Offsite restaurants - Suggestions please

[mithuri]

Hi;

For those who stay offsite, can you please recommend the offsite restaurants that you normally frequent?

Thanks, Al

[tone.def]

Ihop for breakfast whether I'm on site or off! At the corner of 192 and Poinnciana... Yum yum.

[braddillman]

Millers Orlando Ale House (several around, SR 535, I-drive, Florida Mall, etc.). Really inexpensive sports bar, decent pub food, large portions.

Cuba Libre at Pointe Orlando, great food, great atmosphere. Check their website for happy hours. Best mojitos.

B.B. Kings at Pointe Orlando. Decent food, great live music. The house band is the best!

Panera Bread (one on Vineland near the outlet mall, other by Florida Mall). Great baguettes, french onion soup, pastries and salads. Good prices too, IMHO. This one I never like to miss.

Bonefish Grill is really nice IMHO, good prices too. DO NOT confuse with Fish Bones, which I've never been but heard bad things (1 degree of separation).

Macaroni Grill was pretty good, haven't been recently. I preferred it to Olive Garden.

[Disney Ontario]

Earls Sandwich in Down Town Disney.Mmmm

[potzie2]

Sweet Tomatoes is great at the CrossRoads across from Downtown Disney. Sign up on their site and you will lots of 2-4-1 coupons and such each week. All the food/soups/breads are made from scratch fresh on site each day.

Cheers,

Brian

[dancin Disney style]

CiCi's....the cheapest pizza you'll find. It's $5.49 for the buffet and while it's not the best pizza I've ever had it's hard to complain when 4 people can have a dinner and dessert buffet for $25. Also, if you want a certain combination of toppings they will make it for you and bring it to your table...no extra charge. I totally love pizza so we usually go twice.

[Kat&Dom]

Cracker Barrel - it is a homestyle restaurant where you chose your main dish then can have whatever sides you want - stuff like hashbrown casserole, homemade mashed potatoes, green beans, about a dozen choices etc. They bring a basket of biscuits and cornbread for you to munch on while you wait for your food. Their prices are really reasonable too.

They have a store attached to them that you can wonder through and look at things - it kind of reminds me of the store off Little House on the Prairie, they have the candy sticks in a jar, all kinds of interesting gift ideas. I have bought a few unique gifts for friends here.

They also have a huge porch with rocking chairs on it for sale that people can just sit in and relax. It is a totally different kind of restaurant from anything that I have seen. It is fun and great food.

[Disney_Mama]

Benihana at the Hilton across the street from DTD. Lot's of great tasting food and entertainment. Went for the first time a couple of weeks ago. This is now on our must do list for every trip.

[sprmom]

Their salad and breadsticks are always a favourite of the children and their kids menu is OK. They have some "healthy choice" options noted in their menu with an olive branch. We stop there once per trip. There is some new restaurant developments up passed Universal off exit 76 near Mall of Millenia, a farther drive, but less traffic than the Sand Lake I-drive Restaurant Row.

Of course, no trip would be complete without our annual vist to Dennys! There is a nice one by the airport near the Hertx car rental facility. Tony Romas and Cracker Barrel are there too.

[weezy26nm]

We also like CiCi's pizza. Another favorite is the Golden Corral (all you can eat buffet) and we also enjoyed a buffet breakfast at the Ponderosa. Can you tell we like buffets?:lmao: We just find it is the best value for a family of 5 and everyone can find something they like.

[ribica]

CAA now has a "kids eat free" card you can buy. I think it's about $9.00 and it's good for kids up to 11 years old. Not sure which restaurants are included in the deal, but I think there's a website that lists all the places that are participating.

:)

[Sue M]

Bahama Breeze and Cheesecake Factory!

[doxie24]

I second the Cheesecake Factory and Cracker Barrel votes...so yummy.

Oh, deep fried olives and mac and cheese from the CF are killer :)

[weewuvvdisney]

This one is not really off=site.

If you are at Epcot and would like a good meal.... take the boat to the Boardwalk and go eat at THE BIG RIVER.

