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[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

nd Josh said we hadn't gotten a chance to try them yet. She looked him dead in the eye and said...I'll wait" and then stood there until we both tried them and reassured her they were good.

That is strange.... Wonder if that is how they do service all the time. I also wonder if your server ended his shift or something? Def odd.

This was sooo good I'm Italian, and we have a lot of Italian restaurants in the area/family members that cook at home so we're always hesitant to try Italian restaurants on vacation. But this one was amazing! I also really like the portion size since Italian restaurants tend to give you way too much food sometimes, and I felt like this was just enough where I could finish everything, and still have some dessert.

Josh got:

Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo -grilled chicken breast, Parmesan cream sauce, pancetta, peas

These both look delish!!!

Food Budget-1600
Estimated Cost-55
Money Spent-55
Over-0
Leftover-1491

I love the food budget breakdown. I might need to start this for our next trip. I don't think the dinning plan will make sense for us, as I "think" we will be doing a split stay. I don't want to stress about using all of our credit half way through the trip. We will see... But I love seeing the breakdown!

 

[Jenny Sanders]

Hi Raeven! That's too funny how you're Italian and you're hesitant to try Italian restaurants because my 100% Sicilian husband is the EXACT same way!!!!!! His mom is such a great cook that he'd rather she cook for him than go out any day of the week...

 

[Lesley Wake]

These are 2lbs, contain a whole bag of cannoli filling, and I believe are marketed towards parties of 4+.

Discrimination against solo diners! I would totally get that whole thing myself!

It was so fun watching the chefs put all the dishes together.

I love open kitchens!

I like how they incorporate kitchenware as decorations

Very very cute! Once I have my own kitchen again, I'm totally decorating it like that.

There was also an awkward moment when our entrees were brought over. The lady that brought them asked how they tasted and Josh said we hadn't gotten a chance to try them yet. She looked him dead in the eye and said...I'll wait" and then stood there until we both tried them and reassured her they were good.

Um, weird! I do not like people watching me eat!

 

[paradesintherain]

It was so good! I’d actually never had bread pudding before our first trip to Disney, and I loved it so much that I’ve ordered it just about anywhere they have it ever since

Same! I had never had it until I ate it at Ohana, and now I am obsessed!

 

[auntfrannie]

The Vivo meal looks fantastic! I'm not a big Universal fan but it looks like City Walk has some good restaurants.

 

[buzzrelly]

Hello, there!

We have a Margaritaville here in CT but the one at Universal is way better…maybe because the surroundings are nicer and there are actual Palm Trees around. I've only been there once with my mom and kids, but we all enjoyed it. I think sometimes the restaurants will save their better workers for the busier times, so maybe you got the B workers Your Pina Colada looked yummy, though!

Your dinners at Vivo looked really good. I'm kind of the opposite of you, I love Italian food and will often get it on vacation because I find it's hard to mess up! So even bad Italian food is pretty good to me

Edited because I had some quotes and I don't know what happened to them, but…ew! That Starbucks barista…what a witch. I never order in the fancy way they want. I honestly HATE Starbucks but because there are so freaking many of them everywhere, I will go there occasionally. I can't wait for this whole craze to pass. Give me a good ol' Dunkin Donuts any day…though they are definitely not a dime a dozen like Starbucks

 

[Raeven]

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[suse66]

It was meant to be dipped in olive oil, and it was pretty good. Nice and warm, but I didn't want to fill up too much on bread.

Looks yummy!

Chicken Parmigiano-marinara, mozzarella, linguine

I have never tried chicken parm but will have to do so one day. I always go with Josh's choice.....

Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo -grilled chicken breast, Parmesan cream sauce, pancetta, peas

It's always so good but SO rich! Despite my best intentions I never manage more than half a serving.

Bread Pudding-Warmed, amaretto anglaise, topped with sour cream gelato

This looks heavenly!! I am such a bread pudding person and know I would LOVE this!

