VDay Trip Dining Report highlights: Tea, Brunch with a Twist, V&A's UPDATE 5/13 Finished V&A's

The brunch sounds amazing!!! Again your reviews are so well thought out and the pictures you take are great!!

On the Joffrey's coffee stop... this is actually on my list of "to do" while in DHS since I am sure most of our party will do RNR coaster and some will not...thus the coffee stop (I believe I read it is near TOT..is that true?). Are the donuts good? And is there coffee with flavors not of the whiskey variety but of the imbibing variety? lol

We have not been to WDW in 12 years and Tusker House was our go to counter service when we went in 2005 and 1999... or back in the dark ages lol.

Can't wait to read more!!
 
The brunch sounds amazing!!! Again your reviews are so well thought out and the pictures you take are great!!

On the Joffrey's coffee stop... this is actually on my list of "to do" while in DHS since I am sure most of our party will do RNR coaster and some will not...thus the coffee stop (I believe I read it is near TOT..is that true?). Are the donuts good? And is there coffee with flavors not of the whiskey variety but of the imbibing variety? lol

We have not been to WDW in 12 years and Tusker House was our go to counter service when we went in 2005 and 1999... or back in the dark ages lol.

Can't wait to read more!!
Thank you! Joffrey's is actually in Pixar Place across from TSMM. I believe that there is a TOT Coffee cart (that's what it's called I think) by TOT. I liked the donuts. They seem pretty standard just on a slightly super sized scale. They do have other flavors for coffees, not just the hardcore whiskey shot.
 
Thanks for the info..that may actually work better for us since I am thinking now of Rope dropping TSMM coffee/Movie Ride and then sending those that want to RnR with a fast pass (if I can score one for the time we want)... I am planning this trip around food I swear!
 


I actually got a tear in my eye with those brunch pictures. How gorgeous!
Aw, thanks!

Thanks for the info..that may actually work better for us since I am thinking now of Rope dropping TSMM coffee/Movie Ride and then sending those that want to RnR with a fast pass (if I can score one for the time we want)... I am planning this trip around food I swear!
You're welcome! We always planned our trips around food before the kids. Now we actually have to work in some more kid centered things. But our kids are starting to request certain food things so we are getting back to focusing heavily on food. :cool2:

That brunch looked amazing! A lot of Champagne! Glad you were able to have some "adult" time.
It really was amazing. Definitely some much needed adult time. :goodvibes
 
Gahhhh, I HATE being late, I would have been freaking out too! That's awesome that you still got to try the apps and wow...that brunch looked incredible! Anything with that much bubbly involved is right up my alley. Great review and great pics as well! :)
 


Gahhhh, I HATE being late, I would have been freaking out too! That's awesome that you still got to try the apps and wow...that brunch looked incredible! Anything with that much bubbly involved is right up my alley. Great review and great pics as well! :)
Thanks! The bubbly was very good and a big part of why I wanted to try the brunch. :thumbsup2
 
Dinner:

We enjoyed a great afternoon at the pool and ordered dinner for the kids to take back to the room from the Paddock Grill again. They had a hamburger meal and a turkey sandwich meal. We failed to get a picture. Probably due to the fact that I actually got to enjoy some alone time in the hot tub while my mom and DH took the kids back to the room to eat. It was getting dark and a bit chilly. That was some amazing alone time for me! Just 5 minutes, but still. Nice!

When I got back to the room DH and I left the other three and walked over to the Artist’s Palette to pick up something for the adults to eat. Naturally we each got a Mickey ice cream sandwich and ate it while waiting to pick up our food order. That way the kids don’t know that we had dessert. Shh! Parent perks!

APicecreamsand.JPG
We dove right into the sandwiches before the picture. That's why you see mine on the top mostly eaten and DH's on the bottom with just an ear gone. I let him handle the picture. My ice cream was too important. ;)

GM asked for the Saratoga Salad because she enjoyed mine so much. We ordered it without chicken but they put chicken on it. Free chicken I guess. My mom didn’t complain. I failed to get a picture of the salad but just picture the same salad from earlier only in a to go box and with bites of chicken on it.

DH ordered a buffalo chicken Panini and I ordered tomato soup. Our brunch was so filling I didn’t really want that much to eat for dinner. We also enjoyed a bottle of hard rootbeer that we purchased the other day along with the grapefruit beer.

APbufchicken.JPG
Buffalo chicken sandwich and chips in a box.

