Steakhouse 71 at Disney's Contemporary Resort

I had lunch at Steakhouse 71 in the Contemporary Resort at Disney.

 I started with French Onion Soup.

I had the Gourmet Grilled Cheese for my entrree. This was toasted brioche filled with gruyere, smoked gouda, pork belly, arugula, and carnalized onion jam. I picked a Caesar salad as my side.

Tabla in Orlando, FL

Tabla Indian Restaurant was interesting. They were located inside of a motel next to the former site of Mystery Fun House across from Universal. I've never had Indian food in a motel before. All of the open parking spots near the restaurant entrance were reserved for hotel rewards members. I chanced parking in the reserved spot and nobody checked. The inside of Tabla was well decorated, more upscale than I'd expect in a motel restaurant. Regardless, we had hesitations about what we'd be getting because of the strangeness of the motel and parking. Thankfully, the food was good!

Started with Mixed Pakora Appetizer. This was a big plate of deep fried cauliflower, potato, paneer, and onions served with dipping sauces.

Chicken Tikka Masala was served on a sizzling skillet. I've had many versions of chicken tikka masala in my life, but this is the first time I've ever seen it served on a steaming platter. I enjoyed the show.

Also tried the Butter Chicken. 

I enjoyed my meal here. The food exceeded expectations set by the sketchy location. Everything was good and portions were huge compared to most Indian restaurants in the area. It's rare that I eat in an Indian restaurant and have leftovers. This was the case at Tabla. I'd go back.
 

Sassagoula Floatworks & Food Factory in Disney's Port Orleans

I ventured over to Disney's Port Orleans hotel for dinner on a recent evening. After wandering around the property looking at the different food options, I ended up at Sassagoula Floatworks & Food Factory in the French Quarter section of the hotel. The restaurant was set up food court style, with several different counters serving various menu options.

I tried the Jambalaya. It was served in a large bowl topped with a square of cornbread. As far as taste goes, the jambalaya was good, but it also sort of lacked something. It consisted of chicken, sausage, and rice, and that was about it. I'm used to seeing a little more in jambalaya too. Usually there's vegetables in there as well. Celery, green peppers, and onions seem pretty standard in the dish, but there was no trace of them here.

Someone else ordered the Shrimp and Grits. Definitely the better option. The large portion consisted of a large serving of grits topped with a freshly made serving of shrimp, various vegetables, and sauce. Sundried tomatoes aren't normally in here, but they were added upon request. It was really tasty and definitely outshined the relatively boring jambalaya.

Beignets were also ordered for dessert. Doughnuts topped with powdered sugar are always good, and these were better than other theme park beignets I've come across which are basically square funnel cakes. These were light and fluffy and had the proper beignet consistency.

Although my jambalaya was a little subpar, everything else I tried at Sassagoula Floatworks was good. I'd go back!

Boston Desserts (Omni Parker House Hotel and Modern Pastry)

During my adventures in exploring Boston, I had desserts on a couple occasions. This blog post chronicles these desserts...

Omni Parker House's Boston Cream Pie:

I took a guided tour along parts of the Freedom Trail. One of the stops on the tour was the Omni Parker House Hotel. Our tour guide spouted out all kinds of interesting facts about this historic hotel, ranging from the presidents and celebrities who have stayed here to the hotel's ghost stories. The one fact that made my food blogger radar perk up was that the dessert known as a Boston Cream Pie was invented in one of the hotel's restaurants.

I decided I needed to try a Boston Cream Pie from the place it was created. I later returned to the hotel and found out their coffee/gift shop sold the pies without having to go into the pricy Parker's Restaurant. The price almost scared me away. Eight dollars and change for a small dessert that was three inches in diameter. Still, I had walked across town to try the pie, so I splurged.

I think I may have had Boston Cream Pies and Boston Cream Doughnuts mixed up in my head. I was expecting much more cream in here. Instead, the pie consisted of two layers of cake with a thin layer of cream sandwiched in between. It was topped with chocolate icing. After the initial surprise that this was more of a cake than a cream filled pie, I enjoyed the dessert. The cake was moist. The small layer of cream provided a little change in flavor to mix things up. Although it was tasty, the Boston Cream Pie definitely wasn't worth the price and I wouldn't spend that money again. Still, I can say I've tried the original Boston Cream Pie!


