Le Cellier was always one of those restaurants that we wanted to try. It seems to have almost a cult-like following here on the DIS. A few years back we tried some of their cheese soup at the Food and Wine festival. We're Wisconsinites - we know good cheese and good cheese soup. This was
good cheese soup.
We got a copy of "Cooking With Mickey and the Disney Chefs" and the recipe was in there. We made it at home and it was quite good. But like I said, we've always wanted to go to Le Cellier and taste a bowl of the real stuff for ourselves.
Then we looked at the prices (yikes!) and kept putting off our visit until our next Disney trip. Then the next trip, and the next one, etc.
A few weeks before we left on this trip, Grandma & Grandpa call and say "we've been putting off Le Cellier long enough. Let's just go."
I jumped on Disney's online ADR page and - surprise, surprise - nothing was available for dinner any night of our trip. I started going through lunches, and was able to find a 2:25! And as an added bonus - the lunch prices were cheaper.
We were still a bit early, so we stopped for some pictures of some pretty girls and pretty flowers.
I got us checked in and we headed over to the Kidcot area so the kids could get a mask and start coloring it while we waited. A few minutes later, a hostess came over to find us. I'm not sure if this is only something they do for lunch, but I like it so much better than the pager system. It's more personal than waiting for something to beep and buzz and light up to tell you that your table is ready.
So in we go and we get to our seats. I can see why this place is such a hard reservation to make - the dining room is pretty small.
I love the maple leaf theme.
Our server was very friendly and knowledgeable. They start you out with a bread basket - a pretzel bread, a sourdough, and a multigrain. Most of us got a bowl of soup, and it was worth it! Sooo good. I finished mine well before anyone else. (Shhh...don't tell Bambi, but I snuck a spoonful of hers when she wasn't looking!)
Grandma said something about hers being too spicy or something, so I finished hers.
For the main course, I had the mushroom Fillet Mignon. It was very tender, but at only 5 oz, quite pricey at $26. Bambi had a very good prime rib sandwich and Grandpa had the New York strip (very flavorful and it got a thumbs up from him). Grandma wasn't feeling too good, so she just had a side of the mushroom risotto that came with a fillet. Kids had chicken fingers. Sorry, no pictures. We were too busy eating.
And since we've already taken out a second mortgage to pay for lunch, we decided to forget the kid's college fund and get dessert too. With our bellies at least partly full from dinner, we did remember go get the camera out for dessert.
Bambi's chocolate "moose". Tasted fantasic!
Grandpa's s'more. He didn't really care for it. It looked neat, but the marshmallows and the cookies were very hard.
(There is no picture of my maple creme brulee because it was nasty and I didn't want to remember it.)
All in all, the food was very good. With the fillet being their "signature" item, they can get away with charging you so much for so little. Taste-wise it was excellent, as was just about everything. For the 6 of us, it was over $200. It was a great experience, I'm glad that we went, and I can see us going back. But I can't easily justify spending that much on food, no matter how good it is, so this certainly will be something we save for very special occasions.
After dinner, we went back over to Kidcot so the kids could finish coloring their masks. I wandered down the path toward the Oh Canada show just to look around. For some reason, I found myself thinking about Whitefish Bay, WI, which is a northern suburb of Milwaukee. (My mind tends to wander sometimes, and I have no idea why. Especially since I've never been to that particular city.) I stopped for a second and really listened to the background music that was playing. It was the instrumental track to "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot (he's Canadian, you know). There is a line that goes
"the mariners all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay if they'd have put 15 more miles behind her" (The Whitefish Bay in the song is in Michigan, but I told you - my mind wanders like a drunken sailor).
On our way out, I stopped to take a picture of a squirrel enjoying the flowers.
And a duck/squirrel stare down.
That was quite an amazing feet. I just spend the entire top part of this Trip Report update talking about our friendly neighbors to the north, and didn't poke fun at them one. Pretty impressive, eh?
By now, we could go back and ride Test Track. This would be Evan's first time on the ride, as well as Grandpa's. He has some back issues, and never had an interest in most thrill rides. We convinced him it wasn't too bad, and he did like the fact that all 6 of us would fill a ride car.
I know he looks terrified, but he really, really loved it!
Grandpa did too. So much so, that he sent me over to get more Fast Passes so we could ride it again later!
We then started over toward the Land Pavilion to ride Soarin'. Grandpa did take a pass on this one because it never really appealed to him. With Evan standing tall at just over 40", we bypassed the 90 minute wait and headed up the FastPass line. We got less than ideal seating since we were in the back row, but it was still fantastic!
Everyone loved it, but unfortunately, all of the Fast Passes were gone for the day when we got off so there would be no returning for us today.
The only thing we had planned for the rest of the day here at Epcot was to get the kid's faces painted. It's become a tradition of ours everytime we're here to have that done over at the Outpost. We started walking over that way, and I stopped for this pic:
Just before you cross the bridge in to Mexico, you can stop and look across the lagoon at Morocco. You don't know it, but this is the only place in Disney World that you can see one park from another. The imagineers took this into consideration when building the Hollywood Tower Hotel (aka Tower of Terror) over at Hollywood Studios. The themed it and painted it so that it would look like it belonged in the Morocco pavilion.
More Flower and Garden topiaries. This troll was in Norway.
The pirate and the unicorn:
Along the way, we were stopping at most of the Kidcot locations. The kids were never really interested in this in past trips, so this was our first time. I wandered around Germany, looking for the stop in that pavilion. I walked into the wine shop and though "
ummm...probably not". On my way out, I ran into a mother with a little girl, also looking for the stop. She was equally as lost as I was. I tried another shop, and found it to be a crystal shop, full of valuable and breakable merchandise. "
Definitely not in here." I came out and saw a toy store. "
Duh"
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in Germany
Lady and the Tramp in Italy
Goofy, Pluto & Donald in the American Gardens Pavilion
France:
There were several other topiaries that I didn't get pictures of, including Cinderella, Aladdin, and Aurora. The kids were getting hungry and antsy by now. Since they wouldn't eat the fish and chips in England (we found out the line was crazy, too as we walked by later), our options for counter service were to backtrack to the American pavilion or press on to the Refreshment Port just past Canada. Since we were heading toward TT anyway, we decided to press on. They had a Latin theme there that particular day, so the choices that the kids would eat were fairly slim. Luckily, they had a breaded chicken sandwich that the kids enjoyed.
We also had some entertainment while we ate. There was an altercation at the restrooms next door. A woman was going into the companion restroom alone. The lady behind her had kids with her and started screaming at the first woman, because she should go into the normal restroom. The first one started screaming back that she can't go when there are other people around her. It almost came to blows.
With that drama done (security was called, but it looks both parties had gone on their way by the time he arrived), we headed over to TT again. We arrived to find the FastPass line was all the way out to the podium. We were told there was about a 30 minute wait in the FP line because the ride had broken down. It was up and running now, but they were still trying to get caught up. We had nothing else to do, so we waited. It wasn't quite 30 minutes, probably only 15-20.
By the time we got off, it was pretty late. Illuminations was only 20 minutes away, but after being caught in the scrum last night leaving the MK after Wishes, we decided to skip it and beat the crowd out.
Up next: the Beach!
I think it means I need to buy more stuff next time.
