This is one of three trip reports I’ll be doing!
Yikes! This is the best, about the food, then there will be the parks & resort regular old boring one (without the food), and one of Pal Mickey’s adventures
. I’ll have all the links posted on my signature when I get around to doing them. Someday…
Anyway, on to the best report – all about the FOOD! I am proud to announce that when I weighed in at Curves yesterday morning, I only gained
two pounds. Much better than the five I gained on our last trip! It must’ve been all of the walking and walking and walking we did. That’s because food actually has no calories while you’re on vacation, right?
Here are the players of this gastronomic delight:
- Me – “QuiltyMom”. I love food, especially that of the Chocolate food group. I’m really not that picky about what I eat, especially when I don’t have to cook it! So remember this when you read my reports. Food always tastes better when someone else cooks it, right?
- DH – “Handsome”. He loves food, too, whether he cooks it or not. He'll eat just about anything, except kidney pie, but that's a whole 'nother story.
- DS9 – “Buddy Boy”. His favorite foods are applesauce and mac ‘n’ cheese, with cheese pizza thrown in for good measure. If it's green, he doesn't like it, except if it's lime jello.
- DD7 – “Sweetie Girl”. She likes to try new things, but Chocolate is always on the top of her list. Can you tell she takes after her mommy?
Okay. It’s time to get down to business. I’ll be doing the meals in the order of where we ate, first the TS, then the CS, with all of the snacks thrown in at the end. Maybe!
After we arrived at WDW and did all the settling in stuff with some swim time at the resort – to quote Sweetie Girl, “Blah, blah , blah,” – we decided to make our way over to our first dining destination, a 5:30 reservation at …
Chef Mickey’s
We hopped on the Magic Kingdom bus from our resort, Port Orlean's Riverside, and we chose to walk over to the Contemporary after disembarking. It was a beautiful day outside and it was the perfect thing to do. We had never been inside of the Contemporary Resort before, so we wanted to get the full experience.
Then it was up to the third floor, and this is what greeted us when we arrived:
They couldn’t find our name on the reservation list, so it was a good thing I had my ADR# handy. We were officially checked in just before 5:30. Then we made the trip to the big plate for a photo. We didn’t purchase it, but they did let me get a photo of Mick, who got all dressed up for the occasion. He was excited to see his hero!:
Our little coaster buzzer went off just as the photo shoot was finished, and this is what we passed on our way over to the desk:
Humm… Note to self: Gotta save room for desserts. I was glad to have snapped these shots before we ate because the dessert area was a disaster zone the rest of the evening (the top plate had just recently been refilled):
I'm sorry, but who put bananas in the dessert area? Who are they kidding? They're not dessert unless they are covered in chocolate, smothered in nuts and frozen!
Life is short. Eat dessert first!
We were ushered to our table, which ended up being right next to the kitchen door. We asked to be moved, and were eventually seated in a nice little room away from the main floor and very near the food.
Our waitress was wonderful. She stopped by to let us know the in’s and out’s of dining at Chef Mickey’s, and she let us know that she would be around when the characters showed up to get family photos with them, and she was.
So, we were off to get our food. Here's some of the meat/hot foods:
I didn’t take many photos of the food because in all honesty, it wasn’t that good, so I just took photos of what I ate. You can see more of the food in our family photo, but it was the basics.
Here’s my first plate – the salads. There was plain peel & eat shrimp with cocktail sauce, an oriental shrimp (we liked it, but Sweetie Girl wouldn’t have any of it!), a tossed salad and another salad. (Sorry that I can’t remember any of the names. Silly ol’ me thought I could remember everything!) And a glass of milk for me because I really don’t like soda. Too much high fructose corn syrup. But the milk was whole milk, and that was a treat for me! Woo-hoo -- you could taste that whole milk goodness, not quite as good as milk straight from a dairy bulk tank. But I digress ... again.
My second plate – the main dishes. The Salmon with a fantastic wasabi sauce was dry and fishy tasting, but the sauce was out of this world. The roast beef was roast beef, nothing special but basic. And oriental stir-fried veggies. I got the Mickey-shaped cheese ravioli for the kids to eat, for it wasn’t on the kid’s food area and they hadn’t seen it earlier. They gobbled it up nice and fast.
Here we are eating:
The kids had the basics – Mickey-shaped mac ‘n’ cheese (which thrilled Buddy Boy),cornbread, chicken tenders, jello (I think that's what I see on the plate!), with milk to drink.
In the meantime, the characters came around. Here’s a photo of Mickey with Mick – he was so excited about seeing him dressed as Chef Mickey that he jumped around a lot and gave us many hugs and kisses. I’ll have to remember to send him a photo.
Minnie was thrilled to see him, too:
But Goofy wasn’t so sure as to what to do with him:
Donald did, though. He started to beat him up!
And, of course, a photo of the obligatory napkin twirling, which Buddy Boy thoroughly enjoyed (any excuse to mess around at the table is just fine with him!):
I made sure to save room for some of the desserts. Here’s what I had: a Mickey dome, a chocolate rice krispie treat, chocolate soft serve with toppings & a mini lemon tart. Once again tasty but basic, nothing to write home about but good enough to get your fill, and then some. By this time I was full to my ears and couldn’t have any more goodies.
Sweetie Girl brought back this combo. She decided later that she didn’t like the chocolate dome on the cookie. Surprising, but true.
Overall, Handsome and I were not overly impressed with the food, but it was edible and we ate our fill without complaint. There was nothing here, even in the desserts, that was a stand-out for us, but we knew going into this meal that we were there for the characters. And of the two character meals we did on this trip, this was tops on the interaction front. Each character hung around each table for a long while just having fun. That was the best part. Sweetie Girl told us that this was her favorite meal of the week, but it was all because of the characters. She could’ve cared less about the food!
So, we left Chef Mickey's for some time at the MK. Of course, I had to look for the five-legged goat on the Mary Blair mosaic. You can see it from the monorail platform:
And one final glance at Chef Mickey's before we boarded the monorail:
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Next up: Boma!
Table Service Restaurants:
Counter Service Restaurants:
the Snacks:
Looking forward to the rest of your reviews!
) But I am thinking if I just order something like that and then have them miraculously show up in their suitcases, they would have to wear them, right? Or am I just kidding myself? 
