It's like an African safari for your taste buds! Aug 2013 update 1/3 Tokyo Dining

[minniebeth]

DD and I bowled at Splitsville last January and had a blast! TRex won out to eat at though (ok, DD's only 11, so I get it...)
We did use the Freestyle Coke machine, which she loved!
We will be in WDW again this January and hope to bowl AND eat this time!
The chicken strips look good, we'll have to keep that in mind!
Sounds like you had fun!

 

[auntfrannie]

It's nice to see a Splitsville review; I might have to make time for it on my next trip. The problem I have is that there are so many options at DTD now and they all sound so good!!

 

[librarygeek]

DD and I bowled at Splitsville last January and had a blast! TRex won out to eat at though (ok, DD's only 11, so I get it...)
We did use the Freestyle Coke machine, which she loved!
We will be in WDW again this January and hope to bowl AND eat this time!
The chicken strips look good, we'll have to keep that in mind!
Sounds like you had fun!

I get it - we actually like T-REX a lot too! And the freestyle coke machines are so fun. I hope you get to try the food at Splitsville in January!

It's nice to see a Splitsville review; I might have to make time for it on my next trip. The problem I have is that there are so many options at DTD now and they all sound so good!!

I know what you mean! And there are going to be even more options at DTD as they do their expansion into Disney Springs.

 

[librarygeek]

Wild Africa Trek

I have to admit, there were a lot of things that I was looking forward to with the Wild Africa Trek, and the food was one of the highest ones on my list! A meal is included with the price, and with the timing of our tour (we started at 11:30, and ate around 1:00) it served as our lunch. We stopped at a little place right on the savanna, so we had a fantastic view of the animals while we ate! They were also very willing to take any pictures you might want after you finished eating.



They give you a bucket, which is basically filled with sample sized portions of a bunch of different foods. The presentation was super cute, too! There were two layers to the metal bucket. Here's the first one:



This had smoked meats, a fruit salad, and a chicken curry salad. The top level was definitely my favorite, and I loved everything here. The chicken curry salad was definitely the best. It had a great balance of savory and sweet, with pieces of grape and mango mixed in with the chicken and curry. I think the fruit was in some sort of mint sauce, which made it very refreshing. And in my opinion, you can't go wrong with smoked meats! The flower was edible was well. While it didn't have a lot of flavor, I actually really enjoyed the texture and crunch of it - I ended up eating DH's flower as well

The second layer of the tin had three more little samples:



This included shrimp, hummus, and salmon. I ended up giving DH the smoked salmon because it was mixed with cream cheese, and for whatever reason I cannot stand cream cheese. The hummus was pretty good, and was served with three small pita rounds. There was a lot of hummus in the cup for me and I didn't quite finish it. The shrimp were out of this world. I don't know what sort of spices they were flavored with, but they tasted so good!

For a beverage, we were served the same Jungle Juice that you find at Tusker House and Boma:



At the time, we suspected DH might have a shellfish allergy. (By the way, he went for his food challenge today and ate some shrimp - he didn't show any symptoms so he is cleared to eat shellfish again! Yay!). We hadn't known about the potential allergy when I made the reservation, but when we signed in that morning they asked about any allergies and I mentioned it. They were very good to replace the shrimp with something else. The chef managed to whip up an apple and endive salad to replace it:



He actually didn't care too much for it, and felt really bad because they went to extra effort for him. I liked it though, so I ate it and traded him my salmon so it all worked out!

DH said he liked most of the meal. He also really liked that we got a variety of things to try. I thought the food was pretty fabulous. He gave the lunch an 8.5 out of 10. I'd give it a 9 out of 10. I just wish we could get it elsewhere since it was so good!

The price of this meal was included in the price of the Wild Africa Trek Tour (which I believe is normally $189 per person, but they were running a special when we went so we paid $139 per person).

 

[RGirl]

Oh, I'm so jealous of your Trek! I think that sounds like such a fun thing to do. And the food is so beautifully presented and looks very tasty! Thanks for sharing!

 

[emmysmommy]

Just getting caught up with the last several reviews.

As for Cosmic Rays... Why does Disney continue to serve those ick whole wheat fall-apart buns? Not sure why those continue to be used as I'm sure there's more people that are not fans than are fans. I'm a fan of the rotisserie chicken there.

