Disney Mega Post #4 - The Food

Resort restaurants ranked (fine dining)
1. California Grill (Contemporary)
2. Artist Point (Wilderness Lodge)
3. Jiko (Animal Kingdom Lodge), Yachtsman Steakhouse (Yacht Club, Thanksgiving menu)

Resort restaurants (casual dining)
1. Kona cafe (Polynesian)
2. Beaches and cream (Yacht Club), Yacht club galley (Yacht Club)

Other restaurants (Downtown Disney and themeparks):
1. Wolfgang Puck Cafe (Downtown Disney Westside)
2. Mama Melrose (MGM, Fantasmic package)
3. Portobello Yacht Club (Pleasure Island)
4. Restaurant Marrakesh (Epcot, Morocco), Columbia Harbour House (Magic Kingdom)

Even more (not ranked);
Spoodles (Boardwalk), Electric Umbrella (Epcot), Fountain View (Epcot), Turkey legs (assorted locations throughout all the theme parks), Starring Rolls (MGM)

Ah, Disney food. Better than you expect most of the time, sometimes surprising (in good and bad ways), and ALWAYS expensive. California Grill is great restaurant. Not just great considering it's at Disneyworld, but it stands up to its non-theme park competitors very nicely. Our server was just the right amount of attentive and personal without being clingy. I can't remember his name, but I remember he was from Kentucky. I remember Dave starting with a vegetable flatbread that was really good. I got a salad of some sort that was also good, but kind of heavy on the dressing. Not soaking wet, but heavier than I prefer it. Dinner entree for me was the "free form pumpkin lasagne," which was a special that night. It was very very good. I want to say that Dave got a steak of some sort and that it was equally good. Dessert, which we may have split or perhaps Dave got his own, was a trio of citrus items including a sorbet and a custard. Very nice and light, perfect for capping off a heavy meal. CA Grill's wine list is all Californian and has a good selection of wines by the glass.

I was also very happy with Artist Point at the Wilderness Lodge. It has an all Northwest wine list, which was amusing. Our server guaranteed me that the smoky portobello soup would be the best soup I ever tasted. Well, she was close. It was quite good, though the fresh corn soup at the Herb Farm is still at the top of my list. I had cedar plank roasted salmon which was just as good as any I've had in Seattle. They fly their salmon in from AK within 24 hours of its being caught, I had to ask since we remembered one of the restaurants at which we had eaten earlier in the week serving (gasp!) ATLANTIC salmon. I'm guessing that Dave had chicken, and he can correct if I'm wrong. Dessert was a berry cobbler which served in such a large helping that I'm thinking it was meant to be shared. I don't think I shared very much. The coffee at Artist Point is not Nescafe.

Jiko was kind of a mixed bag. For one thing, we were not seated until nearly an hour after our priority seating time. Also, we had to switch our Dave's chair at the table because it was broken. But after we got seated the atmosphere was pretty nice. i can't remember the appetizers, but I got the vegetarian entree. It was a little too earnestly vegan for my tastes (and I'm someone who eats tofu at least once a day) but it was OK. I got pistachio creme brulee for dessert and that was quite good. The layout of Animal Kingdom Lodge is such that the waiting areas for Boma (the buffet there) and Jiko are very close together with a bank of elevators in between. As the lounge was full we ended up standing in that area for a long time and it got quite crowded. It also seemed that it was very near the doors heading out to the pool. I wouldn't mind coming back and trying Boma.

I already talked about the Thanksgiving dinner at the Yacht Club so there's no need to go back over that.

So part way through the trip Dave and I decided that we just couldn't deal with Nescafe anymore and went off in search of a decent cup of coffee. Our search ended up at Kona Cafe at the Polynesian where they serve (duh) 100% Kona coffee (I noticed that the Kona coffee bar next to the cafe only served Kona blend, so check your menus carefully, folks). We had lunch there starting with a really good salad. I mean very surprisingly, even startlingly good. It was the Kona cafe salad. My entree was the asian stir fry pasta, which was so-so. It was kind of salty. Dave had the BBQ pork sandwich, and I seem to remember that he wasn't all that impressed. We split the chocolate macadamia tart and finally got some coffee. Both dessert and the coffee were very good, though the coffee came out in a thermal carafe instead of the promised French press pot. I think the cafe shared its desserts with 'Ohana, the less casual restaurant at the Polynesian. Even though neither of us was really impressed with our entrees I do remember seeing some very tasty looking items going to the people sitting next to us. I would come back to the Kona cafe in the future. I also remember thinking that the prices there quite reasonable for the quality of the food we got.

I already mentioned Beaches and Cream and the Yacht Club Galley so I won't go into those except to add that next time I want to come back hungry enough for the No Way Jose sundae (peanut butter and chocolate).

Our last night in FL we ended up at Wolfgang Puck cafe. He seems to have a whole fortress at Downtown Disney with the cafe, Wolfgang Puck Express and the Wolfgang Puck Dining room. The meal was just like any we have had his other outposts throughout the country, which is to say very good. We had no priority seating but got in with no wait. It did take a while for our food to arrive but the server was nice and apologetic about it. I had the pumpkin ravioli. We skipped dessert because we were quite full (not just from that meal, but from the entire trip) but I was kind of sad about that when we passed the dessert display on the way out. They looked really good.

We had a special package at Mama Melrose at MGM that included a prix fixe dinner and reserved seating later for Fantasmic. We skipped the flatbread course and split dessert because it was too much food. I don't remember what we ate, but it was good. I think I had salmon, and I remember thinking the salad was one of the better ones I had that week. Our dessert was a sampler of coffee-flavored items and was good. Mama Melrose uses the same coffee as the Brown Derby, which, according to our server, roasts its own. It's not Nescafe, but it wasn't great or anything :)

I can't remember anything about Portobello Yacht Club except that they serve roasted garlic with the bread and they are very proud of that. The meal was perfectly acceptable and completely non-memorable. All I remember is that Dave added shrimp to his entree :)

We ate at Marrakesh on our first night and would probably have been more impressed if we hadn't had a great meal at a restaurant by the same name (see http://www.winisp.net/dstewartms/Marrakesh/) in Seattle this summer. It was acceptable and there was no wait to get in, but the food was kind of institutional and didn't seem very authentic. Of course I'm saying this after ordering salmon, which I'm fairly sure is not native to Morocco, so perhaps I could have ordered better.

The lunch included in our Keys to the Kingdom tour was at Columbia Harbour House in Liberty Square just across from the Haunted Mansion. it was in a semi-private dining area upstairs and was probably the quietest meal we had the whole week. I had a hummus and veggie sandwich which was really good considering it was from a counter service restaurant in the Magic Kingdom. With it, I had veggie chili, which was also good though I was somewhat nonplussed by the black olives in it, and broccoli slaw that was particularly tasty. I can't remember what Dave ate.

As for the others, we had breakfast at Spoodles one morning and it was fine. I don't think breakfast is its specialty. Fountain View had yummy pastries. Electric Umbrella had a good veggie burger. And Starring Rolls had some good sandwiches. Dave will have to comment on the turkey legs, and the pricing of said legs in different locations of the parks.