When you think about Walt Disney World, fabulous food may not be the first thing that comes to mind. If you've been fortunate enough to dine at the Flying Fish Café on Disney's BoardWalk, however, you might very well find yourself lost in a seafood reverie, dreaming of perfect pan-roasted Florida pompano, of sumptuous spice-crusted yellowfin tuna, of delectable diver-harvested Maine sea scallops. If you're really hungry, you may even fantasize yourself all the way through the warm chocolate lava cake that The Orlando Sentinel declared the best dessert in the region. Such is the effect that John State's high-flying New American cuisine has on fastidious foodies who are extremely fussy about their fish-irrespective of their feelings vis-à-vis mouse ears. No wonder both The Sentinel and Florida Trends magazine named Flying Fish to their best new restaurant lists for 1996. This ain't yer hot-dog-two-cokes-and-candy-floss-for-the-kids amusement park pit-stop-and State ain't yer typical grill cook, either.

Born into a restaurant family in Michigan, this talented 32-year-old graduated from cooking school in Chicago. He breezed across Europe on a five-month cooking-and-eating tour, then spent eight years working his way through some of the Windy City's best restaurants, including Le Cochonnet Bistro, Zinc's Brasserie, Entre Nous, and the Ivy Award-winning Le Ciel Bleu. State served as sous-chef to Bradley Ogden at the Lark Creek Inn in California (the restaurant earned two gold medals from San Francisco Focus and an induction into the Nation's Restaurant News Hall of Fame during his tenure there), then donned the top toque at Mikalya's. He earned kudos there for his richly conceived cooking, including a four-star review from the Marin Independent Journal. In 1996 State opened Flying Fish, jumping headfirst into the Florida culinary scene. Needless to say, he is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition-especially when it comes to his stellar seafood.