 

[kastoney]

These are 2lbs, contain a whole bag of cannoli filling, and I believe are marketed towards parties of 4+.

Holy cannoli indeed. That thing is huge!!!!!!!

He said this was pretty good, but no carpaccio ever compares to the one at the Brown Derby for him.

Yum, this look awesome. I'm a sucker for a good carpaccio so I'll have to try the brown derby one sometime. The best I ever had was at a Todd English place in Vegas. Its since closed but I'm always checking out Blue Zoo's menu hoping it appears on there.

Although I always think alfredo feels that way

Dying at your gifs. My most favorite show ever. Just watched this episode the other day for the at least the 20th time. Alfredo and Michael Scott never get old.

The decor in Vivo is adorable, and I love the Italian kitchen theme. I like how they incorporate kitchenware as decorations, and I think the open kitchen design is really interesting.

What a great meal. Sounds like an awesome place. I, like you, am Italian and Jason owned an Italian restaurant for a while so we are picky about out Italian food so from one Italian to another I know that must have been good.

 

[Raeven]

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[ariane37]

We had the BEST seats ever! We were seated around the open kitchen, and I loved it! (That's where the title of this post comes from). It was so fun watching the chefs put all the dishes together.

Steve likes it when he can see an open kitchen from our seats at restaurants It's been this way a couple times at Citricos, including one time we were right in front of the chef putting together the desserts which was awesome!

She looked him dead in the eye and said...I'll wait" and then stood there until we both tried them and reassured her they were good.

Weird. I would have been uncomfortable!

Since we haven't really been to a lot of other Italian restaurants at Universal and Disney it's hard to say this is better than certain ones.

Can you please, PLEASE go to Il Mulino? I keep telling you that lol!!!

Glad you enjoyed Vivo, I think I told you my 2 friends had a good meal there in Feb. on our TA trip. I was jealous they enjoyed it since I didn't like mine at NBC Grille. Might consider Vivo when we take the boys over to Universal.

We have a Margaritaville here in CT

The one time I've been to Margaritaville was in CT. at Mohegan Sun!

 

[micheleq]

Joining! I love your TRs! My DH is GF and your reviews are always helpful

Ok, true confession time-my daughter and I were at WDW overlapping your trip and I totally saw you guys in the lobby at the Poly (on Sunday 5/6). It took a second to register in my brain, and by that time you had walked past us lol. We were getting ready to board Magical Express to go home. My daughter swore she had seen a YouTuber at AK that morning and I told her “oh that’s crazy”, then we had a good laugh when I told her I saw a Disney vlogger! It’s a small world after all!

 

[wdwnut61]

We enjoy Margaritaville drinks are good, food is ok but service was bad both in March and last week. We only saw our server to take our order and drop the check
We haven't tried Vivo Italian but after your review I'm adding to the list for Thanksgiving week
Your Chicken Parmigiana looks so good as well as Josh's Fettuccine Alfredo the Bread Pudding sold!
Now for the waitress odd indeed she did tap her toe while saying " I'll wait" ?

 

[Raeven]

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[Raeven]

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[dolewhipandpixiedust]

The King of French Toast
aka The Kitchen at the Hard Rock

Originally the plan was to go to Toothsome this morning, but when we woke up I was feeling more like having breakfast than lunch. Luckily it looked like the resorts all served breakfast until noon on the weekends so I moved our Kitchen reservation to this morning. We had a good dinner there last May, and the menu looked more unique than some of the other hotels, and they had a breakfast buffet with almost everything on the regular breakfast menu on it.

I love the theming in The Kitchen because it combines the celebrity feel of the Hard Rock (pictures of celebs who dine there signed by them & chef jackets they make with their band name on them) with the look of a kitchen. This is our favorite booth that we've sat in both times we've been there:

It could be the time of day (it was after 11 am but still breakfast), but the restaurant wasn't very busy. As a result of this our service suffered a bit. It took them awhile to seat us, then awhile for a server to get to us (which was frustrating because we just wanted to get the buffet), but it also afforded us the opportunity to take buffet videos/pictures which I never really get to do when it's busy. Because I only went through the buffet once though I did screenshot the vlog so some of these aren't the best quality, I also mention any items I missed getting a picture of.