I don’t know if the buffalo chicken lived up to the buffalo ‘hot’ standard. If you think you like buffalo style, but you’re afraid of heat, this is on the mild side of the spicy scale. As I recall, it was a buffalo chicken salad sandwich. As I’d mentioned in the previous episode “Let me ramble about the Tea at the Grand Floridian,” I love adding random crazy things to chicken salad. This was a dream sandwich for that. The spicy buffalo went well with the creaminess of the chicken salad, and there was some nice slaw-like component in there. Placing it on toasted grain-bread was a good choice to hold up to the saucy goodness. I would do this again. Just to be clear though, although it’s not “unholy hellfire spicy” hot, it’s got a little heat to it. It’s just a pleasant amount of heat for people who like heat. If you have an aversion to spicy foods, don’t expect this to be the sandwich that tastes like buffalo sauce without being hot.

We took the food back to the room and turned on the Oklahoma City Thunder vs Golden State Warriors game on tv. The kids fell asleep pretty quickly and so did GM for that matter. A lovely quiet evening of eating, basketball (even though Thunder lost), and packing because we were moving to the Polynesian hotel the next day.

Oh, the food! Right. My tomato soup was just a small bowl of tomato soup that was pretty good. It really fit the bill for a little something that wasn’t too filling but had enough body to it. I don’t think I even tried DH’s sandwich, which is crazy because we always try each other’s food. I probably took a few of his awesome chips though.

APsoup.JPG
The tomato soup. Apologies on the picture. I forgot to take one before I started eating. Oops.

The chips were awesome, as DW says. She didn’t have any of my sandwich because I didn’t let her have any. She’s not so much into spicy foods, and it was a little spicier than she would have liked. I think I told her that and she said “that’s cool, I’m not that hungry.”
 
Epcot Festival of the Arts!

Painter’s Palate:

I think we all had some granola bars for breakfast, I can’t remember. If not, we had the best breakfast ever. The kids shared Figment’s white chocolate puzzle painting and the adults shared a Neapolitan beer flight. Breakfast of champions.

The kids had a lot of fun with the puzzle. They did surprisingly well at sharing. The puzzle comes in three pieces, one piece is half of the puzzle and the other two pieces combine to make the other half, naturally. So it was very easy for the kids to share equally. Whew! The puzzle comes on a cardboard cutout in the shape of a painter’s palette. There were three cups of icing: red, blue, and yellow. Another cup had blue M&Ms (or so I’m told by DD5, I didn’t get to try one) and rainbow sprinkles. They were able to paint the puzzle with a paintbrush that was also provided. It was pretty neat. The only difficult part was finding a spot to do the painting. We ordered these treats from the Odyssey and had to take them outside to find a bench and GM balanced the plate on her lap for the kids. The tables provided were the standard tall tables, perfect for adults, but not so good for kids.

FAfigpzluntouched.JPG
Figment puzzle untouched

FAfigpuztable.JPG
GM's lap table worked out well

FAfigpuzaction.JPG
Puzzle in action

FAfigpuzfinished.JPG
After the kids finished with it. Figment looks great, right?! :p

The Neapolitan beer flight was great. There was a vanilla beer, a strawberry beer, and a chocolate beer. The three adults tried each of them and then we decided on our favorites. Everyone had a different favorite so it worked out perfectly. We each finished the one we liked best. I believe DH had the chocolate because he enjoys darker beers. I’m pretty sure I had the strawberry because it had a slightly fruity note. GM had the vanilla beer. Hopefully the beer drinker in the family will have more insight into the beers for you when he gives his side of the review. All I can say was that there was a slight difference between them and if I thought about it I could make each beer seem like it tasted like its appropriate flavor. At this point in time I don’t remember how strong the Neapolitan flavors were.

FAneapolbeer.JPG
Chocolate, Strawberry, Vanilla

The beers were Young’s Double Chocolate Stout (a very good british stout), 3 Daughters Queens Court Strawberry Blonde Nitro (strawberry influence on a ‘real beer’, from St. Petersburg, Florida), and a Breckenridge Nitro Vanilla Porter (very good Colorado porter). The selections were very good representations of their style.

For those of you who don’t drink beer ever but want to jump in with both feet, there is a very important thing you must know: none of these drinks is representational of what a corresponding ice cream flavor would be. For example, double chocolate is nothing like ‘death by chocolate’ or ‘chocolate chocolate chip’ or anything that will resemble sweet to a human being. There is chocolate used in there, and if you are into beer you will notice a very heavy cocoa presence. Same with the strawberry, it doesn’t taste like strawberry ice cream. Keeping that in mind:

The Young’s double chocolate stout is a fairly widely available beer, and can probably be found at your local booze retailer. It is a very good beer, and uses heavy chocolate (cocoa) flavor, with the caramel roast flavor in there. It has the textural creaminess and a nice chocolate finish to it.

