Dining Review - February 2023

[Noreen411]

Tuesday 2/14/23 Continued
Later that evening we drove to the Dolphin and valet parked for our Valentine’s Day dinner at Shula’s

We sat at the bar and decided to stay there rather than moving to a table for dinner.

Scott had a Bombay Sapphire straight with olives. I had a white sangria. My sangria tasted a bit off; I wasn’t sure what was wrong with it but it didn’t taste as good as it normally does here. The bartender brought me 2 to choose from (he made one and another bartender made another); I think they were having a friendly competition of who made it better. I chose the one I liked best and enjoyed my new white sangria. I wasn’t going to say anything and would have drank the original one that tasted a bit off; Scott mentioned it and they were happy to make a new one. They even said we want you to be happy; how can we fix it if we don’t know it isn’t perfect?



The bread was as good as always, warm and soft inside but crunchy outside. It’s so hard not to fill up on the bread.


For an appetizer we shared the Maryland Style Crab Cake: Jumbo lump crab, mustard, old bay seasoning with remoulade sauce. This was really good with big chunks of crab and not a lot of filler.


For our entree we ordered the special Chateaubriand for 2 with truffle butter (not on the menu). This was delicious. The steak was great. The truffle butter on the side was OK, but could be overpowering if you use more than just a small bit of it. I think truffle butter is better in theory than when you actually use it.



We also ordered the macaroni and cheese: Cavatappi pasta, Gouda and cheddar cheese sauce, bread crumbs. This is the best Macaroni and Cheese at Disney.


We didn’t finish our food and had leftovers wrapped to go.

For dessert we ordered the special Valentine’s Day dessert. It wasn’t on the menu so I don’t have the fancy description but it was cherry compote in a dome. This was a nice dessert, the decorations were all edible. It was lighter than the chocolate souffle we usually order at Shula’s. We both enjoyed it.


Shula’s continues to be one of our favorite meals at Disney

 

[auntfrannie]

Shula's is always great! Glad you got to get there twice in one trip!

 

[ThreeBoyMama]

That steak looks soooo good!

 

[Counting Stars]

Looks like the right place for a special dinner-the food looks really great!

 

[Noreen411]

Shula's is always great! Glad you got to get there twice in one trip!

Shula’s is definitely one of our favorite restaurants at Disney

 

[Noreen411]

That steak looks soooo good!

It was fantastic

 

[Noreen411]

Looks like the right place for a special dinner-the food looks really great!

When we were booking restaurants 60 days out each day - I knew I wanted to book Shula’s for Valentine’s Day.

 

[Noreen411]

Wednesday 2/15/23
We spent most of the day at Hollywood Studios. In the afternoon we took the Skyliner to Epcot to walk around the countries and try some of the Festival of the Arts booths.

At the Refreshment Port we had the Gnocchi Poutine: with red wine-braised beef, cheese curds, basila and burrata. This was good. We were surprised that the gnocchi were fried rather than soft, but I think that made it hold up to the meat and cheese better. It was a solid dish.


At the Moderne Booth we ordered two items

Angry Crab: Whole crispy soft-shell crab with green papaya salad, mango-sriracha fluid gel, coconut-lime foam with pomegranate and mango crush pearls. Scott really liked this. I’m not a soft shell crab fan since it looks too much like it did when it was alive. I gave it a taste but let Scott enjoy it. I did like the little balls/pearls.


Pan Seared Scallops: with vanilla-butternut squash purée, brown butter cauliflower purée and lime foam. I’m not a huge scallop fan in general so just tried the purées and let Scott eat it. He said it was OK but thought the scallops were a bit too fishy tasting.


Later that evening we went to Disney Springs. We got on the standby line at Gideon’s for more cookies including the night time special Dark coffee cake cookie. Similar to the morning coffee cake cookie that’s only sold in the morning until they sell out, there is an evening one that they start selling at sunset until they sell out. These cookies were also frozen to come home with us.

We cancelled our dinner plans earlier in the morning wanting to wing it tonight.

We walked into Jock Lindsay’s Hangar Bar and sat at the bar.


Scott had the Mayor’s Reserve: Woodford Reserve Bourbon, Bols blackberry brandy, simple syrup and lemon juice. He thought it was OK, but also ordered a plain glass of Bourbon which I think he preferred.

I had the Cool Headed Monkey: Starr African rum, van der hum tangerine liqueur, fresh lime juice, watermelon, and pineapple juice. I liked my drink.


