First I Graduated, then We ATE!! Food review with TONS O' PICS!! (COMPLETE 6/12!!)

[CoolDisneyKitten]

Hi, guys! I just got back two days ago (5/14) from a 10 day trip, and I have toonnnnnnsss of yummy food reviews to share with you. To begin, let me introduce the players...

CDK, aka Meg, 26. I graduated college on May 3, and DBF and I left for WDW on May 4. I'll eat nearly anything, but I do have a couple of food rules: no baby animals and never, ever any mustard.

DBF25, aka Mike. He's Welsh, and this was his first time at Disney and only his second time in the US. He was a little overwhelmed. A picky eater, but he loveslovesloves steak (as you'll see).

Last but certainly not least: CoolDisneyCat, aka Mom. She joined us on May 8, and that day we transferred from SSR to OKW and started DxDDP. She's a bit pickier than I am, loves steak and dessert, and my two food rules apply to her as well.

I guess you wanna know where we ate... well for any of you who might've read my pre-trip report, there were a few changes. It all started when we missed our plane... well, I'll wait to tell that story! Anyway...

May 4: Turf Club (dinner)
May 5: Raglan Road (lunch), Beaches and Cream (dinner)
May 6: Kona Cafe (lunch), Turf Club (dinner), Goofy's Candy Co. later
May 7: Pizzafari (lunch), Boma (dinner)
May 8: Wolfgang Puck Express (lunch)
May 8, con't: Yachtsman Steakhouse (dinner, 1st meal w/ Mom)
May 9: Coral Reef (lunch), Boulangerie Patisserie (snack)
May 9, con't: Spoodles (dinner)
May 10: Good's to Go (lunch), Jiko (dinner)
May 11: Beaches and Cream (lunch), Flying Fish (dinner)
May 12: Mainstreet Bakery (b'fast), LTT (lunch)
May 12, con't: Narcoossee's (dinner)
May 13: Cape May (b'fast), Boulangerie Patisserie (snack)
May 13, con't: CA Grill (dinner)
May 14: Raglan Road (lunch), Goofy's Candy Co. (snacks galore)

Whew!! I have pics for almost everything except some of the snacks and our lunch from Good's to Go. As soon as I get them edited and uploaded, I'll start writing and posting!!

[MickeyNicki]

Cannot wait!!

[ciera321]

I'm looking forward to the reviews!!!

[CoolDisneyKitten]

Since I have the first few days' pics done, and since I have so many reviews to write (wee!), I figured I might as well get started.

Our original plan for our first day was to take a 9:25am flight to Orlando, Magical Express to SSR, bum around a bit, maybe nap, then have dinner at Raglan Road at 7:15. Sounds great, right? Yeah...

Unfortunately we missed our plane. It's a long story, but... it wasn't my fault. Or Mike's. And I know it'll never happen again. Anyway, apparently that Sunday was a *very* popular day for traveling to Orlando, because every flight the rest of the day (until 10:20 that night) was completely booked. After sitting around Charlotte Douglas International Airport most of the day, we finally managed to squeeze onto the 4:30 flight.

After all that, we missed our Raglan Road ADR, and we were too tired to do anything but slowly, wearily drag our butts down to Turf Club and hope they had a table for us. They did, and we were seated after only a short wait.

Our nice waitress brought us two diet cokes and some sourdough bread to munch on (I think we looked as bad as we felt).



The butter was good, nice and creamy, but the bread was a little soggy. Mike said he thought they had rewarmed it too long. It was pretty late, about 15 minutes before closing time, so we weren't gonna get fresh-baked bread.

Mike ordered a burger...


and I had the Penne Pasta w/ Shrimp...


Let's start w/ Mike's burger. It was really good, with cheddar cheese and applewood smoked bacon and a sourdough herbed bun. We had a lot of burgers this trip (you'll see), but Mike always said this one was his favorite because of the bread. It was cooked perfectly for him (medium well), and he really enjoyed the smokiness of the bacon. He liked the crispy fries, too.

My pasta had an olive oil type sauce, and had artichokes, spinach, sun dried tomatoes, olives, parmesan cheese (obviously), and a ton of shrimp. I hate it when seafood pasta skimps on the seafood, and this didn't - there was a shrimp every bite. This was a much lighter choice than the burger, and that's what I was in the mood for after our long day. I really enjoyed it, but I couldn't finish it. I even liked the olives, which I normally don't - all the ingredients blended very well.

Mike is a chocolate fiend (even more than I am), so dessert was decided even before we walked in the door - chocolate lava cake. Before...



And after being cut open...



