disappointed in Palo

[natsmom125]

In the five years I have been on these boards, I have never heard anyone say that they had poor service in Palo.

In the probably 15 times we have been to Palo in 6 cruises, we've NEVER even come close to poor service.

Footnotegirl...you must have thought you were in Palo and were maybe actually not.

Phyllis

 

[crisi]

Seems more likely to me that they had poor service at Palo than they mistook a DCL dining room full of children for the adult only restaurant they had to make reservations for on the top deck - unless maybe they got Topsiders and Palo confused.....

Other people have posted that they've had not great service at Palo. And people have posted that the service was friendly and prompt, they expected more unobtrusive from "that sort" of restaurant. No place and no one is perfect - the servers at Palo are humans. Perhaps footnotegirl's server was on his last cruise before going home and really didn't care. Maybe many of the CMs were under the weather and they were understaffed. Maybe they had another very demanding table - which can throw off service. Maybe footnotegirl is incredibly picky. Maybe she was really at Topsiders.....

 

[tecdavidt]

I will never know how Palo is, since I can't eat gluten (wheat mainly), it is silly to go in there then have to request a special diet. It is Italian and that means pasta and Disney doesn't stock rice pasta. (or at least they have not on our last cruises) I do know it has smelled wonderful walking by in the evening. I do enjoy reading the posts. Some will like, some will dislike, some impressed others not.

Service, well, in 6 cruises on the Magic with one coming soon, service does vary a lot. We have had just awesome service to "you have got to be kidding me" service. If I had been at home on the last one it means we would have walked out of the restaurant because we still would of be waiting for our food.

Keep posting your opinions. It is nice to know what other people think about Palo. Kathy

 

[jel0511]

I will never know how Palo is, since I can't eat gluten (wheat mainly), it is silly to go in there then have to request a special diet. It is Italian and that means pasta and Disney doesn't stock rice pasta. (or at least they have not on our last cruises) I do know it has smelled wonderful walking by in the evening. I do enjoy reading the posts. Some will like, some will dislike, some impressed others not.

Service, well, in 6 cruises on the Magic with one coming soon, service does vary a lot. We have had just awesome service to "you have got to be kidding me" service. If I had been at home on the last one it means we would have walked out of the restaurant because we still would of be waiting for our food.

Keep posting your opinions. It is nice to know what other people think about Palo. Kathy

Kathy, you're severely wrong about Palo. There is about only one or two pasta dishes on the ENTIRE MENU, most of it is more contiental in style, and I think would work just FINE with your dietary restrictions. Also, since all the food is cooked to order, it is VERY easy for the Chef to custom make a dish for you. Maybe you should stop by and talk to the head server or the chef, I think you'll be pleasantly suprised and realize that Palo is definately an option for you.

 

[tecdavidt]

Well maybe we might try it, I can't have anything with modified food starch, wheat(flour), soysauce, oats, barley or malt. Pretty much I stick to grilled, baked, meat/fish with no sauce, simple rice or baked potato, tossed salad no croutons, oily dressing but sometimes I even need to know exactly what is in the dressing. Herbs are fine and I do use a lot of herbs to spice of things. The main dining rooms do a good job. As far as desserts, creme brulee is OK but must others are not. I even have to avoid ice cream because most have modified food starch. Now if it is made from cream, eggs, sugar and vanilla that is OK but the majority of store bought is not. Some of the gourmet brands are OK but I have to ask. Just reading what people have ate I know I could not have what they were raving about. When we get on the ship I will talk to our concierge and find out what exactly Palo offers and go over all of the selections to see.

We do have a lot of awesome Italian restaurants in Des Moines; we have a lot of Italian immigrants. I know not all Italian style food is pasta with red sauce but most Italian food has wheat(semolina) thrown in somewhere and I just can't have it. The restaurants we go to do try and accomodate so I do get my share, yum, of the Italian fare. I just assumed being on a cruise ship it would be the standard pasta or flour coated meat or sauce with flour as the thickening agent. Corn starch is OK for me and if they use that I will be fine. I hope they offer a lot of veggies in their dishes. That would be good.