Great move subbing the honey mustard sauce with the chicken tenders at Splitsville. That reminds me of what I like to order at Chili's. Yum!

What an awesome meal for the tour. I love the buckets with the food - perfectly themed. I take it they had these waiting for you and sat out. That background looks familiar where you posed for your photo.

 

[librarygeek]

Oh, I'm so jealous of your Trek! I think that sounds like such a fun thing to do. And the food is so beautifully presented and looks very tasty! Thanks for sharing!

The Trek was fantastic! Such a good time, and good food to go with it

Just getting caught up with the last several reviews.

As for Cosmic Rays... Why does Disney continue to serve those ick whole wheat fall-apart buns? Not sure why those continue to be used as I'm sure there's more people that are not fans than are fans. I'm a fan of the rotisserie chicken there.

Great move subbing the honey mustard sauce with the chicken tenders at Splitsville. That reminds me of what I like to order at Chili's. Yum!

What an awesome meal for the tour. I love the buckets with the food - perfectly themed. I take it they had these waiting for you and sat out. That background looks familiar where you posed for your photo.

I am also so perplexed at why DIsney serves those awful buns! I've heard so many complaints, and I'm sure no one likes to have their bun fall apart while eating a sandwich. Surely it can't be that hard to get another type of bun?

Yes, they had the food buckets on the tour refrigerated... somewhere! And brought them out to us at these cute little tables in the area where we got to eat. Very fun!

 

[shalom]

Glad your hubby's showing no response to shellfish. Bummer that he couldn't have it while at WDW, but better safe than sorry, and it sounds like you guys coped pretty well.

I love the Mara! I have heard that their soups, and I suspect some of the other stuff, is the same recipe as Boma's. Good stuff, whether that's true or not!

After your pics and descriptions, I had to track down the recipes for the Lentil Sausage soup and the African Stew -- the Lentil soup was about what I expected, but the African Stew calls for as much coconut milk as broth. I can make it more healthy easily enough at home, but I don't want to think about how much saturated fat there must be in a serving of that at WDW. There's good reason their food tastes so great, and it's often related to the fat content.

Although most people do so much walking at WDW, I don't expect it does much harm. Also, "different from every day" combined with "a bit of foodie decadence" equals "vacation food," right?

I like the Trek bucket. I am not a fan of a lot of traditional picnic food, but most of that looks pretty good. Love to know what that edible flower is, although in my experience most edible flowers are not very flavorable. Marigolds are supposed to be spicy, though, so maybe I'm eating the wrong ones.

EDIT:
Oh! Is it an orchid? For some reason the original pic didn't say "orchid" to me, but after trying to think of a big purple edible flower, orchid seems likely. Pretty, whatever it is.

 

[librarygeek]

Jiko

This was the meal I was the most excited for. We haven't done a ton of signature dining experiences, but we've really loved the ones that we have done. We were celebrating our 2nd anniversary (a month early) so we decided to go all out for this meal - starting with a bottle of wine!



When we ordered it the server warned us that this was a really sweet wine. We love sweet wines so we knew then that it was definitely what we wanted to order! Sweet it was, and absolutely fantastic too. Hands down the best wine I've ever had. One of the things that's unique about Jiko is that they have many South African wines there, so it's a great opportunity to try something new. I'm hoping it's available in some of the stores around here because I really want to enjoy it again! We drank most of the bottle, but there was around 1 glass left when we finished dinner so our server poured it into a wine glass I could take with me to go (since we were staying at AKL it wasn't a problem to do that).

For an appetizer DH and I started the South African "Vetkoek" (three house-made Naan pastries filled with herb-braised rabbit, coconut-egg curry and Durban vegetable curry)



Yum! This was so good. We each had half of one of the patries. Myfavorite was the coconut-egg curry (not surprising, as I love coconut), followed by the vegetable curry, and then the rabbit. DH liked the rabbit best. It was also served with 3 sauces. I don't remember what they were, but I know I loved that middle one - it was some sort of sweet banana and maybe mango? chutney. I ended up just eating it with a spoon! I would give the appetizer a 9 out of 10. There were lots of apps that we were interested in trying, but if we went back I would be extremely tempted to order this again! DH gave it a 9 out of 10 as well and said that he really liked the variety and how it was an excellent appetizer for sharing, especially since we each liked a different one best.

