Tuesday, July 12, 2011

WDW Trip Report - The Other Side of the Story (Part II)


Welcome back!  Today, I'm finishing up our tour of the restaurants that Joanna and I ate at.

Monday
Today Joanna and I headed over to Animal Kingdom. Joanna wasn't feeling too good, so it was mostly me eating today.  DAK is home to my favorite Quick Service restaurant in the parks: Flame Tree BBQ.  I like Flame Tree because the food is very high quality, and the sauces and spices that they use are awesome!


I decided to get the ½ Chicken, which comes with baked beans and coleslaw.  The beans they serve here are my favorite ever.  They cook them with bacon and they have an BBQ based sauce.  They are tangy and cooked perfectly. In the past, the coleslaw at Flame Tree has been some of the only coleslaw that I've been able to eat.  Unfortunately, it appears that they changed the recipe over the past year.  It was drier and had a more classic flavor than I remember from previous years.  I was a little disappointed by this.  The chicken on the other hand was perfect!  It pulled off the bone easily and the flavor of the rub used was present throughout.  The skin, while not as crispy as it has been in the past, was still very tasty.  I ended my meal with the Key Lime Mousse thing.  It was ok, but I couldn't eat too much of it because of the dairy in it.

After a quick trip to DTD, we were on our way over to Animal Kingdom Lodge for dinner at Boma.  Boma is my personal favorite buffet on property, due to the great selection of different foods. I started out at the Soup Bar.  I had recently discovered a love of Mulligatawny, which is a curry-based soup with chicken, potatoes and apples.  I was very excited to find that Boma was serving it that night!  It was a quick decision that this would be my choice for soup.  Boma's Mulligatawny had a more subtle flavor than what my local soup restaurant serves.  I have to say that it was awesome and allowed the individual ingredients to show their flavors.

Next up, I moved to the area of the buffet that featured the African-themed items.  I sampled pretty much everything in that section, but the item that really stood out was the Lamb Curry.  The lamb was tender, the curry had just the right of spices.  I could have eaten a couple bowls of just that, if it weren't for the other food that I wanted to eat. The only disappointment of the meal was the bobotie.  I've had it at Boma in the past and it was great.  However, this night, it was very bland.  I'd be willing to give it a try again though, as I'm hoping that this night may have just been a fluke.

The Dessert Bar at Boma is not my favorite.  Almost everything is chocolate based, and usually, that means milk or white chocolate.  As such, I stuck with the Fruit Bar for dessert.  This ended up being a disappointment too.  They had these incredibly red strawberries there that looked absolutely delicious.  I should have smelled one first because of I had, I would have known that they weren't ripe.  They were possibly the most bland strawberries I have ever tasted.  Other than that, the melon and pineapple were delicious!

Joanna Edit: Here's the video where we talked a little more about our meal at Boma. 

Tuesday
Joanna and I decided to sleep in a little today, so all I had for breakfast was a few slices of apples.  I didn't even eat them all.  This ended with me being a little cranky and out of sorts for most of our time in Magic Kingdom.  After we finished there, we headed over to Epcot and I decided I didn't want to walk all the way to the Morocco to eat at Tangerine Cafe.  Joanna and I decided to go to Sunshine Seasons at The Land pavilion.  I ended up getting a really tasty chicken & cashew Chinese stir-fry thing and either a cookie or a brownie.  I don't really remember as it wasn't really that memorable.

Our dinner this night was at San Angel Inn at the Mexico pavilion.  Just as Joanna hadn't been looking forward to 50's Prime Time Cafe, this was the meal that I really wasn't looking forward to.  I'm not really a big fan of Mexican food, due to how much they put cheese or cream on everything. I managed to find something that sounded interesting before leaving home and was mildly looking forward to it.  Unfortunately, when we arrived, we found that the menu had changed! I was disappointed, but the new menu gave me more options to choose from.  We both started out with Blood Orange Margaritas. 


