Groom POV:
Back at our own hotel, we had a spot of rest before a casual, laid-back meal at small roadside diner called Vicky and Al's. It's a bit of a hole in the wall.
Keepin' it caj with this year's must have fashion accessory: an adorable Yeti-cat.
Serious cat drams!
Victoria and Albert's! Britain may have lost the American Revolutionary War, but it still maintains a small outpost dedicated to Victorian-style gastronomic and aesthetic excess in the Grand Floridian.
Fancy: Chargers!
Fancier: Not one but two oversized ornate vases!
Fanciest: A harpist who plays Broadway show tunes and Disney music!
While we were on our Disneymoon there was a story making the rounds of content-starved news outlets about
a Los Angeles restaurant with a bottled water menu, for which there was much tut-tutting from the tut-tutters and teeth-gnashing from the teeth-gnashers, because OMG! you can get that stuff from the tap, rich people. The bottled water menu at Victoria and Albert's, featuring water from around the world, must be flying under the media radar, then. And while luxury frequently tips over into absurd levels of excess, we opted for a bottle of mid-range pH Speyside Glenlivet from Scotland, because: 1) the tasting notes of MK-area tap water are equal parts "swampy" and "boggy," and 2) at $8.00 a bottle, this imported Scottish water was less than a bottle of Evian from GF's in-room dining service. The water tasted great, too, clean and smooth, like drinking air.
After a perusal of the wine menu, we opted for a celebratory bottle of Laurent-Perrier Rose. We wanted champagne, something nice but not so expensive or rare that we couldn't afford a bottle for every anniversary. We didn't get a photo of the bottle, but they did give us the cork, and it now looks like this on our Christmas tree:
There are a lot of reasons to be wary of the V&A dining experience, but it's about as accessible a fine dining experience as anyone could hope for. For me, service is key, because the wait staff can often come across as snobby and aloof. This isn't the case at V&A, where every staff member we encountered was friendly while still maintaining the decorum of fine dining. It's a difficult balance to strike, but they succeed.
The meal began with an amuse bouche of tuna three ways: summer roll, zaru soba with a sauce coriander and soy, and seared ahi tuna topped with caviar. Even though DW hates tuna on a traumatic-childhood-experience-with-tuna level, the quality of the produce and the preparation was such that she ate the whole thing and enjoyed it. Soba is something I love--I make it a lot and order it frequently at restaurants, but this bite-sized portion was the best I've ever had, and speaks to the quality of the ingredients and execution of the kitchen.
We were evidently so enamoured by the presentation and quality of the amuse bouche, we only remembered we needed to take photos after we had entirely consumed it. We did better from then on.
Next came the first of three (!) bread courses. A wise decision on behalf of the pastry chef to settle any potential nervous diners by sending out his grandmother's recipe for a humble dinner roll with a light, creamy butter. I love it when restaurants take something familiar and execute it to a degree that elevates it to the level of fine dining through top-notch ingredients and flawless execution.
I started with a Spanish-flavoured octopus a la plancha, which was enjoyable but nothing truly memorable. The small dusting of smoked paprika in the corner really elevated the dish and is the kind of attention to detail that would be a hallmark of the meal.
The real superstar was DW's poussin (young chicken) on top of a jicama salad and a caper berry on the side is quite possibly the single best thing she's ever eaten at Disney or anywhere else. It would be hard for any subsequent dish to top it, but they came close.
The Fish course. I upgraded my selection to a pan-roasted turbot in a Meyer lemon beurre blanc with giant capers. I could have had a bowl of the sauce and drank it like soup. The fish was moist and flaky and the sauce light with the flavourful punch of the capers. It was my highlight of the night.
DW opted for a giant seared scallop over top a cauliflower puree, a combination that would come up so frequently throughout our trip, I'm going to go ahead and call it a food trend. It was good, but not memorable. The portion sizes of these dishes are reasonably-sized, and certainly larger than necessary for the number of courses they're throwing at you.
Second bread course was a fluffy savoury brioche with a herbed butter.
For the next course, I had a veal napoleon. I can't resist crispy sweetbreads, so that choice was a given.
DW zagged over to the vegetarian column with a wild mushroom gnocchi. Maybe in another restaurant in another town where the poussin dish didn't exist, this would have been the clear winning dish of the night, but it was a close runner-up. The mushroom flavours were intense alongside the soft gnocchi and firm peas for textural contrast.
Third and last bread course: a multigrain baguette with fleur-de-sel butter. It was very earthy in a slightly malty way, with a nice, crisp crust and soft interior. DW was wisely pacing herself, so I ended up eating her portion as well. I hate to say that bread this good is disposable, but if you're a light eater and want to, somehow, make it all the way to the dessert course without passing out from a full stomach, skipping the bread is the way to go.
Can I just pause here and remark about the dullness of main courses at Disney dining, and of main courses in general. I always find the appetizer and fish courses in a menu more engaging than the mains, because they aren't subject to the meat-and-two-veg constraints of the course. So despite being well-executed and tasty, the mains weren't as creative or well-composed as the previous dishes.
Nicole loves pork belly, and it's hard for her not to order it. The consistency of the belly was the very definition of "melt-in-your-mouth" and the firm beets added sweetness to compliment the pork and looks like candy on the plate.
I had lamb, composed of different cuts, with root vegetables and a stalk of burnt rosemary for aroma. Again, it was delicious, but we were reaching meat saturation for the meal.
During the mains, the harpist played "As Time Goes By," which is probably a coincidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had somehow found out about our wedding and its theme and made the moment happen just for us.
Cheese course! Perhaps my favourite course. The cheese menu really appealed to me; it was a selection of parmigiano reggiano, gouda and stilton. I mentioned that stilton is my favourite cheese, and they added a second piece. As good as the stilton was (a clean flavour, but I like mine a little nuttier) my favourite of the evening was the reggiano with a piece of fig cake.
Nicole went with a white chocolate gelato instead of cheese, which was very smooth and delicate, not too sweet unlike most white chocolate things, and a good palette cleanser.
Dessert! I went for the peach four ways, which included a blood peach pocket that popped and oozed intensely peachy juice, poached peach slices over top a peach jelly, and torn pieces of peach sponge cake. A yoghurt panna cotta with a crunchy cracker bottom helped keep the dish light and balanced. It didn't necessarily come together as a whole, but very tasty with a lot of great ideas.
Nicole went for the chocolate soufflé with a Godiva chocolate sauce, dark chocolate ice cream and a spicy crisp. It had an amazing chocolate flavour, ranging from sharp bitterness to soft sweetness, but it was a little too much, and she couldn't eat the whole thing.
Then they brought us cookies, which they up and packed for us right away. I'm going to guess they have to do that a lot. Then they brought a rose for DW, which is quite the charming touch. Then they brought a loaf of orange poppy seed pound cake. Then they brought a velvet-lined wheelbarrow and rolled us back to our hotel rooms. The last detail is a lie, but they probably would have done it if we'd asked. They did offer us transportation, even though they knew we were at the GF.
We waddled back to our hotel room, and enjoyed our Wishes view again.
NEXT UP: Magic in Magic Kingdom! I am currently writing up the MK photoshoot and I will post it as soon as I am done! Sorry for the delay!