Epicuriouser & Curiouser: A Dining Review ~ 10/19-10/28/07

[honeybee30]

Welcome to my first Disney dining review! I’ve read, enjoyed, and been inspired by so many of the wonderful dining reviews found on the DIS boards that I thought that I’d take a crack at it. Our last visit took place October 19th to October 28th, 2007. It was a great trip! October really is a wonderful time of year at WDW. Not only is it my birthday month but the fall decorations and events are so much fun. Actually, this year marked our third annual MNSSHP and Epcot F&W Festival, so they must be pretty good!

I do apologize that this review comes in 2 months after our return. It is entirely possible that we ate ourselves into oblivion and are just now regaining consciousness, but it is more likely that the return-to-the-real-world-following-a-trip-to-WDW blues made me procrastinate even more than my naturally procrastinatory disposition is inclined to do. Aside from this general Disney malaise, my DGF and I became first time aunties to two gorgeous identical twin nieces on 10/18 – yep, that's the day before we left for our trip! This has made for an exciting and busy couple of months as we continue to help my sister care for the babies. Then the holidays sprang up on me, and before you know it is two months later. Where does the time go? When I started planning a trip for January ’08 – gotta cash in on those APs while we still can, but is it really less than 3 weeks away!? – my interest in writing a dining review was rekindled. I am a fickle creature. Now on to the food….

But first, some introductions:

My DGF and I are aspiring foodies. The only thing holding us back is our grocery budget. We both love to cook, and we somehow manage to eat (& ) well beyond our means on a fairly regular basis. On vacation – forget about it! Vacation for us is all about long, leisurely meals and a great wine list. Luckily, we’ve discovered that along with pirates, princesses, and pixies these too can be found at the happiest place on earth – just not at character breakfasts, but more on that later. We’re both adventurous eaters and are up for almost anything food-wise.

My Girl

Me

No, we’re not eating yet…. Be patient!

This was to be our last big Disney trip for a while. Famous last words, right… Now January '08 will be our last trip for a while, at least until my nieces are big enough to ride Dumbo! My Magic 8 Ball predicts many Princess breakfasts in our future! I better start saving for BBB now! So on our October ’07 trip, we forwent the DDP – too many pesky counter services to mess with – and instead decided to exercise our DDE card. We stayed AKL ~ savannah view for 10 days. A real splurge for us value & moderate-types, i.e. the financially challenged. Yay for AP discounts! And we threw caution to the wind ADR-wise. Money shmoney! (Don’t you just love faking a blasé attitude about money?) A list of restaurants to be reviewed:

Counter Service
Pizzafari
Flame Tree Barbecue
Main Street Bakery
Columbia Harbor House
Cantina de San Angel

Table Service
Raglan Road (Lunch)
Boma (Breakfast & Dinner)
Donald’s Breakfastosaurus
Narcoossee’s
bluezoo
Hollywood Brown Derby (Lunch)
California Grill
Rose & Crown
Bistro de Paris
Jiko
Liberty Tree Tavern (Lunch)

Mousellaneous
AKL Room Service (Dinner)
Food & Wine Festival Booths (I know this review comes way too late to help the most recent batch of Food and Wine Festival goers, but it may prove useful to those ambitious planners looking towards the 2008 festivities!)

So without further ado…. Day 1, Part 1 ~ Raglan Road!

 

[Linus Van Pelt]

Where did Day 1 go?

 

[honeybee30]

Sorry - Day 1 will be posted shortly. I'm having some technical difficulties with the pictures. Photobucket is driving me nuts!

Edited to add: Looks like we're in business now!

 

[honeybee30]

ME dropped us off at AKL around 11am. After we checked in and dropped off our carry-ons at Bell Services, we headed to DTD for our first ADR at Raglan Road.

Maybe it’s the Irish, Scottish, English, Russian Jew in me, but this restaurant really speaks to me. I like the Guinness and all the wood paneling. This was actually our second visit. We had dinner here the last trip and enjoyed it enough to return for lunch. If you are concerned over reviews of noisy dinner crowds, then I suggest lunch. It was quiet, and we didn’t have to wait for a table.