A lot of restaurants are doing the "chocolate lava cake" thing (we had many on this trip), and a lot of restaurants are doing it fairly poorly. This cake was a good one. The outside was almost crispy, while the inside was ooey gooey yummy delicious. The ice cream was very light (it wasn't "vanilla" enough for Mike), and the raspberry sauce was a nice sourish note. A really delicious dessert, and a great end to our looonnng day. Luckily it wasn't a long walk back to the villa!

[DisneyJo]

That cake looks gorgeous, can't wait for more

[DaniTaylor]

Can't wait to read more

[sandybobandy]

Hey, I'm signing on!

[auntfrannie]

Sounds delicious so far!

[pixiedust1125]

MMM that cake looks so good

[CoolDisneyKitten]

Originally Posted by whayes

No Way Jose!!! YUM YUM!! It is my favorite. Of course, I would ask for extra peanut butter!!!!!!

Wish I was there!

Thanks for the great report!! Oh and congratulations on the recent graduation!

I wish I were there too. *sigh* Ahhh, ice cream.

Thanks and thanks!

Originally Posted by DisneyVeteran

Thanks for sharing your great pics! I've never been to Beaches and Cream...I think I'm going to have t head over there for a No Way Jose next trip!

Definitely go. Try for an off time, because it can get really crowded.

Originally Posted by jerseygal

Heard the burgers, fries were great at Beaches and Cream!

How did you like the Roast Beef Sub? Like a Phil Cheesesteak?

Congrats on your Graduation! What a nice trip!

If you look at this post: http://www.disboards.com/showpost.ph...0&postcount=16 you'll see my first review of B&C where I go into more detail about the cheesesteak, inc a pic, and include my review of the burger. Happy reading!

Originally Posted by 50 years Too!

Really enjoying your food report. Great pictures and discriptions!
I'm off to find your trip report.

Deb

Thanks for reading! Heading over to update my TR now...

Originally Posted by John's Mom

I would love to order the scallops, but I HATE MUSHROOMS and I'm not really crazy about green peas. So, can you taste the mushrooms?

Couple of things... 1, you can order it w/o the shrooms. 2, the mushrooms didn't have a whole lot of flavor if you do order it with them. 3, you can order a completely different setup than the one it comes with if you want. 4, the setup it's served on actually changes; if you look at the menu on Deb's site, it's a different setup than I had, so you may not even have shrooms!

Hope that helps.

Originally Posted by TigerKat

I was so excited to read about FF! It's my second favorite place of all!!!! We went twice on our last trip and I'd always wanted to order the steak there and finally did it. It was hands down the best steak I've had at Disney, but it does have to be cooked med rare.

My DH is a scallop lover and always orders them at FF, but I had to chuckle, he HATES peas. I'm curious as to what he'd have done with that minor menu problem.

That pumpkin Mahi Mahi looks fantastic, I think I'd have probably ordered that puppy too!

We went to Flying Fish twice on our last trip, too! The second time we went, my mom got the Mahi Mahi dish I'd gotten the *first* time. She didn't like the setup with it, though, so they swapped it out for a setup from another dish. So if you don't like peas, like I told the John's Mom, you can always ask for a different setup.

I would say try the risotto, though, b/c I absolutely despise peas. They make me feel , but I love this risotto!

Originally Posted by kabuki

OK! I guess I have been on another planet but I just read your reviews! They are wonderful Great photos and Flying Fish is one of my Favs!

I am still stuck on "this is Mikes 1st OREO" ?????
Thank goodness that has been corrected!

Thanks for the nice comments!

I know; no Oreos is a sad situation. I was surprised, too, knowing how much he loves cookies and chocolate. Oh well, better late than never!

Originally Posted by honeybee30

Jiko & Flying Fish! I must say I long for and crave those goat cheese & sweet potato tamales from Jiko. They are insane! I also love the crab cake at FF.

I've always wanted to try B&C. Must put that one on the list. No Way Jose - right up my alley!

Mike enjoyed the tamales, and I was very proud of him for ordering something so "different" for him.

Go to B&C! Ice cream = good!

Originally Posted by DisneyJo

I don't like Peanut butter either, must be some strange UK thing

Oh and tell Mike they sell Oreos over here now

I just asked him if they have some sort of weird nasty peanut butter in the UK. Next time he's here I'm gonna get him to try some organic American peanut butter. Maybe that'll convert him.

He was very happy to hear about the Oreos!!

Originally Posted by panthergirl

Hey CoolDisneyKitten! I'm from Charlotte too and just wanted to tell you that you can get a medium rare burger at Big Daddy's on East. Blvd. I think they grind their own meat so they can serve them that way. I am enjoying your reviews!

Ohh, I've never been there! I'll have to check it out. That's actually one of the things they told me at Disney, too: the places that grind their meat fresh can serve burgers medium rare, otherwise, no go. Thanks!