This drink was really good, probably my favorite drink of the trip. For my meal, I decided to have the Mole Pablano, while Joanna had the Carne Asada a ala Tampiquena.  My meal was OK, but I'm not really a fan of Mole.  It had a bitter, but spicy flavor to it that just wasn't too appetizing.  I ended up scrapping a bunch of it off because it was too overwhelming.  For dessert, I had been “looking forward” to having churros.  Thankfully, the menu change also provided a more interesting choice: Isla Flotante.  This was a surprisingly good dessert!  It's a caramelized lime meringue in a vanilla sauce with berries.  After the heavy entree, I really needed a light dessert.  You can't get much lighter than meringue!  It was delicious too!

Joanna Edit: In this video you can see Kyle eating said apples, him (and me) being a bit cranky before lunch, and then us talking about our snack from Germany and dinner in Mexico. After the 2:00 minute mark, I find this video to be one of my favorites that always makes me laugh (well this one and our DTD video)! :)

Wednesday
With that, we come to the last day of the trip. I have to say that I didn't want this day to come because I was having so much fun with Joanna. We decided to start the day off with the most important meal: Breakfast at Whispering Canyon Cafe.  I've been to WCC once before, and really enjoyed it.  I also thought that Joanna might enjoy it.   This restaurant really feels like a cousin to 50s Prime Time Cafe.  The staff tend to have a lot of fun with the guests and the food is very comforting.  Joanna and I both ordered the Skillet.  I personally believe that this is the way to go when ordering here.  It's another All-You-Care-To-Eat meal with the following items: Eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles, oven-roasted red potatoes, biscuits and gravy. 

I've never understood the whole biscuits and gravy thing, so I shied away from the latter. I was actually surprised that Joanna didn't like it either, though she actually tried some (something I can't say I did, but I blame the collard greens for destroying my adventurous taste buds.) Other than that, I really loved the potatoes. The sausages were pretty good too.  Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed with the scrambled eggs.  I think the eggs at the resort food court tasted better.  After filling up on all the potatoes, eggs, bacon and sausage that I could eat, I noticed that a couple of the staff were approaching the nearby table.  Our waitress broke off from the group and approached me with a birthday cupcake.  Then the whole group of waiters/waitresses had me and a young lady from the next table stand  up while the whole restaurant sang to us. Yikes!  How embarrassing for the both of us!

That's the last Table Service meal of the trip. After scouring the parks for some last minute souvenirs, we headed back to Port Orlease Riverside where we spent our last couple snack credits and I used our last Quick Service meal on a simple Chicken Nugget meal.  I'm actually amazed that I went so long without ordering these.  Sadly, they changed the Honey Mustard sauce that they offer.  It leaned more toward the mustard side of the spectrum.  The nuggets themselves were all right, but not as good as they have been in past years.  I would still order them though! 

With that final meal, the tour of Joanna and my culinary adventures comes to a close. I have to say that after spending four trips solo dining, I really enjoyed having someone to talk with.  It made eating in a nice sit-down restaurant much less awkward (though at times, it ended up more humiliating thanks to  Joanna's sneaking my birthday onto our ADRs. ;-)  )

HUGE thanks to Kyle for being my first guest blogger! He did a great job detailing our meals in a way that I couldn't manage to do (probably even if I did get to eat them).  I admit that sneaking his birthday onto every single reservation might have been a bit excessive, but I really enjoyed getting to celebrate his birthday [early] with him.  I've never gotten to "celebrate" anything bit at Walt Disney World before, so that was kind of a guilty pleasure for me.  Next post will wrap up the trip report and then we'll move on to some more big Disney fun!  

1 comment:

  1. I think it's funny that your favorite drink of our trip was the one that was arguably the strongest and effected me the most! I could not stop giggling y'all & I think I kept calling Kyle "incredibly adorable" for about an hour... *blush*

    Someday I want to go back and try Boma for real. I ate of the kids part of the buffet here (mashed taters & a chicken leg) to find enough bland stuff to eat, and I think the stuff Kyle ate looked like something fun to try. Maybe I'll go back for Kyle & Joanna's Adventure Part II... hehe.

    ReplyDelete