We both woke up on Friday feeling like doggy doo-doo of the squished to the bottom of your shoe and scraped off on the nearest curb variety. I know, appetizing image, right….
MGM (nope, still won’t call it Hollywood Studios) was the park of the day, but neither the wake-up call nor the promise of Beauty & the Beast, Live on Stage, was capable of rousing us. At some point, DGF raised her sad little head and mumbled something along the lines of “Can’t move…” I hacked and wheezed in response. So we pulled the curtains, put out the Do Not Disturb sign, turned on the Lifetime movies, and slept the whole day away at WDW. I agree, unthinkable, but true.
At some point during the day (I know it was still daytime ‘cause the sun was in the middle of the sky), we realized that we were hungry, so we got dressed and dragged our wretched corpses to the Pop Century food court. I’m sure we were a sight fit for the haunted mansion.
Neither of us was feeling very creative at this point, so we both ordered the best looking thing from the first food station we came to. Parmesan Crusted Chicken Penne Alfredo with a Breadstick:
My taste buds were not really working at this point, to paraphrase DGF, “Everything tasted like the snot in the back of my head,” so I honestly don’t know if the chicken was any good. All I remember is that my throat hurt, so I mainly stuck to the coke slushy.
Disclaimer: I borrowed the 2 pictures featured in this post from the
Categorized Food Pictures thread, an act that probably violates some kind of copyright law, but I’m not making any money off this, so it should be ok. Kudos to my fellow DISers, BTW, for being more meticulous than I and taking such great pics!
We had an ADR at Jiko for that evening, so after sleeping for another 4 hours or so, we decided to shower and venture out. At least the day wasn’t going to be a total wash, right! We drove over to AKL, (*sigh* I love that place!
), valet parked for free (A most excellent feature of the DDE!
), and since we still had a few minutes to kill, decided to mill around the gift shop (Must find bag of Kenyan coffee!
). Unfortunately, the gift shop only had a few bags of the eunuch version, i.e. decaf, left. I mean what’s the point?
We consulted with a most pleasant and helpful CM who confirmed the shortage and suggested we try the Mara to see if they had any over there. Okey-dokey. We walked down to the Mara. No go. A bummer, but no biggie.
At this point in the trip, the Disney gods took pity upon us and began throwing liberal amounts of pixie dust in our direction.
As we were walking back from the food court towards Jiko, we heard someone behind us calling, “Wait!” We looked back and there’s the lovely CM who had helped us earlier in the gift shop. She was chasing us down to bring us a bag of caffeine-infused Kenyan coffee! She had found a spare bag in the storeroom and insisted we take it for free! Is that not the sweetest thing?!
It considerably improved our outlook on what was a most crummy day!
And we still had a yummy dinner at Jiko to look forward to as well, so having thanked our fairy godmother profusely, we went inside and checked in at the podium. We were given a pager and directed towards the bar. I had heard many good things here on the DIS (Thanks for the tip
John’s Mom!) about the Victoria Falls Mist, a signature cocktail of the AKL that seems to have disappeared with the onset of standardized drink menus. *Bah Humbug* I mentioned it to the bartender, however, and he said, “Sure, I can make you one of those.” Groovy! I couldn’t wait to try it.
A Victoria Falls Mist is a cocktail made with a bunch of different fruit liqueurs (tangerine, melon, & banana), sweet & sour mix, orange juice and a splash of Sprite. Sounds good, eh. Well this snotty lady at the bar sure didn’t think so! She was watching him make our drinks with some interest and asked him what was in it, so he told her and she was all like, “That is
so not my kind of drink.”
And I was all like, “Well it’s a good thing you don’t have to drink it then.”
You know I’m not feeling well when I get snarky with a stranger in the bar.
This whole exchange seemed to make both DGF and the biatch’s husband uncomfortable, so I was glad when our pager went off, and we were taken to our table. The Victoria Falls Mist was tasty, though. A perfect fruity vacation drink!
I stopped drinking after things got catty at the bar and had Ginger Ale with dinner. I think DGF had wine. Honestly, I didn’t bring the camera with me, and I didn’t take any notes. I was probably running a fever, so it was a miracle I remembered to wear pants. Needless to say, the details are spotty…. I actually had to call DGF at work today to probe her for details.
For an appetizer, I ordered the Maize and Sweet Potato Tamales, which are described as herbed maize pudding and truffled sweet potato mash with shredded goat cheese in corn husk boats. As I was commenting on another dining review, I crave these suckers! The flavor is mild, but rich and delicious. DGF had the Lentil Pastilla, which are lentil filled phyllo pockets with a sweet and sour sauce. This is another one of our favorite appetizers at Jiko. Spicy and wonderful with the sauce! And how can you go wrong with phyllo? We shared the apps between the two of us, although it was a sacrifice to give up one of my little tamale boats.
We both ordered the same thing for our main course, the Chermoula Roasted, Tanglewood Chicken with red-skin mashed potatoes, preserved lemons, kalamata olives, roasted garlic, and harissa:
I’m always jealous when DGF orders this dish because the flavors are just so amazing, so I decided to get it this time, too. Jiko is one of those restaurants where everything on the menu sounds good. I have systematically been trying to sample each dish. So far I’ve had the filet, the short ribs, and now the chicken. All fantastic!
Unfortunately, our appetites weren’t up to snuff that night, so it wasn’t as enjoyable a meal as it could have been. We skipped dessert (unthinkable!), returned to our room, and you guessed it, went back to sleep
......Edited to add: I just remembered what happened with dessert! We ordered it to go! We got the Madagascar Vanilla Bean Mouse with cardemom-spiced pound cake, mascerated strawberries, and strawberry sauce, which we ate back in the room before taking a big ole swig of Nyquil and passing out again. If I recall, it was light and not overly sweet with a nice vanilla flavor. So there ya go!
Don’t worry though, the rest of the chapters won’t be quite so pathetic. The day of sleep did us some good and, with the help of Dayquil, we continued on with our vacation and had lots o’ fun!
WTH...what business is it of hers, it was your drink....ugh some people....
