onelilspark
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2008
- Messages
- 7,166
Hi friends. Long time no see.
I flew down to Florida over the long MLK weekend for a girls weekend with my Mom. We didn't do any of the parks, but decided to head to Downtown Disney on Monday for lunch before I flew home. My Dad also had the day off from work, so he came with us.
Sunday night I hopped on Disney's website to book a lunch for us. Now, I love Raglan Road, so that was my first go-to, until I saw Portobello in the list. I had heard that Portobello was tasty, but had slow service. We weren't in any hurry, so why not give it a try!
We had an ADR for 1:20pm and were walking into the restaurant by 1:15pm. We were told to stand over to the side for a few minutes while they got our table ready. We waited for about 5 minutes (when they say 1:20, they mean 1:20!) and then we were seated. Not a huge deal, but they only had 7 tables with people at them in the entire restaurant. I mean, I understand that restaurants will sometimes not seat people in sections because they don't have the restaurant at full staff, but seriously? 7 tables and you have to make people wait to be seated? At this point we shrugged our shoulders, since we knew going in that the service was slow.
Once seated it took a while for our waitress to come over, but when I just wanted water, she did bring me a larger glass for it, which was nice. And a good thing, since she never came back to refill it...
We were served some sourdough bread with roasted garlic (yum!) and olive oil. I think they need to change the kind of bread, but it was still good.
We decided to start with the calamari. It came out surprisingly fast.
Unfortunately, when we tried it, the calamari was luke warm at best and super chewy.
After giving it a closer look, it became pretty clear that they had tried to re-heat it and that it was over-cooked.
We decided to send the calamari back. It was almost inedible it was so chewy. At no point did we receive any apology for it.
After a longer wait, our entrees came out.
My Dad ordered one of their pizzas.
This was such a sad looking pizza. I mean, you expect something like that out of a counter service versus a sit-down. It wasn't hot (shocker) but he didn't really complain about it.
My Mom had the gnocchi which had a pork ragu on top.
The good news is that the gnocchi was hot. But the sauce (with the pork) was not. So they didn't saute the sauce and gnocchi together, they just tossed everything together. She liked the flavor, but was disappointed over all.
I had the spaghetti and meatballs. I had heard that they made good meatballs, so why not give that a try.
Mine wasn't exactly hot, but it was normal for a restaurant. The meatballs were very tasty, but the sauce was pretty sad. You can see at the top of the picture the oil gathering at the edges. It was super watery. It just made me wonder what canned product they were using.
Overall it was a really disappointing lunch. I wouldn't recommend it at all. Half way through I was really wishing we would have just gone back to Raglan Road
I flew down to Florida over the long MLK weekend for a girls weekend with my Mom. We didn't do any of the parks, but decided to head to Downtown Disney on Monday for lunch before I flew home. My Dad also had the day off from work, so he came with us.
Sunday night I hopped on Disney's website to book a lunch for us. Now, I love Raglan Road, so that was my first go-to, until I saw Portobello in the list. I had heard that Portobello was tasty, but had slow service. We weren't in any hurry, so why not give it a try!
We had an ADR for 1:20pm and were walking into the restaurant by 1:15pm. We were told to stand over to the side for a few minutes while they got our table ready. We waited for about 5 minutes (when they say 1:20, they mean 1:20!) and then we were seated. Not a huge deal, but they only had 7 tables with people at them in the entire restaurant. I mean, I understand that restaurants will sometimes not seat people in sections because they don't have the restaurant at full staff, but seriously? 7 tables and you have to make people wait to be seated? At this point we shrugged our shoulders, since we knew going in that the service was slow.
Once seated it took a while for our waitress to come over, but when I just wanted water, she did bring me a larger glass for it, which was nice. And a good thing, since she never came back to refill it...
We were served some sourdough bread with roasted garlic (yum!) and olive oil. I think they need to change the kind of bread, but it was still good.
We decided to start with the calamari. It came out surprisingly fast.
Unfortunately, when we tried it, the calamari was luke warm at best and super chewy.
After giving it a closer look, it became pretty clear that they had tried to re-heat it and that it was over-cooked.
We decided to send the calamari back. It was almost inedible it was so chewy. At no point did we receive any apology for it.
After a longer wait, our entrees came out.
My Dad ordered one of their pizzas.
This was such a sad looking pizza. I mean, you expect something like that out of a counter service versus a sit-down. It wasn't hot (shocker) but he didn't really complain about it.
My Mom had the gnocchi which had a pork ragu on top.
The good news is that the gnocchi was hot. But the sauce (with the pork) was not. So they didn't saute the sauce and gnocchi together, they just tossed everything together. She liked the flavor, but was disappointed over all.
I had the spaghetti and meatballs. I had heard that they made good meatballs, so why not give that a try.
Mine wasn't exactly hot, but it was normal for a restaurant. The meatballs were very tasty, but the sauce was pretty sad. You can see at the top of the picture the oil gathering at the edges. It was super watery. It just made me wonder what canned product they were using.
Overall it was a really disappointing lunch. I wouldn't recommend it at all. Half way through I was really wishing we would have just gone back to Raglan Road
