminiscent of the Florida springs of his youth. While it’s only his home away from home, the 200-seat restaurant that opened in July 2016 is a kind of homecoming to the former personal chef to Oprah Winfrey and two Florida governors. (He has also cooked for President Obama and the British royal family, owns a number of restaurants, and has won two James Beard Awards that are on display at Homecomin’.) Smith is pure Florida. He was born and reared in Jasper, FL, near the Georgia border, and completed the first Walt Disney Magic Kingdom College Program in 1981, as a 21-year-old student at Florida State University. “Everybody else in the program wanted to work at Magic Kingdom® Park,” Smith recalls. “I wanted to bake cakes for Walt Disney World® Resortʼs central food services.” It took 34 years, but Smith has finally returned to his roots and his first love, Southern cuisine with a Florida bent. He’s moved back to Jasper with his husband, Jesus Salgueiro, and their four adopted kids, to be near his aging mother. And he splits his time between Chicago, his Victorian farmhouse in Jasper, and Homecominʼ. The menu is designed to showcase regional comfort food, including mac and cheese, fried chicken, fried catfish, barbecue, shrimp and grits, fried green tomatoes, hushpuppies, biscuits, braised collards and, of course, cakes. Shine Cake is a tribute to his granddaddy who Smith says made “fine moonshine.” That potable is an unabashed theme here. It’s not only in Shine’s frosting and cake—the restaurant’s bar, Shine Bar, proudly serves moonshine-based cocktails and flights. While Smith admits it’s hard to define “Florida food,” for him—a sixth-generation Floridian—that phrase calls to mind Key Lime pie, smoked fish, grilled grouper, local vegetables, and local honey. “I want my chefs to know where their food comes from,” he says. “That’s important because it makes us more sustainable and healthy. I found this amazing chicken that’s produced close by that will support local farmers in an area where 30 percent of the community lives in poverty. Everyone’s been ‘farmed-to-table’ to death. But what about the idea of farm-to-life?” His main objective is to reinvigorate struggling local communities by creating jobs and revenue streams. At Homecominʼ, at least 50 percent of the food and bar goods come from Florida, not to mention two large round tables and sections of the bar carved from a pre-Civil-War-era camphor tree. But locally grown ingredients that can upli the area aren’t the whole story here. “To me, the best part about Homecominʼ is the people,” Smith says. “Guests say to me, ‘I Iove my server’—and they mention the person’s name. That’s really flattering.” To see how Smith’s ‘farm-to-life’ vision for the restaurant extends beyond its walls and menu, one need only look to the antebellum mansion in nearby Madison, FL that he’s turning into Reunion Florida Garden and Kitchen School. When complete, it will provide cooking instruction, teach farm-to-table principles, and enable an historical landmark to play a role in shaping a more positive future. He’s also transforming a former sporting complex into a commercial bakery, which could produce thousands of cakes and biscuits for distribution across the South. This is the ultimate in sustainability: a cycle of growing and cooking food, preserving traditional ways and supporting local economies. Smith acknowledges that his move back to his hometown has posed challenges. “But,” he says, “there’s nothing better than sitting out on the porch at night, hearing the owls, and seeing the stars.” Florida, Disney, and the restaurant are providing fertile ground for this energetic, high-minded chefʼs transformative ideas. “Disney is a big believer in team building and has an incredibly strong sense of service, too,” says Smith. Homecominʼ: Florida Kitchen & Shine Bar shows just what a perfect team the two make. ExperienceKissimmee.com 51
Experience Kissimmee 2018 Kissimmee Destination Guide: Page 51