To start our first day at WDW off right, we ordered Celtic Sangrias all around.

This is a fruity, fizzy concoction that tastes like vacation. Yum-Yum!

We then chased our Celtic Sangrias with a beer flight.

The Province Beer Flight includes Guinness, Harp, Murphy’s Red, and Smithwick’s beers respectively. Good beer on tap – what can be bad? I’m a big fan of dark beer, so the Guinness and Smithwick’s were my favorites.

For lunch, I had the lobster club. This was more like a lobster salad sandwich with avocado, egg, chives, and watercress, served with chips on the side.

Once I dismantled this very tall construction and removed some of the bread, it ended up being quite nice for a light lunch. It was like a mac daddy tuna fish sandwich, but with lobster, which pimped it out a bit. The chips at Raglan are really good with malt vinegar.

DGF had a dish with no name (at least not that I can find) that was comprised of a potato pancake topped with smoked salmon, crème fraiche, and micro-greens. It came with a side dish as well. She chose a Caesar salad.

DGF used the following adjectives to describe this meal: delightful (smoked salmon), awesome (crème fraiche), sub-par (Caesar salad), dry yet flavorful (potato pancake), and zingy (micro-greens). I also tasted this dish, and while I greatly enjoyed the Scottish smoked salmon, the potato pancake was not as good as my mom’s. This is a bias that should probably not affect you unless your mom also makes amazing latkes for Chrismukkah every year. Didn’t think my ¼ Jewish heritage would come in to play here, didja?

Now for the real reason that we returned to Raglan Road – the Bread and Butter Pudding!

This is When Harry Met Sally, orgasmic good. It is creamy and buttery, without being too sweet.

Overall, an excellent lunch. The service was fine, & we saved like $12 bucks by using our DDE card. That’s enough for another beer flight!

 

[honeybee30]

The computer gods have surely cursed me tonight! Day 1, Part 2 ~ Boma coming soon...

 

[Minniespal]

Excellent start ~ Looking forward to reading more.

 

[MickeyNicki]

Ok now I am so going to Ragland Road because I have to get that lobster club, omigod that looks to die for

 

[John's Mom]

Great review and pictures! Thanks for posting. Waiting for more....

 

[Linus Van Pelt]

Let me just say that the wait for the pics was well worth it. Can't wait for more!

 

[RSoxFan]

From one Irish Russian Jew to another, great review!!

 

[Leslieann1024]

From one partial-Jew to another (1/2 in my case . . .) -

Loving your trippie so far ! Looking forward to the rest of your reviews, especially Narcoossee's, TE's BlueZoo and Rose and Crown . . . . .

 

[Iggipolka]

Woohoo! Loving the reviews and the pictures. From one Jewish woman with a gf, and two adorable nieces, to another, it's so GREAT to see your review.

 

[kabuki]

Great reviews and pics! Thanks!

 

[Melisa1]

Great report w/pics!

 

[wezee]

count me in!!

 

[PiperGirlInWondrland]

Keep the reviews coming! Everything looked DELISH!

 

[mickeysgirl17]

loving the review and pics! Keep it coming!

 

[BarleyJack]

Can't wait to see more!

 

[honeybee30]

Our lunch at Raglan Road was followed by a slightly tipsy sojourn into the Downtown Disney Marketplace. I find that a buzz makes the World of Disney almost tolerable, and it makes spending money a lot funnier too, which wasn’t so funny when I got my credit card bill in November, BTW. Alcohol also makes looking at flamingos a lot more entertaining, as evidenced by the many blurry flamingo pictures that I allegedly took upon return to our resort (and a quick visit to Victoria Falls Lounge) that afternoon:

Not on the menu, as far as I know.

Shopping and flamingo-watching sure make a gal hungry. Luckily dinner was at one of our favorite restaurants at WDW: Boma!

A frightfully exciting picture of the Boma menu board!