We ordered several things that we shared

Nona’s Home-style meatballs: Handcrafted italian meatballs, Sunday gravy, basil pesto, scratch made lemon ricotta, grilled focaccia crostini, grated pecorino Romano. These were really good, better than we expected. Scott makes his own meatballs and his own sauce/gravy at home so is very critical of meatballs and sauce/gravy when we go out and he thought these were great too.


Tacos Al Pastor: Citrus chipotle pork belly, pineapple pick de gallo, red cabbage, grilled corn tortillas. These were OK but we probably wouldn’t order them again.


Snakebit Sliders: Gourmet beef sliders with tomato bacon jam, house made pickles, shredded lettuce and cheese. These were really good. I pulled the pickle off and it was great.


Air Pirate’s Cargo Loaded Pretzel: prosciutto, sliced brats, artisan pepperoni, smoked cheddar, black diamond cheddar, caraway pickles, spicy mustard and beer cheese fondue. This was good but it was too much stuff. We probably would have been better off ordering the plain soft pretzel.


We had some leftovers that we had wrapped to go. We enjoyed Jock Lindsay’s Hangar Bar and would definitely return. My only complaint would be the bar stools not being comfortable (one of my pet peeves).

 

[Noreen411]

Thursday 2/16/23
We spent the day at Magic Kingdom.

Throughout the trip I kept saying to Scott that I wanted to get a Dole Whip. I haven’t had one in years. We got the Dole Whip Swirl. It’s good, but not as good as I remembered it being. There was too much pineapple and not enough vanilla in the swirl. It needed more vanilla to cut the tang of the pineapple. We enjoyed it and finished it, but I didn’t love it like I expected to.



Later that night we drove to Disney Springs for dinner at Homecoming. We sat at the bar.

I had White Peach Sangria: Peach moonshine, La PerLina Moscato and fresh peach purée muddled with orange and mango. Garnished with a moonshine-soaked peach wedge. This was a very good sangria.

Scott had Woodford Blues: Woodford reserve private select bourbon, house-made blueberry syrup and agave. He enjoyed this and said he’s going to try to make it at home.


We ordered a few items to share

Fried Pickles: Hand-cut spears are pickled in house, crispy fried and served with remoulade. Scott thought these were great. I don’t like pickles so wasn’t a fan.


French Fries. We ordered these since I don’t like pickles and this way I had a side type dish to go with the chicken biscuit sandwiches. I always like French fries.


Thigh High Chicken Biscuits: Three biscuits topped with chef Art’s famous fried chicken thighs and B&B pickles. Drizzled with hot honey. These were very good. I pull the pickles out and give them to Scott if we forget to ask for them on the side. The size of the chicken in the biscuits seems smaller than they were last trip. They are still really good and filling (they don’t need to be bigger) but it was a noticeable difference.


We thoroughly enjoyed our meal at Homecoming

We skipped dessert at Homecoming since we wanted to get our favorite dessert later

 

[Noreen411]

Thursday 2/16/23 Continued
Before leaving Disney Springs we walked to Everglazed. We’ve never been here before and wanted to try the donuts.
We ended up getting 6 donuts to go. We didn’t freeze them but they were put in the cooler to come back to New Jersey with us. We ate them over the course of the next 6 days (we shared one each day).

I took the pictures of the donuts before they were cut the night we got back to the villa with them. The cut pictures are when we ate them over the course of the next 6 days or so.

The donuts were so soft and fresh, we enjoyed them and said we’ll need to stop at Everglazed earlier in our next Disney trip.

Strawberry Iced with sprinkles. This was the simplest one we ordered and ended up being my favorite. We ate this on the car ride home.



Peanut Butter Explosion. This was pretty good but you have to really like peanut butter or it can be a bit much.




Cookies and Cream. Also a very good donut.

 

[Noreen411]

Thursday 2/16/23 Continued
The rest of our donuts from Everglazed to follow

Nutella Boston Cream. It was good, I didn’t taste too much Nutella in it.




Black Raspberry Beret. Also good. Kind of like a jelly donut with a lot of extra stuff on top. The corn flake looking things were a bit soggy by the time we ate this, but I’m assuming they were crispy when the donut was fresh.



Dulce Le Leche. Another good donut.



We’re glad we finally made it to Everglazed and were able to try a selection of donuts. We shared each one. They were all very good. My favorite was the simple strawberry glazed one. We’re looking forward to trying some more varieties next trip. I’m also impressed by how long they stayed fresh. We didn’t freeze them, but they went in a cooler to make the ride back to New Jersey. They were put in the refrigerator. Even the last one we ate, it was still soft.

 

[Noreen411]

Thursday 2/16/23 Continued
Later we drove to the Polynesian and went to the Tambu Lounge


Scott had a Grand Marnier and I had water


We had our favorite Bread Pudding.




