Josh Oakley, the chef and owner of the Smiling Bison, has announced that he will close the original location on Bennett Road in Orlando before the end of the year. He will continue to operate the Smiling Bison that opened in Sanford a little over a year ago.
Oakley cited limitations on the Orlando space and being unable to come to an agreement with the landlord as reasons for the closing. Smiling Bison started serving its well-crafted food out of the limited kitchen space in 2013.
He said that he plans to open another restaurant in Orlando, perhaps in the downtown or near-downtown area and has actively been seeking possible spaces. He lost out on the former Txokos Basque Kitchen space to the recently opened Domu. He has expressed an interest in the Thornton Park building that Graffiti Junktion is vacating when it moves to the Wildside Bbq building a couple of blocks away, but isn’t sure when that might happen.
The Bennett Road building was home to Red Light Red Light previously as wells as to a bevy of other businesses, including, at one time, a gay bar.
Just to demonstrate how things go around, before opening Smiling Bison, Oakley sold tacos and sausages from a cart he purchased from Bruno Zacchini, who now operates Pizza Bruno. His popular spots for selling from the cart were Will’s Pub on Mills Avenue and Red Light Red Light on Bennett Road, where he would open his first restaurant. (Red Light Red Light, as all local beer drinkers know, moved to Corrine Drive in Orlando.
The exact date for the closing of the Orlando Bison has not been determined but you can probably look for it to happen in the third week of December. Oakley plans to take much of the Orlando staff to Sanford to start lunch and brunch service there.
