After our afternoon break at CSR, we headed over to the Poly in good time to get to the podium area at 'Ohana about 15 minutes before our ADR...and we joined a humongous line at about 4.55 PM to check in for our 5.10 ADR. It actually took about 15 minutes to work our way up in the line to the podium, so we were checking in right at our reservation time. Which was fine because they actually didn't appear to start seating people until around 5.15 anyway. We ordered pina colavas from the bar & waited to be seated. Our buzzer went off about 10 minutes later, so we were seated just before 5:30, which I didn't think was bad, given what I've read about how fast 'Ohana gets backed up. Our hostess, gave us the little tour as we walked in to the restaurant. Stopping where they pick up the hot, fresh bread and pointed out the flaming grill, and they explain as they walk you to your table how the food will be served in courses & hot off the grill, etc.
We were seated in the main room, at the far end away from the grill. The first thing we noticed is that the restaurant was FREEZING. Even with that huge open fire at the end, the place felt like a meat cooler. I mentioned it to our waiter, and he said “Oh we think it’s a wonderful place to work because it’s about the only restaurant where it's comfortable for the servers.” So apparently the temp is set for the employee’s comfort, not the patrons. Funny way to run a restaurant...I'm all for good working conditions for staff, but I thought restaurants are in business to cater to paying clients, not for keeping the staff happy? But I've read some glowing reviews of 'Ohana, and this was the first trip in about 10 that I actually was able to get a reservation here before 9.30 at night, so we decided to stay. We ordered cokes & ice water since we still had a little of our pina colavas left when we sat down:
Now, to the bread…I’ve read so many rave reviews about this special pineapple bread. Well…I LOVE pineapple. And I love hot, fresh bread. Unfortunately, this was cold, tough & tasteless...apparently those "heat lamps" were just regular lamps because they had imparted no heat to this bread. And it's not served with butter, either. I was expecting something scrumptious like the fresh Hawaiian bread from Kona with the macadamia nut butter. NOT! Really, I wish I would have taken these two temperature clues (freezing restaurant and cold bread) and just left right then and there. We took one bite & left the rest...there was the promise of all that other good food to come, so what the heck on the bread, right?
Our beverages arrived, and I got a bonus in my ice water with a complementary protein serving: a mosquito doing the back float on the top (Sorry for the unclear photo—had trouble with glare off the ice & glass, but the mosquito is the blurry dark speck in the water, look to the right of the brown spot on the lemon…it was actually a good-sized dead mosquito in there) Then it took most of the meal to get a new glass of water
. Again, should have listened to inner self saying LEAVE NOW! But I didn't.
The other server dropped off the Meat sauces…note how greasy the peanut sauce looks….yuck.
Next to arrive at the table were the Potstickers and sticky wings…surprise, surprise: these actually were warm, fresh and delicious. Also very, very messy. Thank heavens they deliver the hot, wet washcloths. Course we didn’t know it at the time, but the cloths were actually the hottest item served to us that night. The warm sticky wings came in second on temps...but at least they were warm. We liked these, but decided not to over-eat on them since so many good foods were scheduled to arrive.
The ‘Ohana salad showed up just after the wings. Now we are salad lovers, and this was not good salad: the lettuce was wilted and dressing was lacking—could just barely taste it…there was just enough to verify that yes, it is sweet dressing but not enough dressing for the size of the salad. The little bit of dressing on it was good, but we both just had a bite of the salad…not impressed with that at all, and figured we were really there for the grilled foods. (The lettuce was wet – with water, like it had just been rinsed. It was not wet with dressing.)
The Noodles were delivered shortly after the salad. All I can say here is these were super-yuck. Tasteless, gloppy consistency and barely room temperature….thanks to the frigid A/C, these were completely cold by the time meat arrived. You’d think everything would be hot & fresh at 5:30 when the place just opened at 5:00. But anyway, 20 minutes later they’re dropping off room-temperature or cold food. Wondered if the stuff was leftovers from previous night and that they just didn’t reheat all the way? That’s about what the noodles tasted like…cold leftovers. At this point I asked the waiter if these foods were supposed to be cold or warm and did any of it come hot? He replied it was all supposed to be different temperatures depending on what it was...started in on a speech about ‘ohana means family, and it’s a shared family meal, blah blah blah and meant to be served in courses, not all together so of course things will be different temperatures. Sounded like a load of hooey to me…but just then the kids entertainment started and I couldn't hear a word he was saying over the noise.
OK, got my flame suit on but I have to say. OMG! The entertainment in there is sooooooo bad. That woman’s voice is so annoyingly-cloyingly-fakey-dripping-sugary. Ugh. Note to adults … if you still want to eat at ‘ohana after this, make sure you request the non-entertainment room. And we were actually at the other end from Miss Annoya. Well, I’m sure the kids enjoyed it (except for the ones in our vicinity having tantrums because they didn't want to participate & parents were insisting how much "fun" they should be having...and then there was the little girl putting on a major pout because daddy wouldn't dance with her instead of mommy. So OK, not all the kids were having fun...) Holey-moley if they’re going to seat adults-only parties in the main room there, they should at least warn ya so you can get good & liquored up before the “entertainment” started.
During the "entertaining" pre-schoolers Hawaiian language class...where they were teaching the kids that Hawaiian words often have more than one meaning...I was tempted to ask Miss Annoya if the other meaning for 'Ohana was "cold family meal"...but anyway, we were rewarded with another edible dish: the Grilled shrimp…and it was actually served hot! Joy, joy, joy. Tasty, with a little bit of kick to it. Didn’t care for having to peel it, but otherwise it was quite good.