How could we not end our trip this way…with our favorite dessert at Disney. We will be thinking about/dreaming about this bread pudding until our next Disney trip.

 

[Noreen411]

Friday 2/17/23
We left about 6am to start the drive home.

We were making good time and debated driving straight through. We ended up deciding to stop for the night after all so we wouldn’t be totally exhausted.

We stopped in Virginia and were happy to find a hotel that had a full kitchen. We wanted to have a real freezer to keep the cookies frozen and a real refrigerator to keep the donuts cold.

We headed out for dinner and ended up stopping at a few places before we settled on one.

We started at a place called River’s Bend Grill; a local place but not really our vibe when we walked in so figured we’d keep looking

We stopped at Hooters. Scott has never been to one before. It’s a chain. I went to Hooters years ago and remember it being pretty good. Unfortunately, this one was not kept up very well. The floor and bar were sticky like drinks were spilled and they weren’t cleaned up. The bar stools we tried sitting on were broken. We didn’t stay.

We went to AppleBees. Another chain. We haven’t had AppleBees in a long time but figured we’d give it a try. We sat at the bar. It was clean and welcoming. People sitting near us were friendly as were the bartenders.

I had White Peach Sangria: Barefoot Moscato, Peach Schnapps and fruit juices
Scott had Bourbon


We shared our food

We ordered the Chicken Quesadilla: Grilled quesadilla loaded with chipotle lime chicken, pico de gallo and a blend of melted cheddar cheeses. Served with chipotle lime salsa and sour cream. This was good, we both enjoyed this.


We also had the Prime Rib Dipper with fries: sliced prime rib topped with grilled onions and melted American cheese. Served on a toasted cheddar roll with house-made herb mayo and French onion jus for dipping. We asked for no mayo. This was also very good.


This was a solid meal at Applebees. Sometimes simple comfort food is just what you want.

 

[Noreen411]

Saturday 2/18/23
We left about 6:25 to finish the drive home

Just before 10 we were at the Maryland Rest stop and decided to get breakfast sandwiches from Wendy‘s. My original thought was the other Maryland Rest Stop that had Earl of Sandwich but they didn’t have breakfast sandwiches and opened a little later.

We ordered a few things
Bacon egg cheese biscuit - the egg had a weird consistency so I wouldn’t eat it and Scott did
Sausage egg sandwich - Scott ate this
Chicken Croissant - asked for it plain (no sauce). This was OK so I ate this
One of the sandwiches we ordered as a combo so it came with potato buds.

At 10 am the places switched to lunch so Scott also ordered a hot dog from Nathans.

I didn’t take pictures of any of the breakfast food but it was basic fast food and pretty disappointing.

We were home by about 1:30

While we were driving home we talked about ideas for where we should go out to dinner but we ended up just ordering pizza later for dinner and staying home. I forgot to take a picture of the pizza.

 

[Noreen411]

Final Thoughts
This was a great trip. We really enjoy Disney.

We tried some new restaurants and still have some favorites.

I know for our next trip I’ll still log on and book a dinner reservations 60 days out for each night. I will try to remember not to stress if I can’t get everything I want since we can keep changing things and sometimes things pop up last minute. We also liked the flexibility of having a night without a reservation to play it by ear. We were surprised that we enjoyed some of the off site places we tried as much as we did.

If you have any questions please ask, I love talking about Disney

Noreen

 

[auntfrannie]

Thanks for the reviews! It was fun reading along with your dining adventures!

 

[Noreen411]

Thanks for the reviews! It was fun reading along with your dining adventures!

Thank you

 

[tigerlilly]

Thank you so much for your food reviews. I have loved following along.

My husband and I went last September (during Ian... so not a "normal" trip lol). I too love Tambu Lounge....so much so that we are planning a trip in October for a stay at the Poly.

You always seem to have great luck sitting at the bar. What time do you recommend going? Our last visit was crazy busy with only one overworked bartender (it was a Sunday afternoon) and no food was being served. My guess is they only serve food when Ohana is open?

Also you have inspired me to go to Shula's. I just have to figure out where to fit it in lol

 

[ThreeBoyMama]

Awesome reviews as always! Thank you for sharing

 

[2xcited2sleep]

Love your reviews! When's the next trip? You've convinced me that I need to visit Shula's and Jock Lindsey's ASAP - never been to either one! Those chicken thigh biscuits at Homecomin' are soooooo good. Love that you ended the trip at Tambu -- so perfect for you. You guys seem to have really good luck with finding seats there. It's always so busy when I visit.