The kids soon returned from the show, which they thought was hilarious and were off to Flounder’s, the Lab, and the Edge respectively. We didn’t know how well Sarah would handle going to Flounders, as she was only 4 months old last time she was onboard and she is not in day care at home, so basically the only caretakers she has known are us or immediate family members. Luckily she went right in and had a blast playing with the toys. We watched her through the one way mirror for a minute but she never looked back, so we headed off to Palo.
We arrived exactly at our reservation time of 8:30. There was another fantastic Halloween display, and this one still had chocolate in it…not that I wanted any candy of any sort prior to the wonderful meal I was anticipating.
We were seated immediately, to our delight in the “Dis” section right next to Ellen and Pods and Beth and Steve (tinkerbelltwins). In fact we were seated in the same exact seat we sat in for both of our Palo meals last time we were on the Magic in ’08. We were promptly greeted by our server, Sylvester from India, who was AWESOME! We have always received the most outstanding service in Palo.
We were promptly brought our Antipasto Freddo to begin the meal and the delicious crusty bread selection and dipping sauces. These have not changed over years, and there is no need to. There is an aioli, a red pepper, and my favorite- the olive spread!
For drinks, Ron ordered something domestic on tap, and still feeling the Key West thing, I decided to try a Key Lime Martini….oh was this scrumptious!
That is so not the best picture of me, but let me tell you the martini is to die for. It tasted like liquid key lime pie in a glass. But it was deceptively strong. Next thing I knew Ellen and I were over by the kitchen posing with the chefs, the real one and the headless variety!
The first thing we ordered was a pizza for an appetizer. Palo makes delicious pizzas! We had a Margherita, and it was sublime, creamy fresh mozzarella and ripe tomatoes, sprinkled with fresh basil. Fantastic!
We enjoyed chatting a bit across tables, and before long our appetizers arrived. We are such creatures of habit again we had the same selection, and it is one we always shave at Palo: the Grilled Portobello Mushroom with Polenta and a Roasted Shallot Sauce. Beautiful presentation:
You can also see in that picture our “bonus” appetizer brought over for us to try by Sylvester. As great as our service had been in Palo the last couple of visits, our waiters had not brought us many extra items to try, so it was a nice surprise to have this experience again at every course. Sylvester brought us the Mozzarella and Plum Tomatoes with Basalmic Dressing. I am such a sucker for fresh mozzarella, I probably did not share any of that with Ron (there was a small disc of it beneath the tomato).
And as Ellen has noted in her Trip Report about Palo’s menu description not exactly matching up with the items you actually receive, this is an excellent example. You can see here that the tomato was a large one, not plum tomatoes at all. But it was fresh, crisp and ripe. Very tasty but I admit we did not eat the entire thing. There was so much more to come…
We did, however scrape our Portobello appetizer plates dry. I just love it! It is a tender large grilled Portobello cap served over a polenta (which if you have not had polenta before it is made out of cornmeal and is a lot like cornbread, but not so dense or crusty). The polenta was soft and light and not soggy. It crumbled gently away as you cut it. The mushroom and polenta are covered by a scrumptious shallot sauce and drizzed with a truffle oil. It had a light earthy but not overpowering taste. It was terrific.
While we were waiting for our entrée, we were offered a tiny serving of lime sorbet as an intermezzo. While it was tangy and tasty, sorry, my creamy lime pudding in a glass was way tastier. Although I am pretty sure it was gone by this point.
Before too long, our entrees had arrived, again I must apologize to those of you looking to see a large variety of food to read about, as we both ordered the Beef Tenderloin Palo served with the signature Barola Red Wine Sauce, and also with a small stack of scalloped potatoes. Boring? Maybe, but wow did it taste delicious!
My steak was perfectly cooked medium well (which is not too easy to get gray inside and not black outside!), it was well seasoned but not overpowering. The meat had a rich deep flavor and was still very tender and juicy. The red wine sauce was tangy and smooth, a perfect complement. The potatoes were just OK, nothing really to write home about to mom here. They were a little dry, but I don’t like wet scalloped potatoes anyway. We had absolutely no problem cleaning our plates, that’s for sure!
And we also had requested a small serving of the Wild Mushroom and Hazelnut Risotto to share. We had enjoyed the mushroom risotto so much the night before, we were ready to see if Palo’s version could outshine it. For sure it did, this risotto was so lip smacking good! Topped with a thick coat of parmesan, it had deep earthy and nutty flavors, was creamy and not dry, the rice was al dente but still tender. I highly recommend this dish! (And yeah you can blame in on Le Cellier for my continuing desire to eat risotto with my filet!)
I had hoped it would not happen, but it always does. Yes…it was dessert time and we were STUFFED. How in the world this can be avoided in Palo I’ll never know. Maybe if we reversed things and *started* with dessert? Obviously the chocolate soufflé is a given and we had already let Sylvester know that we would need four of them, two to take back to the kids. On our last cruise they were jealous that we were eating in Palo and that they could not join us so we promised we’d bring them back pizza and a dessert, a tradition that we have followed on each subsequent Palo visit.
But no matter how full I profess to be, there is always…ALWAYS room for this:
There really is no way to describe the Palo Signature Chocolate Soufflé except as chocolate heaven in a ramekin. It is super rich, fluffy, chocolatey…perfection.
