Monday, October 15th - A Little Bit of Food and Wine ... A Whole Lotta Fish and Booze
I'll spare you the details of our afternoon ... if you really want to read about how we ran into BriarRosie (Hi Lori!), fell alseep in our room and missed DisneyDuet and her hubby (please forgive us
), and then wandered over to Epcot to check out the Festival Welcome Center, look for our newest unwritten trip report:
Gastronomy Interrupted - We Blame Norway and So Should You.
Woohoo! I'm a guest star!
Anyway ... it had to be about 6PM by the time we left the villa and headed over to Epcot. I was eager to see the new welcome center for this year's Festival and I wanted to begin scoping out stuff to buy right away. Had I been more smart I would have actually purchased those things when I found them rather than waiting ... but I'm not always the sharpest tool in the shed. Learn from my hard-knock lesson: if you see a shirt you want in your size buy it... immediately. If you find a bottle of Sam Adams Utopias snatch it up and run gleefully around the welcome center screaming, "I GOT IT!!!" at the top of your lungs.
Would you believe I never made it over to the Welcome Center at ALL? And that I also had my own Buy It Right Away Syndrome, too. The aqua F&WF shirt. I saw it on the first day of my trip, but I didn't want to deal with getting it then. When I tried to find it in my size later, no dice.
And damn, girl! You had a bottle of UTOPIAS in your hands and you LET IT GO?? Are you freakin' NUTS?
Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever assume that it will still be waiting forlornly for you to come back and whip out your credit card on the morrow.
Gah, I feel like saying, "D'oh!" right about now.
We ended up buying a bottle of Fairy Tale Cuvee for my birthday on Wednesday and then ventured out into the World Showcase to "get the lay of the land." We were both pretty hungry and decided to stop in Mexico for a snack.
Chilaquiles
Quesadilla con Chorizo with some Dos Equis Beer
The quesadilla was a tasty, good-sized portion but it was comprised primarily of cheese. I'm taking it on faith that those little chewy portions I stumbled across now and then were actually chorizo and not something else that I'd be happier not knowing about. I think that this was a better offering in years past when it included chicken as well as chorizo.
Please note: we ordered the 6-ounce serving of Dos Equis but had some good beverage-karma working for us and were given a 12-ounce serving by mistake. I tried to give it back and the CM behind the counter just told me to keep it. Hey, don't tell me twice to keep the extra beer and I'm taking it on faith that no one hawked a throat rocket into this baby just before you offered it to us.
As for the chilaquiles ... I wasn't even sure what they were supposed to be. Jason took a bite and pronounced them, "Mmmmmmmmm." He then held out a "safe" forkful for me to try... safe meaning no strange colored sauce or shaving cream (because that's what the little dollop on the top looked like). It wasn't bad, but perhaps a bit spicier than I like my food to be. I checked the Festival cookbook and these chilaquiles were baked tortillas with chicken and cheese covered in a jalapeno pepper sauce and topped with sour cream (still looks like shaving cream to me).
I love the chilaquiles. The tomatillo sauce really makes the dish for me.
Even the shaving cream was tasty!
I didn't get the quesadilla for the same reason I wouldn't get the pizza in the Italy booth. It's too "normal" and everyday for me.
At this point, Jay and I decided that we would be daring for dinner and try some sushi. This came about because the folks at Epcot couldn't seem to figure out whether or not the restaurant remodel in Japan would be completed by the time the F&W Festival started. We tried, on numerous occasions, to book the sushi / sake pairings being offered as part of the Festival's special programming. After the 15th phone call and the 15th different answer I decided to wash my hands of this event.
Yes, I found out I could have booked it the day before, but I decided out of spite to wash my hands of it, and I had a sushi roll at Tokyo Dining, then.
Kimonos, located at the Swan, had received high marks from many DISers whose opinions can usually be relied upon. Jay and I decided that we would just go there and make up our own sushi / sake pairing while still spending less money than Epcot would have charged us.