The strawberry blonde has a nice berry flavor built over the top of a light body beer. Not a lot of crazy grain flavor to this beer, because that’s not the kind of beer it is. If you are imagining something like a Smirnoff Ice or Mike’s Hard or any of the other fruity ‘malt beverage’ drinks that are super sweet and fizzy, this is for sure not that. Again, the strawberry influence to the beer mostly shows up in the finish of the drink. The drink also probably starts out with a little more acidity than it otherwise would if it were blonde without strawberry. And the strawberry smell was there.

The Breckinridge vanilla porter is a nice example of a porter, with a good vanilla aroma and vanilla finish. I think porters are very smooth in general, and the vanilla was very compatible with the smoothness. I believe that this beer is also available at the local liquor store.

I don’t have a problem with Disney using ‘available beers’ over ‘local’ or ‘super rare’ beers, although I know some people are possibly a bit put out about them. I figure if I discover Breckinridge at Disney, I can remember EPCOT every time I buy more at the local alcohol supplier. While the ‘available’ beers are fairly widely available, they are not Budweiser, Natural Light, or even Red Bridge (the Budweiser beer that looks like it might be not from a major brewer but is). These are legitimate good beers.

For those of you who don’t know what a Nitro beer is, that’s a common term for beers that are pumped with Nitrogen. Fun fact: brewing alcohol doesn’t necessarily give it the carbonation that you would necessarily expect when you drink beer. Once the beer is brewed, it’s pretty much a flat beer. Carbonation happens when either a: sugar is added during bottling, starting another round of fermentation that creates and captures carbonation; b: carbonation is pumped in with co2 (pretty common with kegs); or c: nitrogen is pumped in (also common with kegs, more recently I’ve noticed they’ve started making nitro coffee too with the same principal). So that’s what that is. I’m pretty sure the Nitro pumping is what made the head on top of the two beers that used Nitrogen. Also, I guess I should add here for all of you home brewers out there who know more than I do about what beers are like and the brewing process: I’m really paraphrasing a bunch of stuff here. And I acknowledge that I may not be EXACTLY correct on my descriptions.


E=AT^2:

DH likes Reubens and we had seen a picture of the Reuben featured and decided it was a must try. This was probably the coolest presentation of all of the foods. I loved the ring of bread or puff pastry or whatever magic it was. I tried a bite that included everything just to try it, but left most of it for DH and GM. I thought it was pretty good, but Reubens aren’t my thing so I didn’t want to take away from the others.

FAreuben.JPG
The Reuben

A long time ago (back in college *gasp*) I decided that one of the best ways to judge an eating place was by trying their Reuben out. As a result, I have had quite a few in my day. I can fairly and definitively state that I’ve never had one like this. I was a big fan. The corned beef was a good tasty meat that was chopped up super fine, which is nice and handy when there are so many things that you can try it with. The big standout to me was the red cabbage Sauerkraut. It was a really good pickly flavor, and the cabbage kept its crunch very well. I would never order this if I wanted a ‘real sandwich’ but I really loved the concept and execution as a tasty take on a reuben. And again, I got to play mix/match with my food components. I would get this every Disney trip if it were available. Oh, another bonus for the prep method: the super small bites make it easier to chase after your kids with saying, “try this out, it’s delicious!!!” And if they don’t like it, you only lost a small bite.


El Arista Hambriento (The Hungry Artist):

Choriqueso Taco served with Chihuahua cheese, red and green peppers over a corn tortilla and garnished with poblano peppers and micro cilantro. These were delicious! I didn’t want to share. You’ll notice in the picture that the micro cilantro was left off. I’m not sure if that was by accident or if DH asked for no cilantro. Either way, I was happy it wasn’t there. I’m one of those unfortunate ‘special’ people that don’t like the taste of cilantro. It took me a while to figure out what that pungent flavor that appeared only in certain bites of my favorite dish at a local Mexican restaurant was when I was 12. It definitely leaves me with a blech face when I bite into it. I wish I liked it; it would make life much better. Yay, no cilantro! There was a bit of spiciness too it but not that much. I could have eaten ten more of these little guys, but instead had to move on with life.