We were also brought some bread and butter - I believe it was it was some sort of honey wheat bread with tandoori butter:


The butter was unusual, but good. I really liked the bread. We didn't have much because we didn't want to fill up on bread, but it was a nice start to the meal!

For his entree, DH got the Curry-rubbed Lamb Loin (cauliflower puree, eggplant-artichoke Zaalouk and olive-walnut tapenade):


He gave this a 10 out of 10. He enjoyed the lamb, but interestingly the real standout of the meal for him was the cauliflower puree. Quote from DH: "Once in a blue moon, there comes a meal that challenges everything I know about how delicious food can taste. That is what the cauliflower reduction did for me." Dramatics aside, he does still talk about that cauliflower all the time!

I had the West African "Jerked Scallops" (basmati rice, red quinoa, baby rainbow carrots, and coconut curry sauce):


They were nice, delicious scallops, though as you can see the portion size isn't huge so I was glad we got an appetizer as well. The best part about the dish was absolutely that sauce on the side. It made everything taste so good. Overall I'd give it an 8.5 out of 10.

For dessert, DH ordered the cheesecake (white chocolate, toasted coconut, mango sauce, and pineapple chile sorbet):


he gave it an 8 out of 10. He said it was very good, though compared to the rest of the meal it was probably the weakest. A yummy cheesecake, though it didn't blow him away.

For my dessert I had the Chocolate and Tea Safari (Vanilla rooibos-Tanzanian chocolate cake, free form "kit kat" and green tea ice cream ):


I love chocolate, and I love tea, so of course I had to get this! It was definitely a tasty dessert, and I enjoyed it, though I don't think it was particularly a stand out. At least, I gather that by the fact that I can't remember much about what I thought about it now that it's two months later, other than it was good! So I'd give it an 8.5 out of 10.

When DH ordered he had a hard time deciding between the cheesecake and the creme brulee. So as an anniversary treat they made us a mini version of the creme brulee! She said normally they give out a different mini dessert but she asked if they could make this one for us because DH had wanted to try it. I thought that was so sweet! It was good as well:



Overall Jiko was great. I'd give it a 9 out of 10 easily, and would definitely return! I think for me personally the other signature we've tried, Narcoossee's, beat it out a little. But I think DH preferred this one!

Jam Jar wine: $39.00
Vetkoek appetizer: $12.00
Lamb entree: $37.00
Scallops: $35.00
Cheesecake: $9.00
Chocolate tea sampler: $10.00

Total with tax and gratuity, after Tables in Wonderland: $146.55

Total saved with Tables in Wonderland: $28.40

 

[sjs314]

Your dinner at Jiko looked good. I had an ADR for there but Bob is very picky and we decided to pass on Jiko this trip.

 

[RGirl]

Your Jiko meal sounds and looks great! That is so funny about the cauliflower puree - not something you would guess in advance would have that kind of impact!

We did Jiko for the first time this trip as well.

 

[starousse]

So funny....Jiko is where I was introduced to Jam Jar too. I loved it so much that I bought 4 bottles of it in Downtown Disney and was thrilled to see it here back in NY in certain specialty liquor shops as well. Best bottle of wine and only $10.

 

[emmysmommy]

I'm a big Jiko fan so I loved seeing your review. I thought for certain you were ordering the cheesecake that had coconut in it since your appetizer and entrée both had coconut or coconut flavor. That congrats crème brulee was a very nice touch as was the wine to-go!

Speaking of wine.... I wonder if they sell that wine at The Mara. I saw they sold bottles of wine but I didn't see anything in particular that hit my fancy.

Glad you enjoyed your anniversary meal.

 

[librarygeek]

Your dinner at Jiko looked good. I had an ADR for there but Bob is very picky and we decided to pass on Jiko this trip.

Understandable - I don't think it's the best place for a picky eater, though one of my friends is very picky and absolutely loves the steak there!

Your Jiko meal sounds and looks great! That is so funny about the cauliflower puree - not something you would guess in advance would have that kind of impact!

