Pepper Market at the Coronado Springs Hotel

I went to eat dinner at the Coronado Springs Hotel in Walt Disney World. I walked through the hotel and reached a restaurant called The Pepper Market.


There were some animals baked out of bread outside of the restaurant. Here is a turtle and an alligator.

The restaurant is set up where a hostess brings you to a table, and a waiter gets your drinks. Everyone is then given a card which is taken to various food counters and is stamped with whatever is ordered. There are various counters in the restaurant, including Mexican, Italian, American, Asian, and dessert. On this visit to the restaurant, I decided to go with Curry Chicken with Pineapple from the Asian counter. The only problem was that nobody was working at this counter. I went over to the Italian counter and asked the employee working there to get someone to make me food. He acted surprised and asked me "You want that Oriental Food?" as if customers ordering from that particular counter was a rare occasion. When someone finally came over to cook my food, the worker seemed really annoyed that he actually had to do his job. As he begrudgingly cooked my food, he added pre-cooked fried chicken, pineapple, carrots, peppers, sauce, and other various ingredients into his wok, and then served all of this over steamed rice.

My biggest complaint with the meal was the actual chicken. I wasn't expecting fried chicken, but I can't complain if that's the way they do it. The problem was rather than using white meat chicken, they seemed to use cheap chicken parts. I saw some dark meat. I saw some black areas. As I was eating, there was occasionally an unedible hard piece in the chicken. I really didn't want to know what parts of the chicken were served, and just swallowed it down. For the $15 that the Pepper Market charged for this rather small portion, I want white meat. A chicken breast would be nice, not the leftovers. Maybe they figured that since the chicken is fried, nobody would notice what the meat looked like under the batter.

I also noticed that overall, the menu of this restaurant changed very much since my past visit. Prices went way up, while the menu size and portions went way down. The Mexican counter seemed to be their showcase in the past (makes sense in a Mexican themed hotel), with lots of options, huge portions, and it all tasted good. On this visit, the Mexican menu was down to only two items. I saw someone ordering the fajitas, which cost a few dollars more than my chicken, and it included one tortilla filled with meat and peppers. The quesadilla wasn't much better.

The Pepper Market made some changes for the worst, and I don't think I'll be returning anytime soon.

After eating, I took a walk around the hotel and saw the duck topiarys and the swimming pool surrounding a Mayan pyramid.