Coro in Audubon Park is the restaurant this city didn't know it needed

"So, what's your favorite restaurant?" In the 18-plus years I've been reviewing restaurants in this city, I've never been able to answer that question. My invariable reply — "It depends" — is often met with disappointment. Those dependencies, after all — cuisine, cost, mood, time, locale, craving, noise level, lighting, service, etc., etc. — make it damned near impossible to respond with any semblance of conviction. But if you were to ask me now, I'd say Coro. With certitude. Coro is my favorite restaurant.

In hindsight, it may have been my favorite restaurant even before it was officially a restaurant. When chef Tim Lovero and his wife, Natalie, launched Coro in February as a two-night pop-up at the now-shuttered Farm & Haus in Winter Park, every Italian-leaning dish, globally inflected in spectacular fashion, had me in a prandial swoon, all the while wondering if it was all some sort of fluke. So, when Coro soft opened in early June, I was excitedly there. Guardedly excited, but excited nevertheless.

Coro being Italian for "choir" or "chorus" undoubtedly elicited all the clichéd phrases about a "symphony" of this and a "harmony" of that from food influencer-dom. Fact is, Coro is Lovero's magnum opus, and having been a creative force in the kitchens of Luma, Prato and Luke's for 16 years seems to have led to this moment for the 40-year-old chef. Yet what struck me the first time I stepped into the Audubon Park resto was how egoless the whole operation appeared. Maybe it was because I could walk directly into the unimpeded kitchen and, theoretically, stir the sauce pots, or how genuinely welcoming everyone was. Maybe it was the restaurant's minimalist design, or that the lines between the back-of-house and front-of-house teams were blurred. On both my visits to Coro, our servers happened to be the cooks and chefs who had a direct or indirect hand in making the very dishes we were about to eat.

As the yellow bill of fare says, dishes are "ever evolving" from a team that's "always creating." The amuse bouche on that first visit in June was a stack comprised of a purple potato chip, Kennebec potato chip and sunchoke chip layered with creme fraiche, aged Gouda, green garlic and smoked tomato dust. It was tasting menu-level stuff, but without the inflated Michelin-iness of a tasting menu restaurant.

I get the sense Lovero et. al. would be perfectly content not having Coro's walls sullied by stars (see note about ego above) because the tables are full of them anyway. I could rattle off a litany of composed sharables: cobia slivers soaked in umeboshi and Sichuan chili oil colored with Florida strawberries ($18); fermented potato naan served with crunchy chicken-skin butter and citrus chili jam ($12); or a jammy sous-vide duck egg nestled into a mix of sweet potato greens and spinach, slicked in a roasted Funghi Jon mushroom-yuzu vinaigrette, topped with osetra caviar and sourdough croutons, and dusted with a powder of fermented and dehydrated mushroom stems ($18).

"I find inspiration from the produce around me and really try to make it the star," Lovero says. "I also try to find new ways to use parts of vegetables that are usually thrown away."

Not that you'd know mushrooms and beet stems, onion ash or tomato dust were in any of the dishes, given the misleadingly sparse descriptions on the menu. Here, what you read isn't always what you think you're getting. After ordering an item that simply read "aged beef, kohlrabi, warm rice" ($22), we ended up with a bowl of egg cream with Dijon, house sourdough, lemon and neutral oil. Seasoned koshihikari rice and crispy rice sat on top. Grass-fed beef tartare mixed with fish sauce, EVOO, salt, shallots, last year's kohlrabi kimchee and lemon juice was spooned onto it and finished with Sugar Top Farms arugula and seaweed dust. The idea was to toss the mix and enjoy it with the supplied toasted nori wrappers.

Surprising turns like this can prove restorative to regular restaurant-goers. It's why I named Coro "Best Restaurant for Jaded Gastronomes" in Orlando Weekly's Best of Orlando issue earlier this year. Dishes are studied and superbly crafted, yes, but they're a helluva lot of fun to eat. They bring smiles to the faces of burned-out bon vivants, a not-so-easy feat anymore. All Coro's dishes, with the exception of an aged coulotte ($30) we found to be a bit ordinary (and a bit tough), had us giggling and giddily anticipating what was next.

"Here we have squid ink noodles ($24) with black garlic chicken jus and ponzu, thinly sliced squid, chili oil, breadcrumbs, Chinese broccoli, cured lemon and pickled shallots," said Lovero.

"Whoa, duuude!"

"This is agnolotti ($20) with eggplant that's been salted, pressed and pan-roasted in olive oil, the seeds removed, with burrata for the filling. There's confit tomato and fermented green garlic with white soy-marinated green tomatoes, parmesan and mixed herbs," said one of the cooks.

"Whaaaa? That looks incredible!"

So, when a dessert labeled "bananas and caviar" presented itself, we felt compelled to order it regardless of the $55 price. It looked so elegant, this seared sweet plantain marinated in black garlic, ginger, soy and lime. Set into a blob of roasted banana dulce de leche, topped with fried plantains, crème fraiche, sturgeon caviar and a splash of Sicilian olive oil, it made for some "fifth taste" feels. A cross-cultural capper of koji rice ($14) cooked down with coconut, mango and citrus, crunched with crispy rice and quinoa, and puckered with chamoy and cilantro comprised flavors and textures any Thai, Mexican or Indian would find familiar. And the wine list — hyperfocused and never hackneyed — "ever evolves" just like the restaurant's cuisine.

Brandon McGlamery, chef-partner of Prato, Luke's and Luma (RIP), was quick to recognize Lovero's abilities. "He has a calm and natural thoughtfulness to the dishes he cooks and presents. ... His effortless, elegant style is easily recognized from a distance and his flavors are balanced, fresh and flavorful. He is a big talent, yet he remains humble and grounded and is one of the nicest people in town."

Well said, Brandon. But you're preaching to the Coro.