We did Jiko for the first time this trip as well.

I know! I'm going to have to figure out what they did to that cauliflower and try to recreate it at home!

So funny....Jiko is where I was introduced to Jam Jar too. I loved it so much that I bought 4 bottles of it in Downtown Disney and was thrilled to see it here back in NY in certain specialty liquor shops as well. Best bottle of wine and only $10.

Oooh, that's good to hear! Hopefully some of the stores around here will have it too, I just have to go check it out!

I'm a big Jiko fan so I loved seeing your review. I thought for certain you were ordering the cheesecake that had coconut in it since your appetizer and entrée both had coconut or coconut flavor. That congrats crème brulee was a very nice touch as was the wine to-go!

Speaking of wine.... I wonder if they sell that wine at The Mara. I saw they sold bottles of wine but I didn't see anything in particular that hit my fancy.

Glad you enjoyed your anniversary meal.

Haha, I love coconut! I probably would've order the cheesecake except that I'm not actually too big a fan of cheesecake! The other flavors sounded great though

And by the way, I was catching up on episodes of the DIS Unplugged and heard that your TR was the 2nd most popular thread of the month! Congrats, that is awesome!!

 

[TigerKat]

Enjoyed your Jiko review! Going next week for the first time in two years, really looking forward to it!

 

[librarygeek]

Enjoyed your Jiko review! Going next week for the first time in two years, really looking forward to it!

Thank you! I hope you had a fantastic time!

 

[librarygeek]

Boma - Breakfast

When I went on my solo Disney trip in June, I had dinner at Boma and was definitely blown away by it. I'd heard good things about breakfast too, so we decided to try that on this trip. We're not usually big breakfast eaters, but this was the day of the wedding, and we would be having a late lunch, probably around 2:00. So some sort of breakfast seemed like a good idea.

It's a buffet, and to be honest I can't remember a ton about it. I know there was plenty of "normal" breakfast foods. Your typical scrambled eggs, bacon, pastries, and all that. There was also some specialty African foods, like spiced meats.

Here's my first plate:


The meat was pretty good, and probably the best part of the meal, but for me I can't eat a lot of meat at breakfast. I don't think I even finished everything here. The grilled tomato was a nice accompaniment - I know it's not a typically American thing but I like having tomatoes at breakfast.

For me the highlight of the meal was probably the delicious Jungle Juice that they serve here:


Yum! This stuff is so good, and a wonderful combination of flavors.

Here was DH's first plate:


And his favorite, croissants:


I ended up just getting a lot of fruit after my first plate, because there wasn't a lot that appealed to me. Luckily, the fruit was very good:


Overall I wasn't terribly impressed with Boma's breakfast. The majority of it was just your typical breakfast foods, with a few African things thrown on. And it's pretty pricey, too, for a breakfast buffet without characters or anything. We would've been better off just grabbing something at the Mara, I think, and saving a lot of money, but I'm glad we tried it. I would guess it you really like breakfast it would be good, because it is a very large buffet with a lot of stuff. It just didn't do it for me, so I'd give it a 6 out of 10. DH gave it a 6.5 out of 10 and described it as "unremarkable." I will definitely be back to Boma, but for dinner, not for breakfast.

Adult Breakfast Buffet - $22.99

Savings from Tables in Wonderland: $9.20

Total after Tables in Wonderland, but with gratuity: $47.46

Total saved with TiW on this trip so far: $37.60

 

[tybrilinja]

Oh my gosh, that grilled tomato on your plate looks amazing. So does the meat, but I'm a sucker for tomatoes. We haven't had breakfast there, but maybe our next trip.

 

[RGirl]

I'm sorry you didn't love Boma breakfast. Pretty sure I would have the same reaction. I LOVE dinner at Boma, but I'm not a huge breakfast person. For me if I'm going to pay a ton for a buffet breakfast (which I'm hardly going to touch), I want to see some characters!

 

[emmysmommy]

Your plate at Boma was much healthier than mine would have been. I piled on the Mickey waffles and the bread pudding! I do like the omelet station but I agree most of the choices are typical breakfast foods. I like Boma as a non-character alternative for a buffet.