(For the SPECTACLEFEST trip report,
click here.)
Day 1: Pepper Market and Teppanyaki
We arrived at CSR around 10:30, checked in and took our luggage and groceries to the holding room. The family was kinda hungry, but we'd had a big breakfast on the road and didn't want a full meal, so we went to Pepper Market, where DW and the kids used our first snack credits. (I drove all night and wasn't feeling so hot, so I just got a soft drink.)
We'd heard horror stories about how long the wait is to be seated, have your drink order taken and get your food at the various stations. We found that not to be case with us on this occasion. In fact, we found service to be prompt throughout our stay, even with another convention in attendance.
DS ordered tiramisu, DW ordered a fruit tart and DD ordered a blueberry danish. (We all got our refillable mugs at this time, too.) DS enjoyed his tiramisu very much--it was fresh and "spongy" (his word). DW loved her fruit tart--it had blueberries, blackberries, strawberries and small chunks of canteloupe on top of custard in a flaky small pie crust. Her only complaint was that she wished it had more custard on the bottom. DD aso enjoyed her danish, saying that it was very fresh. All of these items were available for snack credits. Later in the week, CSR would change its policy and the tiramisu and fruit tart would no longer be available on the
DDP.
Next we had a 5:45 AD at Teppanyaki.
We arrived around 5:40 and were seated about 10 minutes later. The hostess asked if our family (and the other family, from Massachusetts) were on the DDP, and she very graciously took the time to explain what was covered on the plan and what would be out of pocket.
Our cook was Tom:
Tom had a dry sense of humor and did all the usual tricks you see from a teppan cook.
^Onion volcano, Mickey-style
Perhaps most importantly, he knew the correct pronunciation of our hometown, Louisville--when I told him we were from "Loo-EE-vill," he looked at me knowingly and said, "That's not how it's pronounced, is it?" And then he pronounced it the way we locals do ("Loo-uh-vul," as if you're trying to swallow it as you say it
) So we liked Tom even before he started cooking!
They brought us a sample of spicy seaweed salad:
^(Sorry for the low image quality)
It was so tasty that 3 of us got that for our appetizer, while DW got the garden salad with the ginger dressing. The seaweed salad had an interesting, crunchy texture, with a soy/sesame dressing that was tasty without being too salty. DW's salad was fairly ordinary with the exception of the ginger dressing, which was spicy and sweet.
For the main course, DD got the ebi (shrimp):
DS got the Hatamoto (chicken and shrimp):
DW got the Fujiyama (sirloin steak and shrimp):
And yours truly got the Seto (shriimp and scallops):
There's not a large margin for error if you're cooking chicken and sirloin in this manner--cook it too long and it gets very dry and chewy. Tom cooked all of our meals to perfection. Done, but tender. The veggies and noodles didn't have much unique flavor to them, but they went well with the meat, and the dipping sauces (soy-based and mustard-based) provided good flavor without being overpowering.
All entrees were served with steamed rice, and none of us ate much of it because the entrees were so large. By the time we finished, we all decided that the only dessert we could handle would be ice cream, so I ordered chocolate:
while everybody else ordered the ginger:
^(Note the Mickey sprinkles--nice touch!)
It was very creamy, and both ice creams had a lot of flavor.
They also served hot green tea samples:
which were fine, but we were all so full that none of us felt like we could drink (or eat!) anything else.
Overall, we found the service to be excellent, our chef to be fun and the food to be comparable to our neighborhood teppan restaurant, with the extra twists of the seaweed salad and the ginger ice cream, which we'd never experienced. We left there happy and full:
Next: Day 2--A Big Honkin' Pecan Cinnamon Roll, Tusker House and the much-maligned Hollywood & Vine
:
, but so glad it was resurrected.