Now, I just read a thread about how Boma was overrated, but I sooo disagree. I’m not a buffet fan. We never get our money's worth at these places, and communal serving dishes are kinda skeevy. But you gotta love a restaurant that dishes out food from something called a pod! Besides I find that the food quality is higher at Boma than any other buffet I’ve been too.

This particular evening, Boma was really crowded, so we ended up waiting for a table. It was cool though because we were seated in the same section at the same table and served by the same waitress as the first time we dined there in 2005. Uncanny! Seriously though, ask for Joanne the next time you have dinner at Boma. She’s a peach.

Happily seated and all caught up with Joanne, we both ordered Ginger Ale to drink and set off in search of Butternut Squash Soup, which, like the Bread and Butter Pudding at Raglan Road, is my true raison d’etre for dining at Boma.

Plate 1 - Appetizers: Said delicious soup, hummus (What’s the plural of hummus? Hummi?), naan bread, and pasta salad.

The butternut squash soup tastes like pumpkin pie, which is sort of a strange comparison because I don’t usually desire my soup to taste like dessert, but it works in this case. I’d be interested to try the strawberry soup at 1900 Park Fare for this reason. As far as the hummus goes, white bean is my favorite. Oh and the creamy, curry pasta salad rocks too!

Plate 2 – Main Course: Curry salmon with pineapple chutney, pork loin, prime rib with Boma mustard, Potatoes with Afritude, couscous, and roasted veggies.

Since I’ve dined here a lot, I go for my favorites, and these are them. I’d highly recommend the prime rib with mustard sauce to any of you omnivores out there. It is excellent, buffet be damned.

Plate 3 - Desserts: Zebra Domes, fruit tart, chocolate mouse, pineapple upside-down cheesecake.

Zebra Domes live in notoriety on the DIS. It’s a love or hate relationship for many people, but I just plain like ‘em. They have a tiramisu-thing going on, which is OK by me. My real favorite is the chocolate mouse, though. Yummy-scrummy. The pineapple upside-down cheesecake was a new one that I tried only because the very talkative man sitting next to us insisted. And you know what, he was right! So go ahead, ignore all those warnings your parents gave you about talking to strange men at buffets….

All in all, both DGF and I found it to be a satisfying meal. I like a place where you can find some out of the ordinary selections at a theme park resort. The chefs spice the dishes very well, and all of the flavors go together nicely. We had excellent service for dinner. Breakfast was a bit sketchier, as we shall discover on Day 3.

Next up Day 2, Part 1 ~ Donald’s Breakfastosaurus & Petrifries

 

[honeybee30]

Excellent start ~ Looking forward to reading more.

Thanks! Wow, judging by your signature you’ve got some exotic travels coming up in 2008. Spain, Norway, Dubai, Japan - how exciting! I love the name Florence, BTW. It’s my grandma’s, too!

Ok now I am so going to Ragland Road because I have to get that lobster club, omigod that looks to die for

It was really good, and I’m pretty sure they only have it at lunch. The lunch and dinner menus at Raglan Road vary a lot more than I expected. It’s a good place for lunch or dinner though. I’d like to go back one night to hear the Celtic band play.

Great review and pictures! Thanks for posting. Waiting for more....

Thank you! After our last trip, I’m an AKL fan, too! Watching the giraffes from our balcony just made our vacation.

Let me just say that the wait for the pics was well worth it. Can't wait for more!

Thanks for hanging in there with me.

From one Irish Russian Jew to another, great review!!

It makes for an interesting family reunion to say the least!

From one partial-Jew to another (1/2 in my case . . .) -

Loving your trippie so far ! Looking forward to the rest of your reviews, especially Narcoossee's, TE's BlueZoo and Rose and Crown . . . . .

So your family does lox and bagels on Christmas morning too then….

Woohoo! Loving the reviews and the pictures. From one Jewish woman with a gf, and two adorable nieces, to another, it's so GREAT to see your review.

Thank you. That is dear! It looks like you hail from my old stomping grounds too. I grew up in San Mateo!


A shout out to Kabuki, Melisa1, wezee, PiperGirlInWonderland, mickeysgirl17, & BarleyJack Thanks for your lovely comments!