FAquesotaco.JPG
Choriqueso

So, I didn’t realize until I was ordering these beauties what exactly I was ordering. Actually, it may have been when the people in front of me said “I want a choriqueso, without the chorizo.” I was all, “Ohhhhhhhhhh!!! Choriqueso is a taco with chorizo plus queso. I get it now!!” That’s exactly what this is. Chorizo taco with that mild cheese that crumbles and doesn’t melt. Hard to go wrong with it, really.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DLo
Lotus Blossom Café:

We needed to find some food for the kids to eat for lunch. They enjoy pot stickers that DH makes at home so we hoped they’d like them at Lotus Blossom. The kids shared the kids Pot Sticker and Spring Roll meal that comes with steamed rice and the kids got an apple juice. Though, as I’m looking back at pictures and cross checking menus I realized that we didn’t get any rice. Oh well. They loved the pot sticker but wouldn’t try the spring rolls. We ended up going back for an order of pot stickers only that they shared. I believe it came with three of them but we didn’t get a picture. We also ordered the bonus Festival of the Arts item, the Panda rice cake. I love Giant Pandas so why not order a rice cake that looks like one? It was pretty plain, just had a hint of sweetness. But we enjoyed it. Plus it was super cute.

LBkidsmeal.JPG
Pot sticker and spring rolls. Note that we didn't take a picture of the second order of pot stickers. Oops.

LBpandacake.JPG
Panda rice cake

This meal was a great example of why waiting in lines is sometimes overrated at Disney (at least in February). When we got to the café, there was a full wait queue that took up the whole room. It was seriously probably as big of a line as I have ever seen at the place. We were set on getting the potstickers, so I stuck it out. Fast forward to ten minutes later, the kids loved their potstickers and we decided we should get some more while they were feeling like eating food made by humans. I prepared to wait in another horrendous line, but when I rounded the corner I saw only one person in the entire ordering area. My takeaway is that if you don’t like the line, you can just come back in a bit and see what the line looks like. This advice holds especially well for space ship earth, but doesn’t work at all at places like Soarin’ or that Canada restaurant.

I love egg rolls. A good fried egg roll is hard to beat. Where we come from, there is a food truck that makes very good egg rolls the size of burritos. The food truck is cleverly called ‘Taste of Soul Eggroll’. Get it? Like Seoul, in South Korea, but spelled like soul food? God, it’s so good there. If you ever see that food truck, follow it until it sets up for lunch. But I digress… These weren’t egg rolls. They were spring rolls. They were quite tasty and normal springroll size. For those who don’t know the difference between a spring roll and an egg roll is, it’s essentially the wrapper that goes around the filling. As a non-expert, I will probably brutalize the distinction. But when have I ever let that stop me? The filling seems more or less the same to me between the two types, but where an egg roll has a relatively thick wrapper that gets fried to create a hard shell, the spring roll has a thin wrapper that gets fried to make a crispy flaky sort of wrapper. Like a lighter version of an egg roll (perhaps a spring version?). Anyway, the spring rolls were pretty good. And as far as the difference between egg rolls and eggrolls or spring rolls and springrolls… I have no idea which one is right so I use them interchangeably.

While I was waiting in the super long line, I saw the panda rice cake advertised, and thought it would be a fun treat to try out. It’s not a very dessert type item, but the rice has a little bit of sweetness to it so it’s not a savory food item. I grew up eating plain rice with light seasonings, and so I appreciated its very small flavor profile as being pretty good. And it looked fun, so it was fun to eat!
 
  • Like
Reactions: DLo
Ok another great report!

and...
For those who don’t know the difference between a spring roll and an egg roll is, it’s essentially the wrapper that goes around the filling. As a non-expert, I will probably brutalize the distinction. But when have I ever let that stop me? The filling seems more or less the same to me between the two types, but where an egg roll has a relatively thick wrapper that gets fried to create a hard shell, the spring roll has a thin wrapper that gets fried to make a crispy flaky sort of wrapper. Like a lighter version of an egg roll (perhaps a spring version?). Anyway, the spring rolls were pretty good. And as far as the difference between egg rolls and eggrolls or spring rolls and springrolls… I have no idea which one is right so I use them interchangeably.

I am learning things too!!! It is like a dining report and an infomercial all in one! lol
I would very much like to try the giant egg rolls in Oklahoma (we live in California though so.... we used to live in Dallas and almost ended up in Oklahoma... so I was close to trying them in a round about way lol)

thanks again for the great reports :)
 
Ok another great report!

and...


I am learning things too!!! It is like a dining report and an infomercial all in one! lol
I would very much like to try the giant egg rolls in Oklahoma (we live in California though so.... we used to live in Dallas and almost ended up in Oklahoma... so I was close to trying them in a round about way lol)

thanks again for the great reports :)

They are very good. And if you catch them on the right day, you can get jalapenos in the egg rolls. I'm not saying that everyone on the planet earth needs to eat one, but I'm also not NOT saying that. If you were ever to find yourself stranded in Oklahoma City between 11 and 2 on a weekday, they're worth looking up.

