Here's another quick review of a meal we ate at the Tusker House Buffet.
Date we ate: Saturday, Feb 14th
Time we ate: ADR for 1:40 pm, but were seated late at 1:55pm
Service: Front hostesses were polite but not friendly. Waiter was friendly but busy, and this affected how quickly he was able to respond to our requests. However, despite working a full section, he was still reasonably prompt and remained friendly throughout.
Atmosphere: Fine. Very much a casual-buffet atmosphere.
Food: Summary - Edible, about one notch better than eating at a food court in a mall. A few of the selections were quite good, but a few were inedible.
Ok, here goes.... All of the "mainstream" buffet choices were reasonably good. The roast beef & pork, the caeser salad, tomato-cucumber salad, green beans, roasted potatoes were fine. And if you want to see every possible variation of green-bean cuisine, people, this buffet is for you.
(And another quick aside - I can't decide if it's annoying or cute when themed restaurants try to fool you into thinking that a dish is more "ethnic" or "authentically (fill in the blank with whatever nationality you want)" by sticking a fancy name on it. Case in point? Spice-rubbed rotisserie chicken? It's just rotisserie chicken, folks. And Peri-peri salmon? Yup, you guessed it... it's just regular salmon.)
Negatives: Almost every truly "ethnic" type dish I tried, I didn't much like. The Cape Malay Curry Chicken was very bitter - either someone burnt the curry paste or the mix from the jar was too old. The Saffron vegetables were nicely done in texture but almost tasteless. The couscous with roasted vegetables? Well, the vegetables were hard and managed to pull off the interesting trick of being extremely hot (spicy hot, not temperature) without being very flavorful (ugh).
Overall, what killed this buffet for me was the sheer repetitiveness of the starch dishes. There were three couscous, three rice, one orzo, and one tabouleh. As a result, almost every starch dish started looking like a variation of Rice-a-Roni, and I couldn't remember which was which.
Finding Nemo Show Package: Getting the priority seating for the Finding Nemo musical was the only reason we ate at this restaurant, and I suspect most of the people there that afternoon were doing the same. If you are planning on doing the Nemo combo, the reserved seating (and avoiding the huge wait in line), is a really nice bonus. However, I'd recommend getting the earliest seating possible that still gets you into the show. We had the 1:40 seating and it was definitely too rushed.
Conclusion: For us? We wouldn't waste the time or money eating here again. It ranks as one of the poorest meals eaten in WDW.
Date we ate: Saturday, Feb 14th
Time we ate: ADR for 1:40 pm, but were seated late at 1:55pm
Service: Front hostesses were polite but not friendly. Waiter was friendly but busy, and this affected how quickly he was able to respond to our requests. However, despite working a full section, he was still reasonably prompt and remained friendly throughout.
Atmosphere: Fine. Very much a casual-buffet atmosphere.
Food: Summary - Edible, about one notch better than eating at a food court in a mall. A few of the selections were quite good, but a few were inedible.
Ok, here goes.... All of the "mainstream" buffet choices were reasonably good. The roast beef & pork, the caeser salad, tomato-cucumber salad, green beans, roasted potatoes were fine. And if you want to see every possible variation of green-bean cuisine, people, this buffet is for you.
(And another quick aside - I can't decide if it's annoying or cute when themed restaurants try to fool you into thinking that a dish is more "ethnic" or "authentically (fill in the blank with whatever nationality you want)" by sticking a fancy name on it. Case in point? Spice-rubbed rotisserie chicken? It's just rotisserie chicken, folks. And Peri-peri salmon? Yup, you guessed it... it's just regular salmon.)
Negatives: Almost every truly "ethnic" type dish I tried, I didn't much like. The Cape Malay Curry Chicken was very bitter - either someone burnt the curry paste or the mix from the jar was too old. The Saffron vegetables were nicely done in texture but almost tasteless. The couscous with roasted vegetables? Well, the vegetables were hard and managed to pull off the interesting trick of being extremely hot (spicy hot, not temperature) without being very flavorful (ugh).
Overall, what killed this buffet for me was the sheer repetitiveness of the starch dishes. There were three couscous, three rice, one orzo, and one tabouleh. As a result, almost every starch dish started looking like a variation of Rice-a-Roni, and I couldn't remember which was which.
Finding Nemo Show Package: Getting the priority seating for the Finding Nemo musical was the only reason we ate at this restaurant, and I suspect most of the people there that afternoon were doing the same. If you are planning on doing the Nemo combo, the reserved seating (and avoiding the huge wait in line), is a really nice bonus. However, I'd recommend getting the earliest seating possible that still gets you into the show. We had the 1:40 seating and it was definitely too rushed.
Conclusion: For us? We wouldn't waste the time or money eating here again. It ranks as one of the poorest meals eaten in WDW.
and my husband enjoyed the salmon. And what we loved about it was that it was reasonable. 
