Hungry Are The Damned (October 2007)

This space reserved for reviews still currently in progress over at the DIS from our 10-day October 2007 trip to WDW. We love the Food & Wine Festival so much ... if we were obscenely rich we'd just stay at WDW for the entire length of the festival. It's a dream of ours. ;-)

Reviews will include the following:

Kimonos Sushi Bar (Swan & Dolphin Resort)
Hurricane Hannah's (Beach Club Resort)
Jiko (Animal Kingdom Lodge)
Crystal Palace Character Breakfast (Magic Kingdom)
Casey's (Magic Kingdom)
Boardwalk Bakery (Boardwalk Inn)
Bistro Paris (Epcot)
Yacht Club Galley (Yacht Club Resort)
Afternoon Tea (Grand Floridian Resort)
Spoodles (Boardwalk Inn)
Kona Cafe (Polynesian Resort)
Food & Wine Pairing Le Cellier (F&W Festival - Epcot)
Room Service, Part I (Beach Club Resort)
Party for the Senseless (F&W Festival - Epcot)
Sc-Fi Dine-in Theatre (Disney-MGM)
Scotch & Food Pairing Rose & Crown Pub (F&W Festival - Epcot)
Boulangerie Patissiere (Epcot)
Room Service, Part II (Beach Club Resort)
ESPN Club (Boardwalk Inn)
Narcoosee's (Grand Floridian Resort)
Yorkshire County Fish Shop (Epcot)
Multiple Food & Wine Festival Booths (Epcot)

And a few birthday surprises, too!!


Let Us Celebrate the Start of Vacation with the Joining of Chocolate to Peanut Butter...(Beaches & Cream, Beach Club Resort; 10/15/07)

In years past when we've arrived at the Beach Club Villas for the start of an October vacation, Jason and I have always hoofed it over to Epcot to immediately begin devouring the F&W Festival booths scattered around the World Showcase. This year, thanks to an obscenely early flight from St. Louis which meant that we were out of bed by 3AM, we decided to approach the first day of our vacation in a more relaxed manner.

Beaches and Cream sounded like the perfect way to ease into our 10-day visit and thanks to good luck and good timing we were standing at the podium by 12PM on Monday afternoon. The wait for a table was about 20 minutes, but there were plenty of seats at the counter. A friendly reminder to those of you who may not be familiar with Beaches and Cream - all tables and counter seats are first-come, first-serve - the restaurant does not accept dining reservations. Jay and I opted for the counter - we hadn't had anything to eat since stopping at Starbucks at 5:15AM on the way to our gate at the airport and our stomachs were beginning to digest themselves.

We both ordered a single cheeseburger with french fries ... I stuck with American cheese for my burger while Jay decided to be all exotic and order his with cheddar cheese.

Plain old normal American cheeseburger - pillbox not included

Cheddah cheese-ah burgah

The food was tasty and hot - typical grilled burgers and crispy fries. From our seats at the counter we could see all the action at the grill and the ice cream fountain - nothing was cooked or prepared until a guest placed an order. So while it's reasonable to assume that our burgers were pre-formed beef patties pulled from the refrigerator, they weren't sitting under a heat lamp getting served up to the first person who ordered one. I'd estimate that it took about 15 minutes from the time we placed our order until we received our burgers, which is not bad at all considering that it was lunchtime. Hunger may have played a part, but Jay and I agreed that these were mighty fine cheeseburgers. And the fries were great - crispy, but not crunchy, with hot, pulpy potato goodness oozing forth with each bite.

**Brenda's Dining Tip #68: Dip your fries in cheap yellow mustard instead of catsup / ketchup. It's like eating a glob of sunshine with every mouthful.**

Eeeeeeew! "A glob of sunshine with every mouthful"??? Where the hell did that come from? Who replaced my booze with Pollyanna Punch?

Anyway, be sure to save room for dessert when eating at Beaches and Cream, because that's what the place is really known for. And the portions are huge, so I highly recommend splitting dessert with the one you love unless you are having a Moe-ment, defined as: "Hey; no sharing!" Jason and I ordered a No Way Jose, which we had tried last year. In a word, it's fabulous! Chocolate and vanilla ice cream smothered with peanut butter and hot fudge toppings...covered with whipped cream, peanut butter and chocolate morsels, and crowned with a single bright red cherry all for the bargain price of eight dollars.

Now, without further ado, the close-up you've all been waiting for...Every Dieter's Nightmare and The International Ice Cream Association's Centerfold for the month of October...

The No Way Jose!!

Our waitress noticed that I was taking pictures of the food and asked if we wanted to have our picture taken with the dessert before we destroyed it. Bwahahahahahahaha!! Everyone's a comedian!

Dessert cleavage ... I swear it's unintentional

The camera loves Jay and it mocks me ... I wish I could say that I'm one of those people who look better in person than in a picture, but I'm just as silly looking in real life as several people here on the DISboards can actually attest to now.

What can I tell you about this dessert? It's superb. The peanut butter topping is creamy and rich while the hot fudge is thick and chocolaty - it's like eating a melted Reese's Peanut Butter Cup with ice cream. I think if I had a single suggestion to make it would be that the dessert be served entirely with vanilla ice cream rather than with chocolate and vanilla. I found that the vanilla ice cream complemented the other two flavors much better than the chocolate ice cream, which seemed to be warring with the hot fudge. But despite that nit-pick, this remains hands-down the best ice cream dessert we've had on WDW property. If you like peanut butter and chocolate this is the choice for you!