Alright, guys. In for a dime, in for a dollar. Here's the story, with complete details (minus the smushy parts
).
Our evening at Victoria & Albert’s
You know, sometimes, just when you think you can’t top your last experience, it really does get better. We visited V&As in January 2007 for a late 15th anniversary celebration, and we ate in the main room. For our 20th anniversary (which was July 26, 2011, but we were celebrating early this time – you got to do Disney when you can get Disney, I say), I wanted to do something different, I persuaded my somewhat reluctant spouse to go to the Queen Victoria Room instead.
H. had good reason to be reluctant about the Queen Victoria Room – mostly because it’s the same price as the Chef’s Table but it isn’t the Chef’s Table (the Chef's Table is a private room off to the side of the kitchen where you can watch them cook) – and he almost persuaded me to change our reservation to a regular one but in the end, I held fast and we went to the Queen Victoria Room.
We didn’t want to drive (because we planned to do the wine flight. Hey, if you’re doing V&A’s, you got to do it all the way, kwim?
), so we’d planned to travel by Disney transportation both there and back. When we arrived, we were ushered into the side room by the hostess and greeted by our two servers: Jack and Cherie. Jack and Cherie met 20 years ago while working at the Coral Reef in Epcot, back when the Coral Reef was Disney’s premier park restaurant (our server in 2007 had also trained at the Coral Reef). They married and switched over to Victoria & Albert’s, where they’ve been ever since. They were very cute to watch. Jack took care of the larger details – bringing the plates, cleaning up the crumbs between meals – while Cherie (whom Jack often called Ma Cherie (“my dear” in French – it was very cute) oversaw the details of each course.
Let me start by saying that the service offered by Jack and Cherie is my perfect vision of restaurant service. Jack and Cherie were attentive but not overly present, happy to answer a question if you had one, friendly but not constantly there. Arrogant waiters and waiters who try to be "your friend for the evening" seem to be very popular these days (we encountered an overly friendly waiter at California Grill a few nights later. As you'll read when I get to it, I wasn't a huge fan of our waiter at Cal Grill.
). Jack and Cherie, though, were both extremely knowledgeable about all the dishes but neither arrogant about their knowledge nor overly friendly. They knew the evening was for the two of us, not the four of us. They were excellent.
There were three tables in the Queen Victoria Room that evening. We were the first to arrive and were given one of the tables nearest the fireplace. H. had ordered flowers for the table. It was a beautiful arrangement of modern flowers, although it caused Cherie fits because she kept snagging on one of the stems when she would come over to serve me.
The main difference between the Queen Victoria Room and the main dining room is that in the main dining room you’re given a menu of the evening's choices when you arrive and you order your selections from the menu. However, when you book your table in the Queen Victoria Room (and the same is true for the Chef’s Table), they ask you if there are any foods you prefer or dislike, then they build your menu in advance from your answers. We had told them that we don’t eat pork or veal and that we love seafood and game.
(Btw, I found out that evening that you can also make special requests. My favourite item in 2007 was H.’s amazing truffled egg, which he kindly gave me a few bites of. I mentioned to Jack that I was sad that it wasn’t on the menu this time, and he said that had I requested it, they would have made it for me. Unfortunately, it takes 2 days to make, so it wasn’t an option spur of the moment.)
We were given our menus and discovered that it was much more extensive than in the main dining room. Our main dining room menu in 2007 had included an Amuse Bouche, 4 main courses (we'd had 3 selections for each course), a cheese course, a dessert (again, our choice) and coffee. Our Victoria Room menu had an Amuse Bouche, 6 courses, a cheese course, a sorbet course, a dessert and coffee. Each item had already been paired with a wine for the wine pairings.
TR secrets revealed: how Annie knows the exact name of every single dish…
Jack asked if we’d like the wine pairings, and we said of course, since we weren’t driving, and especially since it began with bubbly – Tattinger Prestige Cuvée. We never turn down champagne!
Our meal began with an Amuse-Bouche of soft-poached Quail Egg with Galilee Caviar (left), Burrata Alla Panna (a soft cheese similar to fresh mozzarella) with Tomatoes and Olives (middle), and Lobster Panna Cotta (right).
As you can see, I only remembered to start taking pictures after I’d begun eating!
It also included Roasted Butternut Squash Soup, which was delightful.
The next course was Maine Lobster and Mango with White Sturgeon Caviar and Passion Fruit Pearls, served with a lovely white wine from the Loire valley in France. I adore both lobster and mango, so I loved this course. It was a great mix of flavours and tastes - salty, sweet and lobster-y.
