It is around 2 p.m. on a Friday when I roll into the parking lot of a Bravo Supermarket at 13024 Narcoossee Road in Lake Nona, and I am wondering if there’s a holiday weekend I’ve forgotten about, because it is crazy-busy.
I’m not here to food shop, though. Even if this is the nicest Bravo I have ever seen in my life.
I am here for sushi.
Um … what?
Yes, I know. Bravo is not a brand you’d likely associate with sushi — to illustrate, the line for rotisserie chicken, no surprise, is formidable — but so, too, is the one for the microrestaurant adjacent: The Escobar Kitchen.
Well, actually, not at the moment I walk in. I was lucky.
Every table in the food court-like seating area is taken. And even with no one in front of me, the young woman at the counter tells me my order will take 15 minutes, because the crew behind her, four strong and hard at work, is filling to-go orders, tickets I can literally watch printing as they soar in from phones and laptops in the metro-diaspora.
The Escobar Kitchen’s first location, inside a Lake Nona Bravo Supermarket, was busy with shoppers and diners on this Friday afternoon, with dine-in and takeout customers. (Amy Drew Thompson/Orlando Sentinel)
Though there is American-style sushi on the menu here, goodies like the Dragon Roll, featuring shrimp tempura, crab, cream cheese and cucumber, topped with avocado, spicy mayo and eel sauce, and others like it, I won’t be scarfing raw salmon today. Well, not much, anyway.
I am here for Lewis Escobar’s Latin-Asian hybrids, colorful tributes to his Boricua background that meld classic elements of Puerto Rican cuisine with the stylish one- and two-bite design of the futomaki.
Churrasco and plantain rep The Escobar Kitchen’s Latin-Asian fusion theme well. (Amy Drew Thompson/Orlando Sentinel)
Nothing showcases the concept better than its bestselling namesake roll ($17), in which churrasco and sweet plantains star. In the supporting roles, shrimp tempura and cream cheese, all of it wrapped in Spanish yellow rice, then topped with avocado and chimichurri and two other housemade sauces.
“I named this one after my dad,” says Escobar, a pastor’s son who came to the mainland from Carolina, Puerto Rico, in 1994, a 22-year-old whose first catering gig was part-time at the Orange County Convention Center, a side hustle to his “day job,” driving buses at Walt Disney World.
Sauce Boss: Lewis Escobar finishes a plate at The Escobar Kitchen. (Courtesy The Escobar Kitchen)
“I loved working in food, though, because growing up, my dad was like our personal chef at the house,” he says.
Years later, he moved full-time into culinary (“I became passionate for that,” he says).
Beginning with the World Center Marriott, he moved through the decade with success, leveling up into positions at the Waldorf Astoria and Hilton Bonnet Creek before the COVID-19 pandemic-based cuts set him on the sidelines. But the timing was fortuitous.
The Escobar Kitchen’s Neptune Salad (fresh tuna and salmon with crab and cucumber and Latin-Asian sauce, served with seaweed and avocado. (Amy Drew Thompson/Orlando Sentinel)
“I had this idea in my head for a while,” he says, noting the explosion of sushi he saw around the metro at the turn of the millennium.
“Spanish food is delicious food,” he says with fervor (Escobar has lots of fervor), “but the presentation is boring. The presentation of sushi, matched with the Latino flavors, the savory tastes of the Caribbean, made me think I could create something very nice.”
Escobar had an idea. He wanted to make the switch into something more entrepreneurial. And he finally had the time to do it.
Mar y Tierra. (Amy Drew Thompson/Orlando Sentinel)
“But, I had one problem,” he laughs. “I didn’t know how to make sushi.”
He found someone to show him. And he practiced. And when he got the hang of it, he served it to his kids. And they loved it. And he decided he was going to go for it.
“I thought of my father, who always told me that if the motives of your heart are right, God can trust in your idea. And I prayed that Saturday night.”
Sunday morning, Escobar heard what he believed was the whisper of God in his room.
¿Tu eres Boricua?
