We drove up to the Contemporary and were waved to a parking space after showing ID. Parked up and made our way up to the check in area for our ADRs. Quite a long line to check in, but even though it was obviously busy we still asked for a window table, as that, and the food, was the reason for being here.
We were told it would be quite a long wait, and so instead of going up in the lift to the bar, we decided to have a wander around and found some soft seating within pager range. DH set off to the shop to use up our 9 remaining snack credits (we had moved to a hotel offsite that day) which were due to expire at midnight, and I looked after the girls. Now, I told him to get some breakfast items and soft drinks and he came back in a right state with 9 bottles of drink only:erm:. It turned out that he had lost his KTTW card somewhere between showing it to the guard at the Contemporary and getting to the shop
mg:.
We checked where we were and I said to go back to the car and check thoroughly, and that if the pager went off we'd meet him upstairs.
10 mins later he returned with no KTTW card
Told him to go down to reception and put a block on card (we still had mine with all dining credits left). Reception said NO! couldn't place a block because it was our checkout day and then they wouldn't get paid for incidentals?!
Pager went off and by the time we were shown to our fab table, DH was at the point of meltdown
mg: We had Benjamin as our server and he was excellent!
Some general comments first:
the bar area and restaurant were incredibly noisy! it had a really different feel to Narcoossees...much more bustly and loud.
this was the longest wait beyond our ADR time of the entire trip!
the bar drinks here are different to other WDW restaurants. I chose a mai tai:
And then the food:
we both had the sonoma goats cheese ravioli with sundried tomatoes, pesto and ****ake mushroom to start. This was a really good, flavourful vegetarian dish, and we were both happy with our choice!
We then had pan roasted Florida black grouper fillet with stir fry vegetables and sticky rice in a ginger and soy hijiki broth. This was a really nice balanced dish, again full of flavour, and we both thoroughly enjoyed it:tounge:
For dessert, DH had the celebration dessert which was a cobbler a la mode, served in a skillet, very much like at Zizzi's in the UK:
fall apple cobbler, calvados ice cream, walnut oatmeal streusel, apple caramel drizzle $11
I had the trio of temptation, which was small pots of chocolate cappucino, vanilla creme and mango creme. I only had a spoonful of each as they weren't that inspiring taste wise:
trio of temptation, chocolate cappucino, vanilla and mango pots de creme (sugar free) $11
DD1 had salmon and basmati rice and green beans, whilst DD2 had the wholewheat pizza, which was wood fired so significantly better than Disney's usual pizza offering. Both girls ate every last scrap.
I had a cappucino as my DDP beverage.
The view of Wishes with the lights dimmed and the music piped in was just sublime, as was the outside viewing area.
To sum up, we really enjoyed our meal at California grill...well worth 2TS in our opinion!
BTW, to finish the lost KTTW saga, on the way out we checked again at reception to see if the card had been handed in. It hadn't. They ran a check for us and said the card had not been used that evening. DH's ticket was put onto a separate blue card and we made our way back to the car.
Within a nano second, guess what, I found the card.
It was down the side of DH's seat!
Now I understand it's down to DH's "blind eyes syndrome"...you know, where the laundry basket is at the bottom of the stairs and it's not taken up because "I didn't see it:confused2".
I have come to the conclusion that a man only sees what he wants to see!