If you look in the background of the picture, you see a plate with fresh croutons. Cherie sautéed these at the table in an oil and salt combination of our choosing. I chose the fresh pressed poppyseed oil from France, combined with a coarse sea salt. H. chose the fresh pressed olive oil with pink Hawaiian sea salt.
Here is the presentation of oils and salts that we got to choose from.
At first, I felt a little odd taking pictures at the meal, but Cherie and Jack encouraged me to take them, telling me that when they go to to fine restaurants in Orlando or elsewhere, Chef Hunnel, the head chef at Victoria & Albert’s, asks them to take pictures and to report back so that he can see what the other chefs are doing. (Who knew chefs could be so sneaky!
) Btw, to me, this demonstrates exactly what I mean about great servers. Cherie and Jack always tried to put us at ease, to make our meal as pleasurable as possible. This included telling me that far from looking like a dorky, tacky tourist, my picture-taking was welcome.
It was the next course where the meal really took off. It was Cold “Smoked” Niman Ranch Lamb with Fuji Apple and Curry Dressing, served with a lovely German Riesling. Wow! The lamb was quick cooked and served on a pierced dish, under which dry ice had been placed. The result was that the lamb was both warm on the inside and chilled on the outside. The Fuji apple and curry dressing perfectly complemented the lamb. Without question, this was our favourite dish of the evening and the Reisling worked beautifully with it.
If you look carefully at the photo, you’ll see dark streaks across the plate. That was the “smoke” rising from the holes in the plate, chilling the lamb.
The meal just stayed at that high level. Next was our second favourite dish: Alaskan King Salmon Cooked Tableside on a Heated Himalayan Salt Rock. The hostess came over to prepare it for us tableside on a small grill topped by the slab of Himalayan salt rock. The dish was Asian in its flavours, with pickled mushrooms and seasoned edamame and served over wild rice with a soy reduction sauce. Amazing.
Note the chopsticks at the top.
Next we were given Roasted Quail Forelle with Asian Pears. This was paired with a very light red from the California Piedmont region. I don’t have a strong memory of the taste of the dish, although I remember its textures as being both crunchy and chewy, but the pictures can’t do justice to its beauty. The yellow balls on either side are the Asian Pears, with the quail in the center in a double reduction sauce. This dish needs two pictures for its unique construction.
The quail wasn’t a favourite dish for either of us, but it was the most beautifully presented dish of the evening.
The next dish was also beautifully presented: Poulet Rouge with Hedgehog Mushrooms and Truffle Gnocchi, accompanied by a Rhone red. The truffles were actually whipped to create a truffle foam that coated the dish. It resulted in an interesting taste experience, like a memory of truffles (as if I know what truffles really tasted like…
), since the truffles weren’t there. Chicken always seems to me to be a secondary dish, so I wouldn’t have ordered it if I’d been given a menu of choices. However, H. had the poulet rouge both last time (it was the dish that came with the truffled egg) as well as this time, and both times it was excellent, so I’m glad it was on our menu that night.
The last main course dish was Australian Kobe Beef with Garlic Potato Purée. It was prepared simply but perfectly, with a reduction sauce on the side. Now, certainly, there is a reason why the Kobe beef was the last item of the main courses. It is famous for its flavour and its tenderness. What was interesting, though, was that after so many other amazing, gorgeous and sometimes exotic dishes, the beef didn’t stand out but instead fit seamlessly into the whole - one more fantastic taste for the evening. That made me realize what an incredible job the chefs did in taking relatively ordinary food and making it extraordinary. It also made sense to me that they allowed the Kobe beef to stand simply on its own merits, since all it needed was excellent preparation, which it received. It was accompanied by a fantastic full bodied red from Sonoma Valley.
Following this course, we were given a cheese course, presented on a lovely wooden board and accompanied by an assortment of nuts, chutney and bread to match the cheese. I wish I could remember what the cheeses were right now, but after 7 half glasses of wine (plus a 6 year old port with the cheese – and Cherie gave me an extra glass once H. told her how much I like port), my memory was wearing a little thin. I remember there was a blue and a stilton and a comté, and that’s about it.
The Presentation:
(you can see our flowers in the left corner there. See that one long stem...)
On the plate:
I haven’t talked about the bread yet. We were served various breads throughout the evening (in fact, it was when Cherie was trying to serve us bread that she kept getting snagged by the flower arrangement). All were excellent, freshly baked downstairs in the Grand Floridian’s own bakery.