The shrimp was quickly followed by two more barely room-temp foods: “hot off the grill” according to our server. They actually were slid off full skewers, so I guess that must be a very low-heat grill? Anyway, the Grilled chicken was extremely dry, no flavor except the char sections, which of course were flavored "burnt." The other piece is grilled pork…which looked great…figured with the sauce it can’t be dry, right, so should be edible at least. Well, surprise! The sauce tasted like black licorice (major yuck) and of course char. Hubby did not believe me when I said it had a black licorice taste…then he took a bite and agreed. Suppose it was anise or somesuch, but the end result was not something we appreciated. Worst part was the meat was actually juicy but we couldn't eat it with that gross-flavored sauce…way to wreck a perfectly acceptable bite of grilled pork!
Then a bowl of broccoli arrived. Again, this item was just barely warm (mainly the bowl was warm, the food was room-temp) and these veggies were apparently plain steamed at some point (not recently, judging by the temp) but with no butter or seasoning on it. Not worth eating…
We were both looking forward to the ‘Ohana grilled beef. Dang, disappointed again. This was a major Ugh. Like the chicken, the main flavor of the beef was char, and the texture was gross/mush that you get when you use the chemical tenderizers for too long on a cheap piece of steak. EWWWW. One bite, and we were done trying those foods.
Our waiter came by about then and asked if we wanted more of anything…well, yes, where was my bug-free ice water? So he dashes off to get me water, sans bugs. By the time that comes , Miss Annoya is back out, this time doing a special performance for a wedding rehearsal dinner going on at ‘Ohana. OMG—she’s telling everyone to ding their spoons on their glasses repeatedly to keep the engaged couple kissing the whole time they’re dancing while she sings a horrible “love” song. If that had been me, I would have called off the wedding, lol. Just Kidding. I’m sure they were having great fun at the dinner, especially if they all had adult libations. Just wish the rest of us didn’t have to share in the "merriment" of the ding-ding-ding going on. Hubby said we should at least get a piece of wedding cake if we have to sit through the rehearsal dinner floor show.
Even though we were still hungry, we were sooo ready to get out of there - the noise level was really getting to me and I had a headache coming on. But again, having heard so much about the fabulous bread pudding dessert at ‘Ohana we decided maybe that would finally fill us up. Now I have tried many, many Disney bread puddings & sauces and loved all of them. This one actually was served warm (at least enough to make the ice cream start to melt.) Having heard that they may put too much sauce on it, I asked our server not to pour the sauce. OK, the sauce was good. But was this the best bread pudding ever? No. It was good, but way too sweet, and I only poured about 1/2 the sauce on it. Cannot imagine how sweet it would be with all the sauce on it. Even though we were both still hungry, we could only eat a few bites because it was just too sweet to fill up on. Our server came back and asked if we wanted anything else, and we said check, please! The entertainer was getting ready to start the coconut races & we wanted out before more noise started!
The total bill at 'Ohana (before tip) was $70.27 for two adult meals & soft drinks, which was covered by regular dining plan credits. Was it worth it? No. Hubby said he’d give it a 3 out of 10. Because the potstickers, wings & shrimp were good. Service was just barely alright…the food kept coming, they did check back a couple of times to see if we wanted refills on things. But that ice water did not get replaced on a timely basis. And other than the salad, I think the rest of the food was supposed to be served at least warm, if not hot. Serving it room temp or cool has nothing to do with “family style”…meat, noodles, veggies are supposed to be warm! These guys know they’re not serving warm/hot food…and "family style" is not an explanation of why the food is not hot. Seriously, I did not realize "family style" meant cold. The décor is OK in ‘Ohana, nothing spectacular - probably would have liked the decor more if we weren't freezing in there. The entertainment is annoying unless you have preschoolers in desperate need of entertainment. The food is mostly under-seasoned (except for that bizarre black-licorice sauce on the pork?) I agree with hubby…a 3 at best. Would we return? Never in a million years...here was an all you can eat meal & yet we left hungry because the food wasn't worth eating. As we left the Polynesian to head to the monorail & Magic Kingdom…we walked past a quiet, peaceful Kona Café….with a few empty tables. We both agreed next time we wanted to eat at the Polynesian, we’d return to Kona.
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We joined the line at Main Street Bakery just after rope-drop, so there were about 10 people in line ahead of us. We get up there, get our order served up and we pay. Luckily we found a table (place was mobbed & lots of tables were being held by folks waiting for other family members to bring the food.) So we sit down to enjoy our fresh-baked goodness. And that’s when our dream of experiencing a wonderful warm & fresh Main Street Bakery breakfast turned into a nightmare. I should have known something was wrong because I wasn’t getting the hot-cinnamon-baking-smell when we first walked in. As it turns out, both pastries were COLD! Like straight-out-of-the-refrigerator-cold. Like frosting-was-almost-frozen-cold. Instead of dripping warm icing, it was breaking-off-in-solid-chunks cold icing. And the cinnamon roll itself was so stale it had to be from the day before. I'm sure it was stored somewhere that was not air-tight. The outside edge -- or I should say the outside "2/3" of the roll was absolutely shoe leather – I could not even begin to bite through it – it was so tough I had to tear it apart. The very middle of the roll was edible, but even that was stale-chewy, not soft. And Not warm at all. So I got about 1/3 of a cinnamon roll, and chucked the rest of the yucko thing - if the line had been shorter I would have taken it back, but the line was doubled up/snaking inside and actually went all the way out the door & up the sidewalk. That would have been a long wait. Even the cash registers were all backed up. Not worth the hassle or my time (which I suppose is what they count on when they serve sub-par food like this...people will just leave instead of waiting around to complain. I know, I should have but at that point I just wanted to get on with some fun in the park. :-( 
). Fortunately, when we went back to try the bread pudding--we had the man who was not annoying at all.
was about how crazy-making I found it.
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