 

Modern Pastry:

During the same tour where I found out about the Boston Cream Pies, the guide also recommended checking out Little Italy. I took up that advise and found myself getting dessert at a bakery called Modern Pastry. For a place with modern in the name, they had a very retro neon sign.

The place was filled with cases and cases of delicious looking pastries, cakes, cookies, pies, and other sweets.

I had a sfogliatelle. This flaky lobster tail-like pastry was filled with a delicious cheesy filling. I ate the sfogliatelle in a nearby park where a flock of sparrows really enjoyed eating all the crumbs that fell from the flaky crust...

Steamers Cafe in Estes Park, CO

Horror movies are fun. Historic hotels are fun. Combine the two, and I found myself stopping at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. In horror movie terms, this was Overlook Hotel from The Shining.

The Stanley Hotel seemed to get into their horror movie identity as the Overlook more than I expected. They were having a horror film festival on the day I was there. There were exhibits set up explaining the history of the hotel with The Shining. It made me happy that they embraced their horror movie history as much as they did. While there, I stopped into their coffee shop called Steamer's Cafe.

I had a Chai Latte. It was a typical chai latte. Tasty enough but nothing to write home about. As I sipped, I wandered around the hotel grounds hoping to see a ghost. Didn't see any, but I did come across an elk on the hotel's front lawn. Seeing an elk is even better than seeing a ghost. Elk actually exist...

Siro: Urban Italian Kitchen in Lake Buena Vista, FL

Siro: Urban Italian Kitchen is a new restaurant that recently opened in the Orlando World Center Marriott. Siro uses fresh farm-to-fork ingredients, many of which come from local sources in the Central Florida area. Just before they opened to the public, I was invited to try Siro during their media preview dinner. I was excited to try some new Italian food!

The evening started with a tour of Siro's huge kitchen where Chef Anthony Burdo was introduced.

Back in Siro's dining room, we started to try a selection of the foods offered in the restaurant. I'm separating the food pictures below as they are described on Siro's menu.

Boards 

Siro had three different menu items called Boards. These included meat, cheese, pork roast almonds, and olives.  

The Americano: La Quercia prosciutto, tartufo, and capicola:

The Toscana: Finocchio, Pecorino Toscano, and Bresaola.

Pizza

Siro Sausage and Peppers: Topped with hot and sweet peppers. The sausage had nice flavor and the hot peppers caught me a little off guard because they were actually spicy. Spicy toppings on pizza is good.

Green, Eggs & Ham: Arugula, prosciutto, and sunny side up egg. The egg was from a local farm and there were greens on the pizza. Green eggs. Get it?

Antipasti

Ripe Tomatoes: Heirloom tomatoes, ricotta salata, basil, and mint. I love being served tomatoes that are other colors than the standard red.

Golden Beets: Served with pistachio and soft goat cheese. Beets are good. Yellow beets are better (for the same reason that colorful tomatoes are better)!

Eggplant Caponata: Eggplant, greens, and whipped ricotta served on bakehouse bread.

Arborio Fritters: Robiola, black garlic, and arrabiata sauce. Arborio is apparently a type of short grained rice. It must be obvious that I've never cooked risotto because I did not know this prior to this dinner. Nor did I know that black garlic was a thing. This dish was very educational for me...

 Crisp Baby Artichokes: With a yogurt mint dip.

Salads

Big Green Bowl: Local lettuces and greens, soft herbs, simple vinaigrette.

Meats

Burdo's Famous Veal Meatballs: In a pomodoro sauce.

Pork Belly: With pink lady apples. It seems like everyone loves pork belly. Perhaps I'm weird, but this part of the pig doesn't do it for me. This was one of the tastiest pork belly dishes that I've been served, but I still don't think I'd order it again. I think it's the consistency of thick cut pork belly more than anything that I don't care for. I'm guess I'm not a pork belly person...

 

Seafood

Tuna 2 Ways: Ahi over tomato. The tuna itself was shaved in very thin slices, but I didn't like the sauce. It was a bit too much like mayonnaise. Take a really nice, high quality tuna and put it with a sauce that is sort of like mayonnaise and our brains may play tricks on us giving flashes of tuna salad...

Daily Roast: This was a whole roasted market fish. I believe the fish of the night was snapper. The fish was nice and flaky.

Plates

The Burger: OWC bakehouse bun and handcut fries.

