California Grill - an outstanding meal for a special occasion
Just finished a wonderful anniversary dinner with Husband at Californian Grill. It was the first time for both of us here and we left with plans to go back ASAP. Here’s a recap....
Dinner started in a stressful manner because we weee running late. Being late is one thing I can’t stand. We got our Uber from Universal half an hour before our ADR and we knew we would be cutting it close on the best of days, so of course I-4 was a parking lot and we slowly crawled through traffic. Then once we got on property our driver missed the turns twice to get to the Magic Kingdom and then the Contemporary. I was so stressed because I had been looking forward to this dinner for so long and just wanted it to go smoothly and this was not off to a good start. We checked in almost 25 minutes late but the CMs were so great. They said a lot of guests mentioned the heavy traffic and lots of Uber drivers are having trouble with the construction on the MK roads right now. Anyway, they called upstairs and had a table ready so we headed straight up the elevator.
Everything happens for a reason, right? Because if we hadn’t been delayed, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten a dream table location. Next to the window directly overlooking the Magic Kingdom. We watched the sun set and the park light up as night fell and as we enjoyed our meal and of course we had a clutch view of the fireworks plus the Electric Water Pageant!
But back to food. We stared with cocktails while my adrenaline levels came down. I had a Blackberry Lemonade and Husband had the Cali Grill version of a Manhattan. Both drinks were boozy and tasty, especially the Manhattan it was the smoothest I’ve ever tasted. For appetizers we shared a New Moon roll and Parsnip cream soup, both were delicious and the sushi was so well prepared. It was a huge roll, too. Our main dishes came just before the fireworks started, so we ate and watched from the table instead of going outside. I had the pork loin with goat cheese polenta and Husband had the seared bison with potato gnocchi. Both dishes were absolutely divine and we were so full we couldn’t finish them. That’s not to say we skipped dessert, because we definitely didn’t! We shared the warm chocolate cake, which was a good choice because it was the richest cake I’ve ever had. Deep chocolate flavor in the cake, vanilla ice cream and a salted dark chocolate cream - we almost died, it was so good.
The service was great from start to finish. Our server, Katie, was knowledgeable and very experienced. She never rushed us, wasn’t pushy, and made sure we were happy at each point of our meal. She made herself available without hovering, which I really appreciated, and she put up with our silly questions about the restaurant. Want to know how often the $1,000 pour of Port gets ordered? About once a year, she said.
Our incredible view aside, we felt the atmosphere apart from the fireworks to be a bit lacking. It was much louder in there than either of us anticipated, and the dress code was not enforced. I had made sure we packed nice clothes for this meal and there were nicely dressed guests, but there were many more pairs of shorts, sneakers, tank tops and baseball caps. It was disappointing. We also were amazed at how many families were being seated after 9pm with small children. Our kids barely make it past 7 without eating dinner and there is no way we’d survive eating that late on vacation.
All told, we loved our experience and want to return at the first opportunity.