We were also disappointed by the lack of a sake sampler / flight. It turns out there was no sake sampler, which I had been led to believe from the menu I printed out from Kimonos website over the summer.
Fine.
We just won't have any sake.
We really liked Kimono's atmosphere and decor and thought our waitress was very helpful and professional. She explained the difference between sashimi and nigiri, which I've totally forgotten, and also explained how we should go about ordering. She left a menu with us, and we simply marked off the items and number of servings we wanted.
I'm beginning to regret not going to Kimono's. I've always been meaning to try it, but somehow I never get there. I could have explained the difference between sashimi and nigiri pretty simply.
Sashimi = nekkid fish
Nigiri = nekkid fish on top of a pillowy bed of sushi rice. Sometimes it's not nekkid. A nori (seaweed) wrapper is needed on some types of nigiri.
Maki = nekkid fish, sushi rice, rolled up snug as a bug in a rug...nori wrapper. Aka a "sushi roll".
Why do I describe the fish as nekkid? I don't know!
So... what do you order when you're a sushi virgin and you have a temperamental digestive system?
That's a great question.
The answer: Let the husband choose because he's probably going to end up eating most of it anyway.
ROFL! You were a sushi virgin?
I would have suggested what I call "starter sushi". A California roll.
We actually chose five different items, thinking that it would give us a nice cross-section of sushi to sample. Some of our choices came with 5-6 pieces while others came with only two - either way it ended up being a lot of food...for Jay to eat.
Bagel Roll (salmon, cream cheese & cucumber)
Spider Roll (crisp soft shell crab)
Jalepeno Roll (spicy tuna & yellow tail)
Shrimp Roll (nigiri)
Tuna Roll (sashimi)
We took two pictures to better show the sushi from both sides. It's a lovely presentation ... absolutely gorgeous.
In the fore-front of this first shot you'll see the Shrimp roll on the bottom left-hand corner and the Tuna roll and Bagel roll from left to right across the bottom of the plate. The Spider roll is nestled in the middle of the plate with a few more pieces of the Bagel roll and the Jalepeno roll is the lined up along the back of the plate. The second picture is the plate flipped so that the Jalepeno roll is in the front.
Good gravy.
Damn, I regret not going to Kimono's.
I tried each one of these items and I can tell you right now that it's going to take some time for sushi to grow on me. I didn't like the seaweed and had real concerns about how it would impact my stomach / intestinal tract so I ended up eating around it. And some of the tuna was a little too strong for my taste (I guess I've been eating Starkist and Bumblebee for too many years). Jay really liked everything and would definitely go back for another meal. He was disappointed that Fugu (Japanese pufferfish) wasn't on the menu only because he wanted to yell, "Fugu me!" ala' Homer Simpson.
We did still have a lot of fun throughout the course of the evening by saying simultaneously, "Poison, poison, poison ... tasty fish!"
LOL. That's the quote I remember. "Poison, poison, tasty fish!" I think those who try fugu are nuts.
All joking aside for a moment, I would highly recommend Kimonos to anyone out there who has a love of sushi - the menu is extensive and the food is quite good (even I can acknowledge that it was good even if I wasn't crazy about it). We found the service to be top notch and really enjoyed trying something new and scary for dinner. The next time we're at WDW we may very well go back again and this time ... we might even order the squid platter.
Thanks for reading!
Next time. Definitely next time...
No Way Jose...mmm 
I haven't been DISing. It's just too painful. But now I guess I'll just have to suck it up. 
We are spoiled. There's absolutley no doubt about it. I'm going to look through the F&W Fest cookbook and start making stuff. Maybe that will help... 
I hope it gets better soon. Our plan for tonight is to send Brenna out to trick-or-treat, then have her come back and dump out the crappy candy so we can give that out, instead of the good candy I bought. Rinse. Repeat. 
It figures it took me 8 pages of the report and replies for me to make an appearance. Better late than never!
)