Also, I'm glad my infotainment setting isn't overly annoying yet. Usually when I'm typing, DW asks if I'm caught up yet and then finds out that I'm about two days behind where she thought I was. Because I love to ramble. It's one of the great luxuries in life.
 
Spice Road Table:

We were enjoying the Figment scavenger hunt for the Festival of the Arts and had just completed our tour around the world when it was just about dinner time. We played our usual game of Canadian Roulette and lost. I’ll let DH fill you in on how that game is played. We had reserved seats for that night’s 6:45 broadway show (it was fantastic!) through our DVC membership so we had just enough time for a leisurely dinner. I checked the dining app and saw that Spice Road Table had an opening in the amount of time it would take us to walk from Canada to Morocco. Perfect! DS had fallen asleep back in France during the movie and was still asleep by the time we made it to the restaurant. We were seated in a lovely U shaped booth that turned out to be the best table possible for us. I was able to lay DS down on the bench to continue sleeping. We decided that we would just order food for him when he woke up. That kid was so tuckered out that he didn’t wake up until we were leaving the restaurant.

SROliversleep.JPG
DS passed out in the booth

Ah, Canadian roulette. Once every generation there comes a dining location that is so… let’s call it trendy. A place so trendy that it’s impossible to get any kind of reservation in the restaurant unless you book at phone tree opening at the first possible day and you promise a first born child to somebody. For my generation, that place is Le Cellier, the steakhouse in the Canada pavilion. It seems to be treated with the same level of reverence as the Chef’s table at Victoria & Albert’s. Because DW and I are very contrarian about these things, we decided long ago that the best way to deal with this would be to never try to obtain a reservation. Instead, we have developed a game we like to call Canadian roulette. The rules of this game are quite simple: without a reservation, walk up to the podium and inquire about dinner for the night with your party. In this case, it was a party of five. Much like in the Russian version of the game, you have a statistically inferior possibility of there being availability. Unlike in the Russian version, the winner gets to eat steak. Or soup. Or whatever they serve at the place (for all I know, it’s a salad bar full of cleverly prepared turnips). Needless to say, we’ve never won this game. But some day (perhaps when the mantle of ‘most difficult restaurant to get in to’ passes to the Taste of Soul Eggroll truck) we expect there’s a chance we will earn a hard won victory and will enjoy the food first hand.

Alas, as DW stated, it was not meant to be on this trip. One of the more delightful parts of losing at Canadian roulette is seeing how the cast member treats your losing cause. I believe I was laughed at once when I asked, but mostly people get a sad look in their eyes that says ‘this poor unfortunate soul didn’t even pretend to plan for this trip. I am weeping on the inside as to how ill-informed he must be to think there is availability any time within the next month or more. And now I hope he doesn’t make a scene and start yelling because that would be awful’. This time, I was given sage advice about downloading the Disneyworld app, which would tell me if there were any reservations anywhere in the World. Good advice, by the way.

While I was betting on red at Le Cellier, DW and everyone else were trying to figure out what they wanted to do for reals. One of our big standby places is restaurant Marrakesh. It is really good, but we wanted to try something new and different. Fortunately, the Spice Road showed up as having availability so we booked a table on the app and immediately headed over to get seated. Fun tip: just because you booked 5 minutes or so before you showed up doesn’t mean the restaurant knows that you have a reservation. They had the reservations printed out, so we naturally weren’t on the list. Just something to keep in mind if you try doing something like that. It wasn’t a problem, they just looked us up on the computer and we were on our way to eat. And more importantly, get something to drink. We were thirsty.

First up was deciding on drinks. They had a couple of cool sounding drinks for the kids so we ordered one of each. They came out in to go cups with lids which worked out great since DS obviously didn’t drink any of his while we were there. We took those to go with us when we left. DD had the Watermelon Delight Fruit Cocktail-watermelon, cranberry juice, and orange water. DS had the Moroccan Sunrise-pineapple, strawberry juice and orange water. Both wre very refreshing. I ordered a red sangria that I enjoyed, GM ordered a red wine of some sort, and DH orders the Tangiers Breeze-peach vodka, midori and pineapple juice. I think we were all happy with our drinks.

SRjanedrink.JPG
DD's Watermelon Delight

SRsangria.JPG
My sangria

SRredandtangiers.JPG
Red wine and Tangiers Breeze.

