Restaurant Review: The Hampton Social Orlando, FL

About a year ago there was an Amex Offer for the inKind app. I wrote about it over on Frequent Miler and ended up picking up a bunch of referral credits.

Shae and I have been using those credits whenever we’re in a city with restaurants participating in inKind’s program and we recently ate at a fantastic restaurant using those credits – The Hampton Social.

At the time of writing this review, they have 12 locations across Florida, Illinois and Tennessee; the one we visited was The Hampton Social Orlando. Shae’s mom and stepdad were staying with us that night before driving back to Virginia, so they joined us for dinner too.

Orlando has several participating restaurants with inKind and Shae picked this one which was an excellent choice. They don’t have a huge food menu, but there were all kinds of delicious-sounding dishes to choose from.

There was a good selection of drinks, including non-alcoholic cocktails that you could add spirits to if desired.

We were curious about the sizes available for cocktails. You could either order a glass for ~$17 or a large sea shell for ~$48. An almost $50 cocktail isn’t normally something we’d splash out on, but the inKind credits meant it wasn’t coming out of our pocket and so Shae’s mom ordered an ‘I Glitterally Can’t’ cocktail in a large sea shell.

It’s hard to get a true sense from that photo as to how large the large sea shell was, so here’s Shae and her mom drinking it to give a bit better perspective as to its size. Definitely a fun thing to order!

In addition to helping her mom work on the giant cocktail, Shae ordered her own cocktail, albeit in a normal-sized glass. She was interested in a Pom & Pepper which is a non-alcoholic rosé with pomegranate, black pepper and lime. The Hampton Social offers the option to add house tequila, vodka or gin to it for $7, so Shae added vodka and thought it was excellent.

So many of the appetizers sounded good, but we managed to restrict ourselves to only ordering a couple of them. I got the Bang Bang Chicken which is served on a bed of seafood salad and also comes with slaw, house BBQ and bang bang chili sauce.

I was curious as to how well seafood salad would pair with chicken in a spicy sauce. As it turns out, surprisingly well. The seafood salad was delicious, as was the chicken, so I could’ve happily eaten 2-3 plates of this!

We also got a plate of calamari which was served with lemon garlic aioli and cocktail sauce. This was very good too and between the four of us we easily polished off both plates.

We had a bit of a mix when it came to our entrées. Shae’s stepdad ordered their Southampton pizza which is topped with pepperoni, sausage and basil.

I eventually settled on the balsamic glazed skirt steak which came with grilled asparagus and creamed street corn. All of this was incredibly tasty; the asparagus was cooked perfectly, the corn had a nice kick to it and the steak was cooked perfectly too. The steak’s glaze was somewhat sweet, so Shae was glad she didn’t order that but I very much enjoyed it.

Shae and her mom meanwhile decided to go all out by ordering the Sparkling Seafood Tower to share. The tower came complete with oysters, shrimp cocktail, snow crab claws, tartare, ceviche, lobster salad and a demi bottle of sparkling rosé.

They loved it and it was even more food than it actually looks like below. I tried some of the tartare, ceviche and lobster salad (that’s what’s in three glass bowls on the top tier) and those were all very good. I also sneaked one of the shrimp which was plump and flavorful.

We were all stuffed, but we couldn’t leave without ordering dessert too! I felt like I couldn’t fit anything more in my body, so I ordered the tres leches pound cake to go (hence why it was served in a to-go box). This was served with coconut cream, strawberries and lavender rose custard. I wasn’t a big fan of the lavender rose custard, but the rest of it was very nice.

Shae and her mom shared a dessert too – the banana cream pie. It had a base of toasted waffle, then came topped with bananas, chocolate shavings and whipped cream. I tried a little of the waffle and it was excellent; there were large sugar crystals in it which wasn’t what I was expecting, but that also wasn’t a bad thing.

Overall, this was one of the best meals we’d had in a long time. Everything was delicious, while our server was very friendly and attentive. It wasn’t a cheap meal, so it was fun that we got to splash out courtesy of those inKind credits and I’d definitely be up for returning there or another of The Hampton Social’s locations in the future.