First up we have pancakes:

They had strawberries, cream, and syrup to top these with.

Sticky buns:

Assorted fruit:

At this point I believe there were grits (with the option to add cheese), and oatmeal. Unfortunately when I went to lift the lid and take a picture the lid for the grits went flying off and hit everything on the way down. I was super embarrassed especially because someone who works there had to come over, and then I felt like he was watching me the whole time after so I didn't start recording again right away.

If you can tell almost every container has a top on hinges so when you open it, it just stays up. For some reason only this container had a non attached lid so when I pushed it up it went flying off

Corned beef hash:

Bacon & sausage:

2 kinds of scrambled eggs:

Breakfast potatoes:

Pastries:

In a corner they also had the bagels/bread and a breakfast pizza.

But the best part in the middle was the omelet station and the griddle station (which I'll get to later).

Here's Josh's plate:

He wasn't that hungry, and there wasn't a lot on the buffet he could get so he opted for bacon and a bacon and cheddar omelet. He did get a plate of fruit afterwards, but I don't think I got a picture of it. It was a pretty standard omelet, and he liked it.

I got scrambled eggs, cheddar grits, a strawberry, bacon, and breakfast potatoes for my first plate:

I was a bit disappointed in almost everything except the bacon and strawberry, although it would be hard to get those wrong I actually thought the grits would have cheese in them, but it was a shredded cheese you mixed in, and I didn't find it melted that well or really seemed to work on them. The eggs tasted fake.

I also got an omelet with bacon, cheddar, tomato, and onion:

The tomato chunks were a bit bigger than I would've liked, but overall this was good. I do like the omelet stations at the Universal hotels because they make huge omelets, it just takes a bit longer so you have to be careful about when you go up to the stations because you don't want your other food to get cold.

One of the things I had been excited about on the menu at The Kitchen was:

Frozen Hot Chocolate-A Frozen Concoction of Valrhona Chocolate with a Whisper of Cinnamon

Sadly, it did not live up to the hype. It just tasted like a slushie made of chocolate syrup, and I don't really like chocolate syrup. I'm not sure what I expected it to be, but that wasn't it.

Finally I visited the griddle station. Here's what they could prepare for you:

I chose:

"The Elvis" French Toast -Baguette Slices, Bananas, Peanut Butter, Caramel Sauce

This was so good! It tasted like a peanut butter and banana sandwich with caramel on top I love peanut butter and bananas together, and I don't tend to eat one without the other.

Also I thought this was cool too:

The Kissimmee Instagram reposted my picture! (Although they chose a different filter, I think).

I think the real value in the buffet is in the omelet and griddle station since the buffet itself didn't have anything too impressive on it. If you know you're going to want an omelet and pancakes/french toast or may want to try multiple items at the griddle station then I'd say you'll probably break even/save money on the price of the buffet. The food is also made fresh in front of you there and is made just like the entrees are. The only issue I would think is that each item takes a few minutes so at a busier time you might have to wait for a bit.

The cost of the buffet is $23 a person which isn't bad. Compared to Disney buffets it runs a bit cheaper. I would say a place like Boma which is only a few dollars more definitely has better food, but it might be comparable to the fare at some character buffets where the focus is more on the characters and the food is just okay. We haven't been to many breakfast buffets at Universal, but overall my pick is for Islands at the Royal Pacific. Universal buffets also rotate their character dining, (through the restaurants at 3 of the hotels but it isn't always for breakfast), and that's no additional charge which is pretty cool. (Although I believe Sapphire Falls recently added a character breakfast that is an additional charge). This was not a character breakfast morning (I think Hard Rock's is during dinner on Sat night).