[DrDeb]

I WANT that lava cake in Sept-- i too prefer dessert....yum

[CoolDisneyKitten]

Wait. I can't figure out what day I'm on. Oh, ok, I just posted Flying Fish. Ohh, right, MK day! This was my favorite day of the trip. My mom decided to skip (again), so it was just Mikey and me taking on the MK.

The only real trouble was the bus. We waited for 30 minutes at OKW for an MK bus, watched every other bus come twice, and when the MK bus *did* finally come... another one pulled up right behind it! Fun. EE. If you weren't one of the people waiting to get to the MK!

We of course grabbed some toast before we left (see my "no tummy goes unfilled" policy), but toast only goes so far, especially in Mike's tummy, and especially after waiting 30 minutes for a bus. We decided to stop by Mainstreet Bakery to grab some breakfast.

I'll have you know this was my first time ever getting breakfast at the bakery! I've been there many times, but never for breakfast. Being such a noob, I didn't realize that 1, they still served breakfast foods at almost 11am, and 2, the French toast loaf is further down the line than the regular pastry.



Our spread! I ordered the chocolate croissant, then I saw the hot ham and cheese croissants, so I got one of those. Mike got the plain croissant and cup of coffee. I got the milk. I saw the French toast loaf after I'd ordered everything else. *le sigh* We were charged 1 meal credit and 2 snack credits for all this.

The ham and cheese croissant was yummmm. Hot, cheesy, melty goodness. I'll be back for one of those! I only ate one bite of the chocolate croissant, and Mike ate the rest. (He said it wasn't as good as in France. I mean the real France, not the one at Epcot.) He ate all of his plain croissant as well. He said the coffee was... bad. His words? "How can they call this coffee?!" I had warned him. It was crowded when we first got there, but by the time we were done it was practically empty.

We had a 2pm ADR at LTT, so we hit a bunch of the rides then wandered that way. Ok, breaking news (to me) from LTT land: WHEN did they start giving out pagers and stop saying "Hear ye, Hear ye"!? I was way disappointed, but Mike was like, "Huh?" I told my mom later and she was like, "A pager?! What? No 'Hear ye'??" I was like, "I KNOW, right??" She got it.

Anyway. We decided that two appetizers was too much food, so we split an order of fried cheese... which I forgot to get a pic of. It was really big, though: like 6ish cheese curds and another half dozen cheese sticks. Tasty. Mike hogged the curds.

We both ordered burgers...



Mine's the shroomy one, but I removed most of the shrooms. I have a low-shroom tolerance, but I wasn't in the mood for bacon. I asked our server (who was, lemme tell ya, *grumpy*) to not put the lettuce, tomato, pickle, etc on the plate, and she was like, "It comes on the side." I said, "I know, but please just don't put it on the plate." She made this face at me, but was like, "Ok." Mike didn't brave her wrath to request the same thing, and as you can see, the fixins take up most of the plate - exactly why I didn't want them. That, and they'd just have to throw them away. Might as well save food.

Anyway... good-as-always burgers. Both cooked perfectly, good bread, hot fries. Mike ate every non-green bite on his plate, but I left most of my fries.

For dessert, I got the strawberry shortcake...


I wish instead of whipped cream this had a small scoop of ice cream. The cake was good, though, a nice pound cake. Not very many strawberries, though, so the last half was basically *just* cake. Still enjoyable, though.

Mike ordered the toffee cake...


It's covered in Heath bar, I think. He wasn't all that impressed here. He said it was ok, but there was a big burst of sweet with the first bite, then not much flavor after that. He ate it all, though.

Overall: LTT is still my favorite place for lunch in the MK. Great burgers, comfortable atmosphere... just watch out for grumpy servers!

[CoolDisneyKitten]

For dinner on our MK night, we had a 7:30 ADR at Narcoossee's. Mike and I headed back to OKW to pick up my mom, then it was off to GF! We'd never been to Narcoossee's, so we were really looking forward to it.

We checked in, got a pager, and went out onto the porch to take pics of the view. We'd been waiting a while when the host came out to get us. Our pager hadn't gone off, but he said he'd been paging us. Apparently it wasn't working (even though it buzzed when the lady handed it to my mom), but luckily they're a classy enough place not to just skip people!

We had a table up on the mezzanine level, which was nice. We could still see out the windows, but people couldn't look down and see all our food. Our server's name was Tom, and he talked *really* fast. Mike had trouble understanding him. I tried to order a drinkie, but I got carded and hadn't brought my ID. Mom got a mango margarita and Mike got a beer.

We started with the bread (and Mom's margarita)...