Here it is made even more indulgent swimming in chocolate and vanilla bean sauce:
Sylvester had also brought us a Panna Cotta to share. I think I may have been able to muster one bite, which is a shame, as the Panna Cotta is delicious. It was a creamy and dense vanilla custard with fresh mixed berries and puree. The vanilla bean flavor was rich and pure, you could see the black specks of vanilla bean in the custard. Oh if only we had the room to eat more than a few bites of it!
In fact every time we come to Palo, I swear I will eat less so that I can enjoy more of the fabulous desserts. For instance just look at these other drool inducing offerings: Tiramisu, Chocolate Amaretto Indulgence, Pineapple and Almond Ravioli! But I can never get past that soufflé. It is the be-all-end-all at Palo and it is every bit as good as they all say.
As much as we would have loved to linger over dinner, we had to go pick up Sarah at Flounder’s. We bid adieu to Pods and Ellen and headed down to Deck 5. Not surprisingly Sarah was still going strong, having a blast. We would find out that the kids in Flounder’s had a special visit from Chip and Dale earlier (still all decked out in their Cops and Robbers costumes!) Sarah was the only one awake so she got to play with Chip and Dale for quite a while. The staff thought it was hilarious that she played with them without thinking twice about why two oversize chipmunks in costumes were just hanging with her playing.
The staff took pictures too, isn’t this just adorable?
So after we tore her away from Flounder’s screaming “Toys! Toys! Want to play Toys!!!”, we happened upon the Adult Costume Contest happening below us in the Atrium.
There were lots of amazing costumes, including one family of Cinderella and Prince Charming that had two little kids, a boy and a girl also dressed up as Cinderella and Prince Charming. I had seen them earlier in the evening and they looked so amazing that people (including myself at first) thought they were the “real” Cinderella and Prince Charming and were approaching them for pictures (hey, what did they expect just hanging out in the Atrium like that!)
This however has to be my favorite costume!!! This person gets credit for lugging this monstrosity onboard!!
And even though it was billed as an “Adult” costume contest, there were many children present and participating, like mini Prince Charming and Cinderella. There was a whole family of the Flintstones, also for example, including Pebbles and Bam-Bam and a Queen of Hearts with a little Alice in Wonderland. So for anyone wondering, yes kids can participate in the contest as part of an ensemble, just not on their own.
After the contest ended, we continued on to the Lab to pick up Savannah. While she did have fun meeting some of the girls she had talked to prior to the cruise on the kids’ meet thread, as a whole she did not enjoy her experience in the Lab at all. In her words it was “Taken over by babies”. While that may be a bit extreme it was obvious that the Lab had all ages, and in fact most of the population I observed was between the ages of say 5 and 8. The new club structure that allows the kids between the ages of 3 and 10 to move freely between the Club and Lab did not suit her AT ALL. She begged to go to the Edge with Brendan the next time (which of course, she couldn’t do). While she is only 9, she does skew a bit older due to having an older brother and they share the same neighborhood friends who are all a bit older than her. So the new Club/Lab deal gets thumbs down from her and us. I think overall the Lab struggles to engage the 9 and 10 year olds to begin with and add in the influx of younger children and this makes it even harder. I know tweens are a hard age group to please, but this is somewhere Disney could improve with regard to ages 9 and 10 in the Lab.
Brendan, on the other hand LOVED the Edge and we could hardly pull him out of there. In fact every parent of 11-13 year olds that we spoke to about the Edge had the same problem as us, which was getting their child to leave it. This was wonderful! Since kids in the Edge do not have pagers and have automatic check in/out privileges, we told Brendan he could enjoy the late nights in Edge until it closed down if he wanted, and he did so, every single night. He was instructed to call us when he got back to the room and let us know that he had returned, and he was very good about that (except one night he forgot and we had to call over there at 4 AM).
A quick stop in the rooms, and both were adorned with spooky floating ghosts!!!
But you didn’t think this night was over did you? Savannah had been dying to try Karaoke, so the four of us took off for Studio Sea to join in the Family Karaoke session. Make no mistake, this event-though billed as “Family” is strictly for and about the kids.
Sarah, being the late night party animal that she is, was really getting into it. Looks like we have a baby headbanger on our hands!! (Video, Click to play!)
Savannah chose “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King”, and when she was called up to the stage, she inadvertently allowed that little opportunistic bugger Sarah slide through the partition and, well, she stole the show.
This clip is probably a minute long, but it is absolutely hilarious of Sarah in her PJ’s sneaking up on stage….Baby’s First Karaoke! (Video, Click to play!)
So it was around midnight and we were wiped out. We headed back to the room and ordered room service of a carafe of coffee for the next morning (Usually it will stay hot overnight so you have it ready as soon as you awake) and some warm milk to hopefully coax Sarah into sleeping. It didn’t work too well, and we would find ourselves continually apologizing to our Dis next door neighbors Karen and Jerry for the noise late at night.
Luckily we had a somewhat lazy day at sea ahead of us, hopefully with plenty of relaxing!
Up Next: Food, Folks, and FUN!
I loved seeing the rooftop pool of your former digs- I would never have known that was up there! When we stayed at the Pier House we spent all of 5 minuites in our pool...due to extreme inclimate weather. Not that we noticed much...
I found a video on youtube from our cruise but there are not a lot of crowd type shots. Didn't find ourselves or anyone I recognized. But I was hoping! Then again there are the pictures I'm dreading finding myself in like in Cayman and Cozumel...those unaware swimsuit shots can be baaaad! 