Good food....decent prices.

We always have a side trip to have supper there one night!




Jan

[minnie56]

http://www.roysrestaurant.com/
http://www.texasdebrazil.com/
http://www.seasons52.com/

Ate at all 3 last week and they were excellent!

[Cdn Gal]

Golden Coral- great buffet with steak and seafood and great prices! (usually under $11 a person)

[busyshrew]

I'd LIKE to be able to recommend Texas de Brazil.
BUT.
I took DH to Sweet Tomatoes first. Big mistake. Big, BIG mistake. He ate the food, saw how well DD ate, took one look at the prices and told me "no way to I want to bother with TdB, I wanna come back here!".

Never got to try TdB..... sigh....

Whoops. Forgot to add, I'd also recommend Hanamazuki (Japanese for sushi & ramen at lunch), and Pio Pio Columbian (mmmm... chicken, steak strips).

[cslittle999]

Celebration Town Tavern (http://www.thecelebrationtowntavern.com/) Great sea food at a very reasonable price.

[purple hippo]

Has anyone used the Kids Eat Free Card lately? I see the restaurant choices have changed since these messages were posted. Would you still get it with the current choices?

[c&m]

Bumping this up so we can see recent experiences.

When we went in Aug 2009, we really enjoyed Earl of Sandwich and Wolfgang Puck Express in Downtown Disney.

[SmilingGrump]

When we stay offsite, we tend to make most of our own dinners and breakfasts, but here's our experiences:

Waffle House is one of the best places for breakfast. MUCH better then IHOP, which we've had really bad experiences on the East Coast (West Coast and Hawaii IHOP's have been better, but still not as good as WH)

Buffalo Wild Wings is good for pub food and (of course) wings, but they tend to have the volume of the TVs up WAY too loud (the waitress had to yell into my ear to take my order)

Rio Mexican Grille was great the first time I went but went down hill for authentic Mexican the last time we were there. Margharittas were good though :goodvibes

Boston Lobster Feast was not very good. It was cheap, but sometimes cheap isn't good :laughing:

[bankr63]

Seasons 52 is fantastic. Very good for health conscious eaters (DW), but I was very impressed with the food and enjoyed the atmosphere and service.

Favorite Mexican is Cantina Laredo (just off Sand Lake close to Seasons 52). They make a killer guacamole at your table to start you off, and the meals were outstanding. My only complaint there is that they don't carry Pacifico Clara (best beer from 2 borders south).

[tgropp]

I love Fudruckers which was in Crossroads. Not sure if it is still there.

[Josh Hendy]

We ate at the Pei Wei Asian Diner on Turkey Lake Rd. just south of West Sand Lake Road a couple of times in August and enjoyed it. It's like a budget, counter-service version of P. F. Chang's with many of the same recipes and the quality is just as good as far as I can tell.

Menu (http://www.peiwei.com/Menu/)

[Ken_Breadbox]

Boy, it's frustrating, what with American retailers circling the Canadian landscape like sharks, that we don't have ANY of these chains up here. (Then again, I've never been able to figure out why there aren't Tim Hortons franchises in Florida...the first person to open one in Destin will OWN Destin in short order. And never mind the Canada pavilion at Epcot!

[beebumble]

We loved Bahamas Breeze
Cant wait to go back
Have a magical nite:wizard:

[glenpreece]

Cracker Barrel - it is a homestyle restaurant where you chose your main dish then can have whatever sides you want - stuff like hashbrown casserole, homemade mashed potatoes, green beans, about a dozen choices etc. They bring a basket of biscuits and cornbread for you to munch on while you wait for your food. Their prices are really reasonable too.

They have a store attached to them that you can wonder through and look at things - it kind of reminds me of the store off Little House on the Prairie, they have the candy sticks in a jar, all kinds of interesting gift ideas. I have bought a few unique gifts for friends here.

They also have a huge porch with rocking chairs on it for sale that people can just sit in and relax. It is a totally different kind of restaurant from anything that I have seen. It is fun and great food.
Love Cracker Barrel

Earl of Sandwich and Cheesecake Factory!!!

