It's hard to believe that we have been home from Disney for a month already. Time has absolutely flown by. While we were at Disney I had told myself I would come home and write a review for each table service restaurant we ate at as soon as I could so that I would remember the specific details of the meal. Well, with my Grandmother passing away while we were at Disney World, then heading straight to Iowa for the funeral seven hours after returning home, it was a little crazy around here. So, today starts the first of ten reviews over the coming weeks, and I can only hope I remember the details I tried to focus on while we were there :)
Our first meal of the trip was at Portobello in Downtown Disney. We had reservations at 6:30 as we knew we would be driving all day long and were hoping for a nice, relaxing way to kick off our vacation. We had never eaten here, but it had always been high on my list as a new one I wanted to try. This was the first year it was available on the dining plan, so we happily booked this one 180 days before our trip and anxiously looked forward to it all summer long. I only wish the meal itself had lived up to the hype I had created inside my head!
It started off pretty promising. Since we started our trip a little earlier than we had planned, we arrived in Disney around 2:00 pm. Our room was ready at All Star Sports so we were able to get moved in and settled by 3:30. We decided to head on over to Downtown Disney and see if we could get an earlier seating. By the time we got there, it was about 4:30 and there were only a few guests in the restaurant. It was looking good to us. After explaining our situation to the hostess, she said that she could seat us then, and that she would be with us in a moment. We stood in the lobby with another family for what seemed like 10 minutes. I did not time it, but it definitely was a while. She finally came back and took both of our families to our tables. Once we were there we sat, and sat, and sat waiting for our server. Finally, our server arrived and took our drink orders. Then we waited a long time again for them to be brought to us. Finally we placed our order and sat back to enjoy the meal. A few minutes into our wait, they sat a very large family at the table to next to us. The table was so close that we literally had to get up and move our table over into the aisle as they were continually hitting my arm with every little move they made. The bad part was that the restaurant still wasn't that crowded at that time so they could have seated them anywhere in the restaurant. However, we fixed the problem and were ready for our meals.
While we were waiting they brought us a basket of bread. I am a huge bread eater so I was thrilled! However, I was quickly disappointed. One of the breads had a very odd taste to it, and the other was so hard I could barely cut it to spread butter on it. Next came our entrees. I had settled on the Chicken Farfalle (snow peas, asparagus, tomatoes, and parmigiano cream sauce) and my husband had the Ravioli Gigante (handcrafted ricotta and spinach filled pasta, tomato, basil, and toasted garlic). Truthfully, I can't remember what my daughter had, but I am guessing it was pizza as that was her main meal every day. My husband really enjoyed the taste of the ravioli, but the sauce was super thin. It was like a broth. This may be authentic Italian, but he just didn't like the consistency of it. However, he did enjoy the taste as did my daughter who kept stealing bites of it. I wish I could say the same about my Farfalle. I think it would have been really good if I had ordered it without the snow peas. I personally like snow peas, but apparently not on my pasta. The taste was so strong, that I could taste it in every bite I had, whether I actually ate a snow pea or not. It was very garden tasting (I know that is a weird description, but I don't know any other way to express this taste). I only ate about half the meal, and was really looking forward to dessert.
The dessert was not that great either. I actually had to look at the website to see the dessert options to remember what I ate. I had the Fragole con Saba e Caramello. Although it sounds really fancy, it was just berry sorbet with marinated strawberries. By berry sorbet they mean the strongest raspberry flavored sorbet you can imagine with super soggy overcooked strawberries. I guess it was a little too fancy for me. Just give me plain ice cream please :). My husband had the Chocolate Paradis, which was Rich chocolate layer cake, chocolate ganache and toffee crunch. He was actually pretty happy with his, though it wasn't the best cake he's ever had. He is a dessert person, but he probably wouldn't go back just for the dessert alone. My daughter loved her dessert. It was a create your own sundae. They brought her ice cream, chocolate sauce, mickey sprinkles, and whipped cream (all in separate bowls) and she was able to mix to her hearts content. She was in heaven.
As soon as we ordered our dessert, we said that we were also ready for our check. We had been there a long time, and were ready to head to Disney Quest for some fun before collapsing in our hotel. However, even after taking our time eating our dessert, we were still waiting on our check. My husband finally had to go looking for someone to get our server so that we could get our check and go. I don't know if our server had too many tables, or was just forgetful, but we had to ask multiple times for refills and various items throughout our meal. Slow would be an understatement to describe our meal.
So, would I go back? Maybe. The food wasn't the greatest, and the service was far from good, but maybe they were having an off night. I definitely would not pay out of pocket for this meal. Our bill came to over $80 for the three of us, and that was just entree, colas, and dessert for each of us. Nothing special. If I had the dining plan (for free) again, and needed one more meal to fill the week I might would try it again in a few years. It is definitely at the bottom of my list though. With so many wonderful restaurants at Disney World, I would definitely choose several others over Portobello!
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