Icon Park eatery Helena Modern Riviera misses the mark with its muddled take on Mediterranean

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photo by Rob Bartlett

A subtle anxiety grips whenever I consider our southern horizon. It's cuckoo down there. A world apart. I find little comfort staring into the evil I's — I-4, I-Drive. But this was to be different. Yes, it would be different. After all, I was headed to the Riviera. Orlando's Riviera. Helena Modern Riviera in Icon Park.

Helena is the brainchild of the Atelier Dining Group — it of Rosallie Le French Café and Mangoni Italian Market Pizza in Winter Garden. Themes are its theme, even if in Helena it is one very loosely applied. Ooh, la, la: Nothing says Riviera like a chicken burger and fries. One look at the menu and the promise of pissaladière went poof.

To its credit, Helena does describe its food as broadly Mediterranean and hedges further with claims of American fusion. But ceviche, miso, chimichurri, criolla, Asian slaw, empanadas spelled "empenadas"? It is global fusion. It is also not very good. Platitudinal and unfocused.

Let me set the stage. Thursday evenings on the Riviera are "Havana Nights." Our host ushered us into an interior tilt-a-whirl of spinning lights and Cuban beats, through a pleasant enough hanging-plant and wicker space self-described as Balinese. A scantily clad dancer shimmied from room to room — rooms that were loud and largely empty. A faux Ibizan delirium made further surreal by the passing of tiny passenger trains and revolving of the Orlando Eye outside.

We ordered several starters. Malta Garlic Shrimp ($22) were satisfying enough — the garlic properly heady, shrimp smallish but quality. What made Cyprus Meatballs ($14) Cypriot is a mystery, served atop basic marinara, bland and texturally teetering between bouncy and gelatinous — a far cry from flavorful keftedes. "Medusa" ($28), a plate of poorly prepared octopus, did as promised — turn us to stone. It ate like garden hose.

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photo by Rob Bartlett

Mains were a mixed bag, one largely filled with disappointment. The good started and stopped at a cioppino that was not cioppino ($54) — rather, a white bouillabaisse anchored in butter, cream and fennel. It won us over with its well-cooked seafood, though, the standouts being lobster and shrimp. A bored Seafood Paella for two ($54) arrived devoid of socarrat and topped with a scattering of shriveled calamari, clams, shrimp and mussels. Edible but deeply flawed. Helena's Baked Chicken ($28) was a forgettable riff on airline chicken accompanied by equally forgettable broccolini and mash and was dubbed by one tablemate Poulet Cafétéria. Between ordering and receiving, a lamb shank became Lamb Chops ($38), which our server graciously (correctly) removed from the bill. Even free, the chops were overpriced. Desecrated — tough and overdone — the flavor cooked away, they were reliant on a dim side of chimi.

The mediocrity fumbled along for three hours. Despite Helena being only a third full, our friendly service was painfully slow. Drinks arrived haphazardly. One entrée lagged the others by 10 minutes. Sensing how things were playing out, when I ordered a first glass of passable albariño, I also ordered a second.

It wasn't all for naught. We did end with a learning experience: Tableside Tiramisu ($24) is unnecessary. Like a tableside ham sandwich. Purely performative. Unexciting. Reflective of Helena itself; a bit of popular theater — thematically meandering and bereft of substance. The unrealized aspiration here seems targeted at the likes of Winter Park's Ava Mediterraegean. And if you were to take the fine dining chic of Ava and shoehorn it into a cruise ship — a theme park — it would likely be shaped like Helena. Yes, bingo. Helena is theme-park Ava — a distraction from the restaurant real world, with dumbed-down food and marked-up prices.