As I had mentioned a long time ago during the tea post, there are times when your child goes comatose and sleeps the whole time. This did not phase our server guy at all. He was really great with both the adults and the remaining child. We got our drink orders in and he brought us much needed water. As we were obviously at the park with children, he gave us some advice for good ways to go through the park and attractions that he recommended. I thought that was very cool of him.

The Tangiers Breeze had a very nice peach overtone, and the pineapple sugar cut the alcohol so that it wasn’t just like I was drinking vodka. For those of you who don’t know, ‘flavored vodka’ usually isn’t really in the sweet category, it just has overtones of the flavoring. Kind of like 100% cocoa chocolate. You’re not going to get around the fact that you are drinking vodka. So, the pineapple brought that back to earth. I also thought the midori (lime-ish liquer, right?) helped act as a bridge to bring the peach and pineapple together so that ‘shock of vodka with peach essence’ could travel across the chasm to ‘really really acidic sugar blast’. For fun, we will call that bridge ‘sweet sour boulevard’. I liked it. Then I drank it really fast and wanted 12 more.

DD ordered the kids beef slider with fries and hummus with carrots. She asked for cheese after it was already brought to the table. She led us to believe she wasn’t going to touch it without cheese. Our waiter was doubtful they’d have cheese appropriate for the slider but he delivered a lovely slice of orange cheese on a plate for her and she was very happy. She enjoyed her slider a lot. I don’t think we were able to get her to try the hummus. Typical. The rest of us enjoyed it though.

DW understated the intensity with which DD asserted her need for yellow square cheese. It was a little bit embarrassing, really. But again, our guy was super cool about adding child cheese to a very nice looking slider. No idea where he got it from, but Disney magic works that way, I suppose. The hummus was very good.

SRkidsslider.JPG

Hummus with carrots, slider, fries

We decided to share a few plates of the tapas style items. This was our first visit to Spice Road, so we asked our waiter if he thought our order would work out for the three of us or if we had ordered way too much or way too little. We ordered the Hummus and Imported Olives, Rice Stuffed Grape Leaves, Spicy Garlic Shrimp, and Harissa Chicken Roll. We each picked one tapas and the hummus was just the given choice that we had to get.

Tapas is the kind of food that was made for EPCOT, where you want to eat everything but don’t want to eat ALL of anything because there are so many places to cover.

SRallfood.JPG

This is what all of the food looks like. I'll have close ups of each below.

The hummus comes with cornichons and za’atar pita bread. Yes, I had to goodle “cornichons”…small pickled cucumber. Ah. Yes, hiding under all of the olives. The hummus was great. It came with standard hummus as well as a sun dried tomato hummus. Both had wonderful flavor. I think I’m usually inclined to like flavored hummus more just because I eat standard , regular old hummus more than any other flavor of hummus. I think we did have a problem getting the pita bread to last through all of the hummus. I’m an olive fan and these olives didn’t disappoint. My mom pointed out that I was taking all of the green olives (my favorite), though I wasn’t doing it on purpose. They just happened to be on the corner closest to my seat when I scooped them up.

SRhummus.JPG
The lovely hummus spread and olives

The rice stuffed grape leaves also had fried capers, raisins, and nutmeg. As their name implies they were stuffed with rice. I think this one was my choice just to get something out of the ordinary from what we usually eat. They were tasty. Not my favorite of the meal but still pretty good.

Stuffed grape leaves, as it turns out, have a bit of a sour/bitter taste to them. Not in a bad way, just that’s how they taste. Maybe a bit like olives, but they’re not olives. They’re leaves stuffed with stuff. I liked them a lot, and I was glad I tried them. I would not have wanted an entire meal of them though, which is the beauty of tapas. I get to dabble in the leaf stuffed with things world, while also enjoying shrimp and hummus.

SRpitagrapeleaves.JPG

The grapes leaves on the top and pita bread on the bottom

GM’s choice was the spicy garlic shrimp. It’s sautéed shrimp with dried chilies and fried garlic. You know the drill now, I’m not a big fan of shrimp but I enjoyed it. I love garlic so this was a hit. I’m not into super spicy things and I don’t recall this registering much heat so if you are into super spicy this won’t cut it. If you aren’t into spicy things give it a shot. We’ll see if DH’s memory is different on this than mine. Though he tolerates spicy WAY better than me and loves hot things. So I imagine he’ll agree with me.

The funny part is that I didn’t remember the shrimp was supposed to be spicy. It was good, and as DW said the garlic was very nice. But no, I don’t remember registering any sense of ‘this is supposed to be hot’. So for you culinary daredevils out there looking to show how awesome you are at tolerating Chernobyl hot shrimp here, move along. I did like the shrimp though. I believe I distinctly remember thinking to myself that I need to make shrimp at home and use tons of garlic, because there’s no better way… unless it’s in a brunch bloody Mary.

