Isn't Jiko a gorgeous restaurant?
I really do think that Jiko has one of my favorite ambiance's of all of the Disney restaurants. The bird lamps, the color-changing wall, and the general atmosphere are just awesome.
But we weren't here to just sit and look around! We were here for the even better part of Jiko - the food!!
We settled in to our seats by the sunset wall, and Wingnut decided to try one of the Kenyan coffee/liquor drinks, which was technically one of those after-dinner drinks, but hey, carpe diem.
He thought "it was good, a bit of an experiment for me as I'd never had liquored coffee before. It wasn't bad."
I was especially excited for Jiko this time around because my allergy concerns of the year before were gone (spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, et cetera, if you're just joining us!), and so I was free to order at will!
We started with the Jiko bread and butter basket, which includes a (I think) honey wheat bread and a grain bread, and is accompanied by tandoori butter.
We both really enjoyed the bread and butter basket. Both breads were warm and flavorful, and the butter was a nice break from the typical Disney salted butter slab. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)
W: I would eat that bread as a meal. A meal of the tandoori butter, and the bread with the flax seeds that aren't exactly on the bread. They're just on there until you pick the bread up, and then they fall off.
But, of course, we did not just make a meal out of butter and bread!
For our appetizers, Wingnut was STILL feeling the
appetizer envy from Artist Point, and chose the Roasted Beet Salad - blackberry shiraz vinaigrette, pistacio-crusted goat cheese and serrano ham.
He thought that the beets were on a par with Artist Point's beets, he enjoyed them a lot, saying that it was a very good dish.
(Personally, I liked AP's version better
)
I had been very torn between getting the boar appetizer that Wingnut had loved so much the year before, or a sweet potato soup.
Not boar:
This was, to be exact, Puree of Sweet Potato Soup - with pineapple, and red pepper with curry-whipped cream and Plantain fries. I really enjoyed it, the flavors were excellent. However, it turned out to be a bit of an ordering mistake for me.
You'd probably noticed that throughout the trip, I had ordered cinnamon and other spiced items pretty much with abandon. By this point, I was getting confident that the allergy had completely passed, and what's a bit of curry whipped cream?
By the time I was around 2/3 of the way into this soup, I realized I had either hit my spice threshold for the week, or I had found a variety of curry I was not yet immune to. My reaction was extremely slight, but I took that as a bit of a figurative Yield sign for the rest of the meal, and was a bit wary of the spices going forward.
For his entree, Wingnut OF COURSE went with the dish he literally has been talking about since last December - the Seared Barbarie Duck Breast - Potato and Spinach Masala, Royal Trumpet Mushrooms, and Port Emulsion.
W: "Probably the greatest thing on the planet. I loved the African/Indian spiced mushroom and spinach combination."
I had chosen the Oak-Grilled Filet Mignon - with sweet corn risotto, roasted mushrooms and South African Cabernet Reduction.
This was a very good steak, I liked the flavors a lot. The risotto actually was one of my favorite parts of the dish, it was really good.
Originally for dessert, I had really wanted to try the Parsnip Creme Brulee, because really, where else are you ever going to have THAT? But the allergy concerns scared me off, as it seemed to be heavily-spiced, and so I went with the dessert with the least amount of spice potential: the cheesecake.
While this was not something that I would have ordinarily chosen to end our meal at Jiko with (it seemed a bit boring on the menu description), it was actually one of my favorite parts of the meal. I really liked the flavors, it seemed to be a ricotta-based cheesecake, with cherries on top. And a bit of gold leaf, because Jiko is all fancy like that.
DF tried my dessert, and really enjoyed it as well: "Your cheesecake was good. I really liked it. The cherries were nice and not too sweet."
For his dessert selection, Wingnut chose the Coconut Bread Pudding - Warm bread pudding with caramel rum sauce, toasted coconut and caramel ice cream.
He really enjoyed this dessert as well. "It was really good, but the actual highlight was the caramel ice cream. The bread pudding just left a bit to be desired, it was a bit dry and could have been sweeter. The ice cream was flavorful and refreshing."
After our dessert, we were bought out a little post-dessert treat of cookies, complement of Jiko!
We really liked these, they were a nice chocolatey cookie (they tasted just like cake mix cookies, actually!), and we very quickly devoured both.
Overall, we both really enjoyed our meal at Jiko. It is very solidly one of Wingnut's favorite restaurants in Disney. I definitely love it, but it does now have some tough competition in my mind between California Grill and Artist Point. But Jiko wins in the atmosphere category for me, hands down. It is safe to say that we will definitely be returning to Jiko again in the future!
After our wonderful meal, we headed out to the bus stops to go to Epcot for Illuminations and EMH's! I noticed that the bus seemed a bit more crowded than I had hoped, but figured that it would be fine.
When we pulled up at Epcot, we got off the bus and started walking towards the bag check area. This was when we were instantly able to see that Epcot was completely and entirely PACKED. The line for bag check extended out until approximately forever, and more and more people just kept arriving from the busses, monorail, tram, everywhere.
While I had really wanted to see Illuminations at least once during our trip, I just knew that it wasn't worth it to battle this level of crowd. And once we had stayed for the show, leaving afterwards was just going to be exponentially more difficult. DF left the decision up to me, and I steered us in the direction of the shortest bag check line that I could find, and then we veered left to go straight over to the monorail.
It was a quick trip back to the Polynesian, where we packed
sad
in anticipation of checking out bright and early the next morning before breakfast
sad:
).
I love both of the shirts you bought! I love Mousegear because they have so much Epcot stuff, I always want to buy something, but I never know what to get!
As long as there's no line (and there usually isn't), we tend to always hop on, totally forgetting that the ride is almost twenty minutes long. 
)
). But I'll have to keep them in mind. The caramel ice cream looked amazing, and so did your filet!