After the cheese course, Jack asked if we’d like coffee. H. doesn’t drink coffee but I do, and since I knew there was no way I’d make it to an Epcot late emh without coffee, I was happy to order it fully leaded. They have a special blend created just for Victoria & Albert’s, but I am a huge fan of Kona coffee, which isn’t so easy to find 100% pure and not in a blend of beans. When Jack said that pure Kona was a option, I took it.
I love how they serve coffee at Victoria & Albert’s, which is the same in both the main dining room and the Queen Victoria Room. The water percolates up from the bottom, passing through the coffee as it rises. It’s a fun process to watch.
A sorbet course followed. It was a Chartreuse-Pineapple Sorbet served with Orange Panna Cotta. It was a lovely transition, and it probably gave me the breathing space I needed in order to eat my dessert, as I was getting very, very full by now.
Dessert was chocolate, of course! A Mocha Scented Tanzanie Chocolate Mousse Timbale served with a chocolate Cocktail. Okay, even though, I was very, very full, I found room for every bite. I’ll show you the picture, then I’ll describe it.
The presentation of their desserts is incredible, as you can see. The hoop around the chocolate is spun sugar and that’s edible gold decorating it, punctuated with one violet flower. The mousse itself was in the middle, served in an edible chocolate pot and topped with crunchy chocolate crumbles. Yes, how many different tastes and textures can you find on this plate? Behind it on the right you can also see what looks like my glass of port. It isn’t. That’s the chocolate cocktail, which is liquid chocolate, fairly bitter but with a bit of sweetness, to add another taste and texture of chocolate.
Okay, really, we were done. However, we weren’t really done. Jack came around and offered us an assortment of truffles to finish. We noticed that the couple next to us had had theirs boxed up to go, so we asked for the same.
Speaking of the other couples, you know how I said that we arrived before the other two couples? Well, H. and I tend to be pretty leisurely eaters at moments like this, so even though we were the first to be seated, we were the last to leave. The other two couples there were also celebrating special occasions. The couple next to us were on their honeymoon. They lived and worked in the Research Triangle in Durham, NC, where H. went to university, so we talked to them a bit about their life in North Carolina and our life in Canada. The other couple was farther from us, so we didn’t get to talk to them, but they were local and were there celebrating her birthday. Each couple had some dishes that were the same as ours and some that weren’t, depending on whether they liked veal or game or seafood.
At 10 pm (yes, that’s 4 ½ hours later!), we were done. Jack offered to take a picture of us both, and then he showed us the kitchen and introduced us to Chef Hunnel’s sous-chef, who was in charge that evening since Chef Hunnel was away on a Disneycruise (woo-hoo for Chef Hunnel! I love how Disney people do Disney things, even in their off-time.)
memo to everyone: always take your Victoria & Albert’s picture
before you dine. Both times we’ve taken it afterward, and both times, I’ve thought we look a little worse for the wine flight…
Our plan after the meal was to take the monorail over to Epcot and go to the Friday late emh. As you might imagine, I was a bit woozy from our meal. However, we did manage to successfully navigate our way from monorail to monorail and into Epcot.
All I really wanted to do that evening was ride Spaceship Earth with my honey and play a few games afterward before going home (using those parkhoppers for all they were worth), but after we'd played the human skeleton game a couple of times and put together the skeleton in only 2 mins. (I was sobering up!), we happened to notice that it was about 10 min. before midnight. We quickly decided to go over to Soarin’ to see if we could get on the second to the last flight of the night.
Why the
second to the last flight? Well, last trip, we’d done a late emh and discovered a little secret. If you’re on the second to the last flight and the last flight isn’t full, if you ask the CMs will let you stay on and ride again – which means, DOUBLE SOARIN’!
You have to be lucky and catch the second to the last flight, though – too early or too late and it won’t work.
It was close to midnight when we got on line. What’s also fun about it is that you don’t know if you’re going to get a double Soarin’ until you’re at the front, and even then you’re guessing a bit. We crossed our fingers, watched the crowd, and noticed there were still a few people left when we boarded. Oh yeah! Double Soarin’ it was!
The perfect end to a perfect evening.
Back home at AKV at 1 am:
And one last note, guess what request I've already put in for celebrating our 25th???
Only next time, I'm going to remember to ask for the truffled eggs!
now I'm going to have I look that clip up when I get home 