SRshrimpchknroll.JPG

Shrimp on the top and the chicken roll on the bottom

Lastly we have my DH’s choice, the Harissa chicken roll with spicy ketchup. From the menu this was the one I was least looking forward so naturally it was my favorite! I wish we had ordered another. It was difficult sharing the two pieces three ways, but we made it work somehow. I’m going to have to rely heavily on DH’s memory here to help describe the dish. Typically I have the better memory in general but he seems to always remember food better. I just remember that it was delicious and I wanted more.

I would like to say that I have a way better memory, but only when it matters. You know… food, trigonometry acronyms, and that third thing I’m really good at remembering... I forget what that is, but you get the idea.

The harissa chicken, as you can see in the picture, looks a lot like an eggroll. And it’s a big one, possibly on the scale of the eternally plugged Taste of Soul. I swear I don’t even really have an eggroll fixation, that’s just how these reviews are starting to stack up. The funny thing to me is that DW makes something similar to this. A few years ago, she ended up with a recipe for southwest eggrolls, where you put corn, peppers, and other southwest things together with a southwest blend of spices. You wrap them up in a wonton wrapper and bake them in the oven (we don’t have a fry station). This was much like those, but with the addition of chicken. We are generally too lazy to cook with meat. As DW says, splitting one eggroll that has been cut in half between three people is a little problematic. But it’s worth it. Oh, and this had a more Mediterranean spice combination instead of the southwest flavors.

This meal overall impressed me with an interesting observation, the meat dish was the least easy to share. If you’re not insistent on eating meat (you don’t really care one way or the other), you can get some really good and creative dishes by getting non-meat dominant items. This might not be a shocker for most people, but I hadn’t thought about it much. I did know if you get a vegetable pizza at some restaurants, you are in for a super treat because they’re boss awesome. Other than that, I hadn’t thought.

I really enjoyed our experience here. We had a lovely booth overlooking the water. Our dinner was right at the beginning of dinnertime so hardly anyone was there…nice and quiet. We were able to enjoy a bunch of different things without being stuck with just one meal. I really like the tapas style of dinner. We’ll definitely come back and try some more items. Our server was really friendly and offered up other tips for us about the parks in general with kids since he has a daughter near our daughter’s age. The best part though was the big booth for DS to finish his marathon nap. I mean, he slept through three countries BEFORE we headed to dinner. I was just thankful I didn’t have to hold him while he was sleeping throughout dinner. Hands free! Yay! Side note: this was the only day that we didn’t go back to the hotel for a midday break or leave the parks early, hence the long nap.

Agreed, very good experience. I know it’s not ‘actually hot’ at this time of year, but I was on the hot side when we went to dinner. I really appreciated the A/C that came with the primo view of the EPCOT water view. I believe there is an outside area too and it’s shaded (getting out of the sun was probably all I really needed), but we were inside and it was heavenly.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DLo
Fife & Drum:

DH picked up an Artist Palette Jumbo Chocolate Chip Cookie for DS and DD to share while we enjoyed the Broadway concert. It was another Festival of the Arts treat. It came with 3 splashes of icing and a paintbrush to use on it. The paintbrush didn’t get used that much but DS still had a bit of fun with it. He got most of the cookie since he missed out on dinner. I’m such a good parent. : )

Food is fuel riiiight, guyyyys? DS needed calories, and they materialized. We got him actual nutrition at some point too. I swear.

FDCookie.JPG
 
Auntie Gravity’s Galactic Goodies:

We actually had breakfast in our room. After checking into our new room at the Poly the night before DH and I left to scope out the place. We picked up a box of assorted donuts and a bottle of milk to last for the next couple of days. The kids were super excited to have donuts for breakfast. That is until DS2 had a mini meltdown after taking a couple of bites of his donut. When he looked at his donut after setting it down he realized it was “broken” and he had a fit! “It’s not broken; you just took a couple of bites from it already.” “Want new one!” Ah, two year olds. Can’t eat a graham cracker unless it’s a whole one; broken off pieces are unacceptable. Can’t eat a Babybel cheese wheel if it broke coming out of its wax shell. Fortunately I can just squish that back together and it’s ok with him.

DW is more fortunate than I am with DS and the cheese wheel. He tries to take a bite out of it while it’s still wax sealed. It is a surprisingly sturdy wax shell.