Braised Pork Shank: Served over white beans. Another pork dish from a more enjoyable part of the pig in my opinion. The meat was tender enough to easily fall off the bone.

Veal Saltimbocca: With garlic rapini.

Pasta

Cheese Tortellini: Butternut squash and sage brown butter. As simple as it was, this was one of my favorite dishes of the night. The large, cheese filled dumplings were topped with cubed squash and basil leaves.

Cocktails

I tried two drinks at Siro, both of which were non-alcoholic from the Refreshers section of the menu.

The Understudy: Fresh lemon, basil, simple syrup, and Fever Tree tonic water. This was like a lemonade that was a bit heavier with the tart lemon flavor as opposed to the sweeter flavors that are normally more prevalent in lemonades. I liked it!

Italian Soda: Blood orange, simple syrup, and club soda. This reminded me of a carbonated orange juice. Again, it wasn't overly sweet with a strong orange flavor.

Dessert

Cake Pops: These had a very intense, rich chocolate flavor. Almost bordering on the chocolate intensity of fudge.

Cannolis & Zeppole: Two classic Italian desserts. Everyone seems to love the custard filled cannolis and the sugar coated doughnuts that are zeppole.

And that concludes the food pictures from Siro: Urban Italian Kitchen. It is always refreshing when an Italian restaurant gets creative and does more than the stereotypical dishes like spaghetti & meatballs and lasagna. Siro definitely moved away from the boring Italian standards, which was a very good thing!

Monorail Bar Crawl

So there's this thing that happens just outside Magic Kingdom. It's something that Disney probably doesn't like to admit happens as not to tarnish their perfect family friendly image. This something is known as the Monorail Bar Crawl. Unlike drinking around the world at Epcot, which everyone knows happens, the Monorail Bar Crawl seems a bit less known. It basically involves parking at one of the Magic Kingdom hotels, drinking alcohol at a bar in the initial hotel, then riding the monorail to the next hotel and repeating the process. Although I really don't drink much, I do enjoy wandering around Disney hotels and monorails are one of my favorite forms of mass transit, so I've gone along as designated driver with people doing the Monorail Bar Crawl. The remainder of this post consists of alcoholic beverages that I didn't drink and food that I did eat...

We started at the Polynesian Resort. Once parked, we made our way to the Tambu Lounge, located next to the very popular Ohana. The drink of choice here was the Lapu Lapu. It was a stereotypical tropical drink served in a hollowed out pineapple, complete with paper umbrella.

After Tambu Lounge, we headed to the monorail station and took the ride to the Grand Floridian. The destination here was called Mizner's Lounge. Located right off the huge atrium that makes up the hotel's lobby, the big thrill here was the free bowls of nuts that were brought to every table.

The drink of choice at Mizner's Lounge was the Glowtini. It was basically a martini with an added LED 'icecube.' This allowed you to drink your alcohol in any color you'd like by sticking your fingers in the martini and pressing the button on the cube.

Once the light up martinis were finished at the Grand Floridian, we boarded the monorail once again and rode past the Magic Kingdom and into the Contemporary Resort. Here, we headed to the elevator that goes specifically up to the roof of the hotel to the California Grill. The California Grill normally requires reservations to eat at, but if you go to the desk downstairs and tell them you're going to the bar, they send you right up. Time it right and you'll be up on the roof of the hotel for the Magic Kingdom fireworks. Seeing them from above is my personal favorite way to watch Wishes. Here, the drink of choice is apparently called the Ray-Ray.

As a food blogger, I had to get some food at California Grill. While the majority of the menu at California Grill is rather pricy, their flatbread pizzas are relatively affordable and are enough food for a meal. We ordered a Heirloom Tomato BLT Flatbread and were served the wrong one. Topped with beef, mushrooms, and greens, the heirloom tomatoes were nowhere to be found.

They quickly corrected the mistake and brought out the Heirloom Tomato BLT. This thin flatbread was topped with marinated tomatoes, applewood smoked bacon, chiffonade romaine, and lemon mayonnaise. Getting a pizza topped with a range of colors from the typical to deep purple or yellow is very different. And very tasty.

And that's my experience being a designated driver during a Monorail Bar Crawl. Watching people drink, eating flatbread pizzas at fancy restaurants, and riding monorails. I'd gladly do it again!