Tucked into Orlando's Mills 50 district, The Moderne makes an immediate impression with Art Moderne-inspired interiors — rich colors, gold accents and sculptural curves — and a cocktail program built around deconstructing and reimagining classics. But the kitchen is every bit as ambitious as the bar, and that balance is central to what the restaurant is trying to be.
Chef-owner Michael Nguyen designed the menu to reflect Orlando itself: a tapas-style spread drawing on Southeast Asian and Mediterranean foundations, with Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Italian and Latin influences all sharing the table. His Korean fried chicken alone took six months of daily testing to get right. Dishes like the Tuna Kobachi — spicy cubed tuna with avocado, Japanese-marinated cucumber, ponzu, red tobiko and micro cilantro, priced at $18 — show how those influences come together into something that feels personal rather than patchwork.
Nguyen's path to running a restaurant was anything but conventional. He was studying pharmacy when his Vietnamese immigrant parents entered a partnership to open a restaurant that ultimately fell apart mid-construction. Rather than walk away from the investment, the family decided to finish the project themselves. Nguyen stepped in to help manage the front of the house, a temporary plan that quietly became a nine-year career. He never attended culinary school, learning instead through repetition, tasting and honest assessment of what wasn't working.
The Moderne soft-opened in late December 2022, originally conceived as more of a cocktail-forward concept. Guests quickly made clear they wanted food, and the restaurant evolved to give roughly equal weight to its drink and dining programs. Nguyen sees the spot as part of Mills 50's ongoing evolution — a neighborhood whose modern culinary identity traces back to Vietnamese refugees who resettled in Central Florida after the fall of Saigon in the late 1970s, and which has continued layering new restaurants, bars and independent businesses ever since.
This story was originally reported by Kaia Poisall for ClickOrlando / WKMG News 6.