[who's ur daddy?]

Surprisingly, I will also recommend Golden Corral. You would not expect a good meal from a high volume restaurant with prices that are relatively cheap. But have had great meals there - okay, great may not be the right word - more like satisfying meals.

Earl of Sandwich was good too.

[two*little*birds]

Black Angus (the one we used to go to burnt down recently, but they have other locations)
Golden Coral
Olive Garden
Wolfgang Puck Express


This year we're going to try...

Cheesecake Factory
Sweet Tomatoes
Texas de Brazil
Cracker Barrel

[c&m]

I just bought a Restaurant.com gift certificate at 80% off for Kimonos at the Swan hotel. I read on Tripadvisor that this restaurant is good if you like sushi or Japanese food. I haven't tried it yet - has anyone out there tried this place recently and report what they have on their menu for cooked items? (I don't eat sushi but my family does.)

[purple hippo]

Boy, it's frustrating, what with American retailers circling the Canadian landscape like sharks, that we don't have ANY of these chains up here. (Then again, I've never been able to figure out why there aren't Tim Hortons franchises in Florida...the first person to open one in Destin will OWN Destin in short order. And never mind the Canada pavilion at Epcot!

DH and I had the same idea for Epcot! The first time we went to Epcot we were looking for a coffee and the CM told use to go around the corner to Canada so we got excited and both instantly thought "Timmies!" We were so disappointed on many levels to find out it was regular coffee from a vendor cart. :confused3 They would make money had over fist if they opened one there.

[thebigman65]

If you want Steak then you can't beat Charlie's Steak House in Orlando....It is not cheap, but you get what you pay for and it is Awesome! One suggestion........GO HUNGRY!!!

[Josh Hendy]

Boy, it's frustrating, what with American retailers circling the Canadian landscape like sharks, that we don't have ANY of these chains up here. (Then again, I've never been able to figure out why there aren't Tim Hortons franchises in Florida...the first person to open one in Destin will OWN Destin in short order. And never mind the Canada pavilion at Epcot!

Yeah I know what you mean. There was a Moe's Southwest Grill that opened in Ottawa and before I even got around to trying it, it had closed. As far as I can tell the problem was that Moe's did ZERO marketing in Canada to get people interested in their brand. Must take a lot of money to get a chain going in another country, much more than the cost of actually building and opening a franchise.

Timmies seem to be starting slowly in the northeastern US. I visited one in Cortland, NY but it was on a back road away from the interstate and it was deserted. But I went to one in Syracuse this year that had a great location on a busy corner within sight of I-81 and a raft of hotels, and it was pretty busy. They would probably do well on I-drive. I tried using the McDonalds near the Convention Center this summer and they were surprisingly useless at serving coffee through their drive-thru. They didn't have any milk! Or they didn't know if they had any milk, and couldn't be bothered finding out. :confused:

[two*little*birds]

If you want Steak then you can't beat Charlie's Steak House in Orlando....It is not cheap, but you get what you pay for and it is Awesome! One suggestion........GO HUNGRY!!!

I thought Charlie's was good but nothing to brag about. Maybe because our kids were only 6 and 4 at the time, it was a little harder to enjoy?

[SherryG]

We like Cracker Barrel, Olive Garden, Cici's Pizza and Cheesecake Factory. Really can't go wrong with any of them!

[who's ur daddy?]

Thanks for the great suggestion re: Sweet Tomatoes. What a gem of a restaurant. Such a tasty break from fried, fried, fried everything. Everything was fresh and had that hint of home/freshly made taste - a really really good thing.

Bahama Breeze was disappointing. Wife's steak was chewy terrible. My salmon was okay but nothing memorable.

Really had another few great meals at Golden Corral. I don't go to buffets for the volume anymore (everything now goes to the waist if you know what I mean) - we really go for the variety. The kids seem to eat quite a bit because there's always a selection for them. Price is right and food is pretty good.

[trish4bruce]

Any recommendations for non-chain type restaurants? We like to find try the restaurants that are recommended by the locals.