I will let the gluten free cruisers know how it goes after we get back. Shoot, knowing me I'll post while we are board. Palo is the one place we have not tried in our 6 Disney cruises. Always smells good. So jelo511, I will check it out. Thanks. Kathy

 

[Limmer]

Our server told us that the ice cream was Haagen Daas. I don't know if that is one you can eat, I don't know the ingredients. I try to stay away from labels in case I accidentally see the fat grams or calories!

 

[natsmom125]

Kathy....I agree with Lori......you could find something in Palo that would suit you. I'm a steak and potato girl myself...no sauce, only butter on the potato,
dressing or no dressing on a salad. I don't eat fish or pasta(as a main dish).
I know they have chicken, lamb, fish of the day, filet, and I can't think of the others. For appetizers, I know there is portabella mushroom, calamari(my
favorite), soups, which you would have to check on to find out whats in it.
Desserts I'm not sure about...but DH had something close to creme brulee' although I'm not sure what they called it....the others you probably couldn't have because of the flour.

Your server will know what is in everything and I'm sure the Chef would even come out and talk to you.

As I said in a previous post.....I wish I was sitting in Palo right now, this very minute....with my calamari, pizza, salad, steak, souffle and the MOST WONDERFUL server guys and gals, bar none!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't miss Palo...on any cruise...

Phyllis

 

[ssnyder]

In the five years I have been on these boards, I have never heard anyone say that they had poor service in Palo.
Phyllis

We loved the food at Palo, but the experience was almost spoiled by our server. We wanted to have a nice intimate meal, but he was in our faces all the time wanting us to try something else. We knew what we wanted and we didn't want to overeat. We ordered what we wanted and loved it, but we couldn't get the server to stop pushing other things on us.

 

[disneyholic family]

on our first cruise we didn't bother with palos as i figured it wasn't worth missing dining with the kids....we live overseas and travel and dine out a great deal in the finest restaurants europe has to offer...so we didn't really feel as if we were missing anything....

on our second cruise, we all ate brunch at palos (interestingly, they didn't say a word about my 17 year old son eating with us)....the view was nice, the service excellent, and the food good, but not anything super special....it was a nice experience, but i doubt we'd bother again.....

 

[wide awake]

Hi Kathy,
My son is gfcf so I'm always wary of gluten. We haven't been to the dinner but I would think you could have the filet with the gorgonzola sauce...that is normally just cream and cheese...a nono for my DS...we did the brunch...lots of seafood, cheeses, omelets, a panfried Tilapia filet...you get the picture. I'd be wary of the Tea though...can't think of a thing you...or my DS...could have eaten.

 

[Footnotegirl]

Only the dinner service was bad. The brunch service (we were provided a 'tour guide' very necessary due to the size of the buffet!) was absolutely wonderful. Prompt and friendly without being cheezy, very classy.
Dinner was... jeeze. The waiter ignored any questions we had about desserts, refused to make recommendations, never bothered to refill the glasses of those of us who were having iced tea/lemonade/soft drinks, didn't bring butter with the bread service and when it was asked for took /20 minutes/ to bring it out. Our main course got to our table cold. Desserts came out one at a time with long intervals between so that we couldn't eat them all together. After we had finished dessert we waited over half an hour for our check. Any replies to questions were offered with a barely audible mutter, (we're all in our early to mid thirties and our hearing is fine) and his facial expressions ran the gamut from pained grimace to blank stare.
It was so completely different from any service we'd experienced with Disney and especially on the cruise ship that it threw us for a complete loop. We wondered for a bit if it was something we'd done, but no... formal clothes? check. Etiquette in full force? check. Alcohol content of blood? Nil. On time? to the second.
Just one of those things I guess. Certainly won't keep us from going back.

 

[annect]

on the Wonder, and I agree with most of the comments. I loved the chocolate soufflee, and my grilled filet with gorgonzola sauce was very good. Did you know that if you both order the chocolate souffle, they also give you the panna cotta dessert for the middle of the table? i have no idea why. It wasn't the absolute best restaurant i've eaten in, but it was like getting to go up to first class in a plane-- quite a bit better than coach!

I do think for atmosphere, it was one of the nicest places i've been - the champagne flutes were beautiful, the room was beautiful, and we were on a ship! And this for $10pp! My son was at the kids club and it was like a wonderful night out, except we didn't have to pay for a babysitter! It was fabulous....