“In my mind, it meant ‘If you are Boricua, why should you do the white rice like it’s Japanese. Do the yellow rice. You’re Puerto Rican.”
Best Sushi: 2025 Orlando Sentinel Foodie Awards
And so came the Escobar Roll, for the father he lost in 2015, and for all of his father’s favorite bites.
“When it put it in my mouth, it had the wow factor,” he says.
Customers apparently agree.
Amid the pandemic, Escobar saw an opportunity, and he began creating this and other rolls right in his home kitchen, marketing and selling via social media.
“Everything was closed, and people were looking for opportunities to eat,” he says. “The posts started taking off, and I divided my whole kitchen into stations. I had all my brothers, all my nephews here, creating The Escobar Kitchen rolls in my house.
Best Latin: 2025 Orlando Sentinel Foodie Awards
It wasn’t long before Bravo came calling. And the first Escobar Kitchen found a home. Open since 2021, the location has since proliferated. In 2024, a downtown Church Street location and last year, a sit-down spot in Hunter’s Creek. Sisters that are decidedly different, but with menus that are virtually the same. The latter serves beer and wine, with Church Street boasting what Escobar calls “an aggressive happy hour,” and Hunter’s Creek hosting both karaoke and live music on specific nights during the week.
And the food?
“It’s just fun!” says my friend, Deli Fresh Threads’ Anthony “Biggie” Bencomo, who turned me on to the place.
Passion fruit sangria at The Escobar Kitchen’s Hunter’s Creek location, which offers beer and wine as well as karaoke and live music nights. (Amy Drew Thompson/Orlando Sentinel)
He’s been known to make what he calls Cuban sushi from time to time, “but it’s a lot of work,” he laughs. Upon discovering the Bravo-ensconced enclave (and watching his daughter finally dig on sushi with a not-small amount of delight), he and his family were hooked. They even ordered a bunch for his wife’s birthday.
“They found out and threw in a huge extra roll on the house,” he says.
Indeed, service at both Bravo and Hunter’s Creek locations was dynamite on my visits, with lots of staff direction on what to try.
The Escobar Kitchen: Hunter’s Creek. (Amy Drew Thompson/Orlando Sentinel)
My first encounter featured all the big hits: The Escobar, the Mar y Tierra ($17, a surf and turf roll with churrasco, shrimp, crab and cream cheese, wrapped in sweet plantains and topped with chimichurri, spicy mayo and general tso’s sauce, this one with white rice) and Escobar’s salute to his Colombian customers, The Paisa ($17), a take on the nation’s iconic Bandeja Paisa, with churrasco, chorizo, avocado and cream cheese, wrapped in yellow rice and sweet plantains with chimichurri, honey wasabi and pork rind on the top.
The General Tso ribs made for a really nice appetizer, with lovely levels of both char and stickiness. (Amy Drew Thompson/Orlando Sentinel)
In fact, my fellow food scribe, Saboscrivner Louis Rosen, cited it in his 2022 Best Bites roundup for Orlando Weekly.
Over in Hunter’s Creek, the Neptune Salad ($18, shredded crab, diced tomatoes and seaweed, topped with avocado and sesame seeds) was a refresher enjoyed alongside the sticky, standout General Tso ribs, with just enough crisp and just enough sweet on the flesh that slid from the bone.
Biggie sipped a passion fruit sangria. I licked sauce off my fingers.
The rice-free Cucumber Roll from The Escobar Kitchen. (Amy Drew Thompson/Orlando Sentinel)
“Fun, right?”
Indeed.
And if the crowd was any indication, there would have been a consensus.
Lewis Escobar, who felt blessed by the mysterious voice he says made him who he is today, says the feeling has endured.
Want to reach out? Find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com. For more fun, join the Let’s Eat, Orlando Facebook group.
If you go
The Escobar Kitchen: 13024 Narcoossee Road in Orlando, 407-653-9174 (Lake Nona, inside Bravo) or 420 E. Church St. in Orlando, 407-730-8350 (downtown) or 13769 S. John Young Parkway in Orlando, 407-203-2664 (Hunter’s Creek); theescobarkitchen.com