The best bread of the trip. Huge loaf of soft sourdough, with that excellent butter sprinkled with Hawaiian sea salt. Mike wanted a loaf to take home! It's served in a fish-shaped basket. The loaves and the fishes, hmmm...

For starters, I got the duck springroll...



This was the only dish of the whole meal that wasn't completely stellar. The duck inside was good, but the shell was tough and chewy, not crispy like it should've been. I wish I'd gotten the fried shrimp instead.

Mike got the cheese plate...



Ah, cheese. The top left one is Humboldt Fog with cranberries, then there's a Canadian cheddar with passionfruit, and some (icky) bleu with candied pecans. I liked the cheddar (esp. with the fruit), but Mike thought it was a bit too mild. I like mild. Ok, the Humboldt Fog. Lemme tell ya. I put it in my mouth, and it was good. Then there's this middle bit that had my brain screaming, "For the love of GOD, woman, SPIT IT OUT!!" If you survive that middle bit, the finish is just lovely. It was especially excellent on the sourdough with a bit of butter and a cranberry - made the middle more bearable and the finish even nicer.

Mom got the seafood bisque...



It has crab, lobster, shrimp, and other shellfish in it. She really enjoyed it. The bread was very crispy and garlicky and contrasted nicely with the soup. She ate every bite.

For our entrees, Mom and I had the surf and turf...



The filet here also comes with a brandy peppercorn sauce, and Mom liked this one better than the Yachtsman - it wasn't as peppery. The steaks were both cooked perfectly, and the butter poached lobster tail was excellent. The potatoes au gratin were made with cheese and roasted garlic - yuuummm. All in all, excellent.

Mike got the filet...



He liked the Yachtsman's sauce better, because he said you could taste the brandy more. He thought this steak was very good, but the sauce gave the Yachtsman an edge. He ate everything on his plate, of course, except for the stalks of the brocolini (just the florets).

For dessert, I had the strawberry shortcake...



Um, wow. This was so creamy and delicious. Everything was combined within the cake, so it was creamy strawberry yuminess in every bite. Very light and refreshing.

Mike got the warm chocolate almond gateau...



When he took a bite, the look on his face was like he could hear the chocolate angels singing. This dessert was *incredible* - Mike's favorite of the trip. I don't know if you can tell, but the inside is filled with oozy chocolate, so when you open the bundt cake bit, it all comes oozing out. So fantastic.

Mom got the almond crusted cheesecake...



She loved it, but I didn't. The almond flavor was way too strong for me. She ate all of it, and said it was really delicious. She loves almonds.

Just as we were finishing dessert it was time for Wishes, so we left the table to watch it out on the porch. We came back and Tom had brought us fresh drinks, refolded our napkins into pretty little fans, and brought our leftovers in a Narcoossee's bag. Later he brought us Mickey straws.

Overall: Loved Narcoossee's. The view of Wishes alone was reason to come back, but the food was amazing and the service was some of the best we had. Excellent restaurant, will definitely return!

[MickeyNicki]

Originally Posted by CoolDisneyKitten

The only real trouble was the bus. We waited for 30 minutes at OKW for an MK bus, watched every other bus come twice, and when the MK bus *did* finally come... another one pulled up right behind it!

The ham and cheese croissant was yummmm. Hot, cheesy, melty goodness. I'll be back for one of those! I only ate one bite of the chocolate croissant, and Mike ate the rest. (He said it wasn't as good as in France. I mean the real France, not the one at Epcot.) He ate all of his plain croissant as well. He said the coffee was... bad.

Mine's the shroomy one, but I removed most of the shrooms. I have a low-shroom tolerance, but I wasn't in the mood for bacon. I asked our server (who was, lemme tell ya, *grumpy*) to not put the lettuce, tomato, pickle, etc on the plate, and she was like, "It comes on the side." I said, "I know, but please just don't put it on the plate." She made this face at me, but was like, "Ok."

When we stayed at the OKW last month we waited over 20 minutes for an Epcot bus...all the other buses were coming in droves EXCEPT Epcot and when it did show 2 buses came...that is too weird!

Main Street Bakery, we love that ham and cheese croissant, it is so oozy cheesy good! DH said the same thing about the chocolate croissant....he is a spoiled one and only likes the ones in France!

Ok the thing with the burger I totally understand where you are coming from as I have a best friend that orders her burgers like this "Just give me a burger, bun and fries, nothing else on the burger or on the plate" If they do put the salady items on the plate she gets ticked and just flicks them off and dries her plate with a napkin (I guess the juice gets the fries soggy?) and heaven help you if the items are actually on the burger, she will send it back and make her cook a new one.....strange but true!

[John's Mom]

Great review of Narcoossee's! It's on our list for December.