Is it me or is sit down meal service getting very spotty with quality?

[Karen Willett]

I just returned from a 10 day stay in my favorite place with my husband and 2 adult children. Now we are fortunate enough to be able to go at least once every year to 2 years. This year we decided to do some of our old stand by's for sit down meals and honestly was VERY disappointed. I know that restaurants can have off nights, but when 3 of our 5 staple places were all not so great I begin to wonder. This is just my opinion, but here are my feelings of our meals.

1. Poliet Pig- all food was luke warm at best. brisket was VERY dry and fatty, Brussel sprouts were extremely large and not very crispy at all, pork loin had no flavor at all. After waiting in line for over 20 minutes, I was very disappointed
2. Homecoming- fried chicken and chicken and dumpling soup was as always very good and large amount; however, the mashed potatoes service with all 4 meals were watery and tasteless, catfish sandwich was dry and cold, meat loaf was awful! dry cold actually not eatable at all.
3. Biergarten- food was OK which i expect with a buffet. We went because it was my son's request, good beer and pretzel bread was as always, a hit. But most of the food was dry and cold.
4. Villa Napoli- Best food of the trip!! as always pizza was to die for and pasta flavorful
5. Yak N Yeti- stable good food and great service
6. Trattoria al Forno- biggest disappoint of all- we were seated 40 minutes after our arrival time. ( i understand that time is not guaranteed, but the girl who checked us in asked us to wait close by and seeing empty table in the restaurant i anticipated a quick sit down... I was wrong). once we were brought to our table we were place in a corner spot that felt like they had just placed a table in there. It took another 15 minutes for our server to arrive we actually were about to get up and leave. service was very spotty. once we got our main courses, we never saw our server again till we flagged him down for the check. Meals were not great except the pizza. chicken parm was over cooked and had been sitting under the heat lamp as the plate was extremely hot. pasta serving was very small and bland. This use to be a must do for us, but cant say that I will go back soon.

Will this stop me from returning to our happy place absolutely not, but i just wanted to warn others that things are for the moment not as great as the can be.

 

[thanxfornoticin]

It truly can be hit or miss sometimes. Funny, but if I had looked at your list of restaurants before looking at your experiences, we would have had VN and YnY in the 'good' column and the rest in the 'we do not need to do this place often' column. We've never done Polite Pig, but had mediocre/poor experiences at Homecoming, Biergarten, and Trattoria several years ago that has us not going back anytime soon. We actually did VN twice on our last trip, we enjoyed the food and service so much! I know the other 3 places are pretty popular, but Homecoming and Biergarten might never show up on our list again - there are too many other places we really like, or new places we'd prefer to try.

 

[gottalovepluto]

I can't remember where but recently I was reading someone else complaining about Polite Pig, so maybe there is a bigger issue with that one. Y&Y and VN are some of the most reliable, stable meals quality wise for me each trip. I have yet to try Trattoria but in general it gets decent reviews so Yikes. 40 mins in unacceptable for having an ADR and then bad service on top of it and bad food, can't say I'd return either.

 

[disneydreamer1980]

I agree with Biergarten. Our food was lukewarm to cold there too. I never understood the buzz around Homecomin, we are there a few times and each time was just mediocre.

 

[disneyseniors]

I can sympathize with you about Homecoming.
My husband and I ate there in the first year it was opened. It was The place to eat. We were so excited to get a reservation there. What we had was the chicken, which was fine. But, as you said, the mashed potatoes were watery and could be eaten with a spoon. They had no taste at all. The other food was ok but nothing to rave about. I was wondering why it got such good reviews, and we just figured we went on an "off" night. Your mashed potatoes sound just like the watery mess we got.

 

[Minnie1222]

I haven't been to Polite Pig or Homecomin'. From the remaining restaurants on your list, I would rank Trattoria, Yak Yeti and Napoli as average. Biergarten is only worth visiting when it's linked to a show/dining package.

We've had consistently reliable dishes at The Brown Derby, Tiffins, and Cake Bake.

 

[Mle8308]

Food quality has been declining for quite some time, probably since after covid. There are very few places I consider "must do's" now, sadly. I also think the free dining affects quality. Actually, I know it does, I have a friend who is in F&B at Disney and they have less generous budgets for food whenever free dining happens, money has to be cut somewhere. Lesser quality food to maintain profit.