Back to second breakfast. GM needed some coffee. I guess she survived Epcot the day before without it. We stopped at Auntie Gravity’s and she ordered a Mocha Iced Coffee Float. I ordered a strawberry banana smoothie for the kids. GM wished that there was more coffee in the coffee to ice cream ratio of the float. Being the grandmother she is she shared it with DS and DD even with my Mom Look that I gave her when I realized that she had stirred the ice cream into the coffee part. She failed to think about that until I pointed it out. Let’s not get the kids hooked on mocha coffee floats when they are 2 and 5. The kids did enjoy the strawberry banana smoothie though they were more interested in the ice cream that came with GM’s drink.

I will confirm, the coffee float turned out to be more of an ice cream with coffee poured on it. I hadn’t connected it yet, but DS has been asking to try my coffee a lot since the Disney trip. Hmmmm….

AGcoffee.JPG

GM with the end of the coffee float

AGsmoothie.JPG
DS and I sharing the smoothie...bonus Mickey straw!
 
I love your husband's commentary along with your own. This is totally something my DH would love to do with me when we get back from our trip in a few weeks!
 
Great stuff! One comment: Your son has a Dark Side of the Moon t-shirt. You're a good parent!
 
I love your husband's commentary along with your own. This is totally something my DH would love to do with me when we get back from our trip in a few weeks!
Thanks! It's been a lot of fun. Sad to say that it has stalled out over the last couple of weeks. I've written my side for the most part but my DH is still working on his report. It can get tough finding the time for two people to write up reports.

Great stuff! One comment: Your son has a Dark Side of the Moon t-shirt. You're a good parent!
Thank you! :teeth:
 
Columbia Harbour House:

Our favorite counter service place in the Magic Kingdom. We usually each order the tuna salad sandwich and the broccoli slaw sandwich and swap half. But I’ve gotten tired of that. This time I ordered the broccoli slaw sandwich, otherwise known as the Lighthouse Sandwich-hummus with tomato and broccoli slaw on toasted multigrain bread with potato chips. DH ordered the Lobster Roll with potato chips. GM tried the Chicken Pot Pie with green beans. DD had the kids Uncrustable PBJ, smoothie, cookie, and apple juice. DS wanted the chicken nuggets with smoothie, cookie, and apple juice. We usually order a cup of ice water for our drinks. It helps us stay hydrated better and it’s FREE! Again, we forgot to anticipate the size of the kids’ apple juices and so we all had some apple juice. I’m pretty sure a bunch of juice ended up wasted on this trip because that’s really way too much juice for even a small army. The kids were both happy with their meals. I don’t think either one ate their cookie then, they just saved them for later.

CHHbrocslaw.JPG
Lighthouse sandwich

CHHchknnug.JPG
Kids chicken nugget meal

CHHpbj.JPG
Kids Uncrustable in the process of being enjoyed

CHHkidcookie.JPG
Uneaten cookies

In the spirit of trying new things on the CHH menu, I boldly struck out with ‘the Lobster one’, which I picked out because it sounded super novel and ‘Columbia-ey’. As I have mentioned, I’m not much of an expert on these, but this one made for good eats. The lobster was very visibly present (not working with a picture here, but I think there may have been a claw hanging out of the sandwich), and there was good flavor and stuff. I was a little reluctant to swap, but then I didn’t want to be all stingy either. And I wanted some broccoli slaw sandwich. Again with the ‘vegetarian is awesome’ line of thought, it’s possible this is my favorite sandwich from there. Nice crunchy vegetables with the cream slaw flavor, meshed with the hummus punch and creaminess. Well thought out and well-made sandwich. I thought the pot pie looked really good, and I remember it as having a good looking crust. It didn’t look like a mass produced microwave pie.

CHHlobster.JPG

Lobster Roll

CHHpotpie.JPG
Chicken pot pie with green beans

The chicken pot pie was pretty good. I wouldn’t mind ordering that in the future if I really want to change things up. Plus GM worked her magic and DS ate several of her green “fries”. I was a bit worried about the lack of vegetables that my kids had during this trip. They aren’t big carrot stick fans, but then again they aren’t that big vegetable fans in general. At least DD isn’t. DS will eat a surprising amount of different vegetables. But so did DD at his age, not sure when that changed. Sigh. I like the hummus and broccoli slaw sandwich a lot. I think it’s sort of become a nostalgia meal for me. It’s just what I get when I come to Disney. I love the chips here too. We branched out and ordered the Lobster Roll. As stated earlier, we don’t eat lobster very often and…I’m not a big fan. ;) However I liked it alright hidden amongst all of the “salad” part of the roll, though the mayonnaise might have been a bit heavy on there.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DLo

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!










Top