 

[Phyllisi]

I went to Palo's once and was also not overly impressed. I live in the suburbs of Chicago so there are many nice, intimate restaurants we dine at as a couple. The food was okay, but there is a lot better out there. I would go again if it was not for the wait staff, they hover too much for my liking and take all the ambience out of a couple only dinner. Palo's is nice but it is not fine dining. It may not live up to the build up.

 

[nycgal]

i agree, the food was OK. The dessert was great, but i was disappointed with the food in general on disney. I expected much better.

 

[Rainbowsteph]

I have to agree that I was disappointed with most of the food on our recent 7 day Magic trip. I don't think I ever had a tossed salad for the whole week that is as good as the one I make at home (with baby spinach, croutons, carrots, etc...). I couldn't believe how terribly lacking the salad bars were in both Parrot Cay for lunch and Topsiders for the sit-down dinner. We also went to Palo's and while we had a nice time, it wasn't what I'd call exceptional. I did think we had an exceptional server (Annie Marie) and I did very much like the chocolate souffle!!
All in all, I don't take cruises because of the food....so my disappointment with the restaurants didn't take away from the wonderful time we had last week! Maybe we need to lower our expectations a bit and be pleasantly surprised when they the expectations are exceeded?!

 

[lbgraves]

I guess there is a benefit to living in a small town where the nicer places are TX Steakhouse & Applebees. LOL! I grew up in a larger area but now that I have kids & have to cook, well I find it all nicer when someone else does all the work for me.

 

[cruisenewbie2004]

We had Eleanore from Sweden as our server. Despite her incessant humming when she passed us and calling us Monsieur and Madame (which was a little over the top), we found the service to be quick and friendly. We even got extra dishes brought out to try since we all ordered the same things. This was nice and welcomed. The only complaints were my lobster, which I got another one because it had bits of shell in it and seemed to not have been properly de shelled. Also, we had some terrible 15 ft seasn and we were being knocked out of our chairs, which really diminished our appetites.

As for the souffle, I found it fine. Not fantastic, but I'm not a super sweet chocolate fan and this was one of those desserts. Plus the seas made my stomach a bit off.

Would I do it again? You know, probably not. I really found the dinners in the main dining rooms to be exceptionally good (as did the 10 people in our group).

 

[bfosbenner]

We had Gemma from England on our 11/20 Thansgiving Magic cruise for both dinner and brunch. See was great!! We requested her for brunch. They were back to back.
Dinner first and brunch the next day. Bad choice. We were so full from the night before that I could not really enjoy the brunch. Next time, I will schedule differently. Everything was great though.

 

[flexsmom]

We had both brunch and dinner there, both my parents who are "Radisson cruise snobs", if you know what I mean. They once went on a Radisson cruise with 60 passengers & 300 crew, so they were used to some pretty good service....and food. I didn't build up (or down) any of the restaurants or the food, and they did nothing but comment how much they enjoyed all of it, except for the lack of Splenda! We all did agree that Palo was the best - most likely because we were totally kid free. We had Jemma as our server for both meals and she was fabulous - not too in-your-face and not unattentive, either. She made great recommendations, and brought a few of her "favorite" pasta dishes to put in the middle of our dinner table for side dishes just to try if we wanted to (and both were great!) We live in DC and do quite a bit of "4 & 5 star eating out" for work, but I can honestly say I'd take a lot of the DCL food over some of the frou-frou 5-star stuff we get here. After the cruise I told my parents that DCL frequently gets chastised for mediocre-to-poor food and they were pretty surprised.

(The Splenda thing - seems to be a big issue for a certain demographic these days. Evidently my parents got it from room service, but our server couldn't locate any in the dining rooms! The server & asst server were great, and went above & beyond for kids food/drink not on the menu, but Splenda seemed to evade them! Oh, they didn't ask for Splenda with the chocolate souffles - they took that straight up with sugar!)

 

[Dreamer04]

My two cents.

I ate in Palo this past August, and it was my first time. I loved it. The Filet Mignon (I don't know a gorgonzola from a gargoyle) was melt -in-your -mouth wonderful. The chocolate souffle was the most delicious dessert I have ever had in my mouth! (And that's saying something, lemme tell ya!)

In all fairness, I am extremely easy to please, when it comes to food. Given the right enviorment, some KFC is just as satisfying. So, I can imagine someone who is very accustomed to excellent cuisine, might find Palo wanting.

Ursula