Will we be back? For lunch or dinner, yes. For breakfast only if we're already staying there, and I would order off the entree menu. I found the food to be a bit disappointing since the menu sounded so good, and we really enjoyed our previous meal there. I will say even if the food was amazing we'd probably hold off unless we were in the hotel because it took us longer than we thought to get there. We opted to walk instead of take the water taxi so we walked to Citywalk, through it, then down the path to the hotel, then since only hotel guests can cut through the pool area we had to walk through some of the resort too. We were probably about 15-20 mins later for our reservation because we underestimated the time it would take to get there.

I think overall it would've been better to go to Islands in our hotel. We went in September (so the review was in TR I did on the Universal boards instead of in a DTR), but the meal was really good and the breakfast buffet was super extensive with unlimited POG juice (I noticed The Kitchen didn't have juices on the buffet though you could order them but POG juice was not one of them). Plus it turned out to be a character meal on that day which was fun. Here's a little throwback for those that haven't seen that TR:

(They brought me cinnamon butter from a dish on the entree menu when I asked for my french toast sticks).

Josh had a gluten free pizza:

They had a similar omelet station there:

Food Budget-1600
Estimated Cost-Not sure how to measure this one because we changed things around.
I had estimated about $64 for Toothsome,
but we had planned to go to The Kitchen on Monday which I had estimated would be $70.
Money Spent-64
Under-0-6
Leftover-1427

​

The French toast looks amazing!!!

 

[wdwnut61]

We did get to have dinner at the Kitchen and really enjoyed it.
The Minions breakfast at SF is tempting me for November DD loves them.
The French toast does look good.

 

[buzzrelly]

The one time I've been to Margaritaville was in CT. at Mohegan Sun!

That's the one! I've been to MS many, many times and would you believe I've never so much as put a quarter in a slot machine? I usually go for either nursing conventions, dance comps or concerts. We ate at that Margaritaville once, and I was kind of disappointed because the one in UO is so much nicer!

when I went to lift the lid and take a picture the lid for the grits went flying off and hit everything on the way down. I was super embarrassed especially because someone who works there had to come over, and then I felt like he was watching me the whole time after so I didn't start recording again right away.

Oh my! How embarrassing!

Frozen Hot Chocolate-A Frozen Concoction of Valrhona Chocolate with a Whisper of Cinnamon

Sadly, it did not live up to the hype. It just tasted like a slushie made of chocolate syrup, and I don't really like chocolate syrup. I'm not sure what I expected it to be, but that wasn't it.

Bummer! It sounds and looks good though!

Also I thought this was cool too:

The Kissimmee Instagram reposted my picture! (Although they chose a different filter).

How cool! You're famous!

 

[EvilVillainess]

[QUOTE I also got an omelet with bacon, cheddar, tomato, and onion /QUOTE]
My kindred spirit...this is also my favorite omlette ever.
My DH and I love RPR character breakfast, but I was thinking of trying The Kitchen this year. Thanks for sharing the review knowing that I can try that Elvis french toast and get my favorite omlette sealed the deal for me.

 

[ariane37]

The Kissimmee Instagram reposted my picture! (Although they chose a different filter).

That's cool!
So the breakfast buffet at the Kitchen doesn't look much better than one over at Amatista except for maybe the griddle station At least you can say you've tried it.

That's the one! I've been to MS many, many times and would you believe I've never so much as put a quarter in a slot machine? I usually go for either nursing conventions, dance comps or concerts. We ate at that Margaritaville once, and I was kind of disappointed because the one in UO is so much nicer!

We've been there for a few concerts and ate at Margaritaville before Motley Crue and while it was ok we weren't impressed enough to want to go back to one anywhere. But since I'm not positive where I'll eat on Citywalk when we have the boys there later this year, maybe I'll look at the menu again if the one there is nicer!