dining

Saturday night we dined out at the Raglan Road Irish Pub in Downtown Disney.

The reason for the hour and a half trip to Orlando being to meet up with some friends of Lea's who were visiting from Blackpool, England and staying at the Disney Vacation Club.

The pub itself is apparently authentic having been made in Ireland by Irish craftsman and then shipped to the U.S. along with items of reclaimed furniture sourced from public houses (pubs) and Victorian houses that date back over a hundred years. The management company is also Irish although I felt the overwhelming pressure from Disney probably dressed the place up a little more than the original design may have called for. In other words, for a pub, it's kind a posh looking!

We were there for the food and that's exactly what we went straight after. I had the fish'n'chips,

and Lea had the Shepherds Pie:

While both were good, these are two dishes that restaurants routinely fall short on and I have to admit they could have been better. Why the criticism, well for me these are a couple of staple comfort foods that I have been eating all my life and unless I get the comforted feeling from the dish I feel a little disappointed.

Firstly, the fish'n'chips were kind of boring, the chips to me tasted a little of onions, probably the same oil they do their 'crispy onions' in, and the fish had virtually zero flavor. I mean couldn't they have found a good beer batter recipe to use? There must be hundreds out there!

The shepherds pie certainly looked good in presentation and the flavor was okay, but where were the vegetables? We have potato on top, per the usual design, and the minced meat at the heart of the dish but where were the carrots, peas and miscellaneous other types that are traditionally used? Oh well, presentation versus flavor and apparently presentation won!

Moving forward, after consuming a couple of pints of the good stuff Boddington's and Guinness (when in Rome and all that!) we headed for dessert and agreed upon the trio of bread and butter pudding, raspberries and ice cream accompanied with a very decadent chocolate mousse. All three were excellent! Great flavor, great consistency, we both thoroughly enjoyed them.

And so, we come to the end of our meal, but not quite! To finish we ordered a couple of Irish coffees that were equally delicious!

All in all it was a good meal and something Disney should be proud of, maybe I am just a little too picky when it comes to food I have enjoyed all my life. Would I go back? Sure, there were plenty of other items on the menu that caught my eye, I just happened to be craving fish'n'chips!

Dave
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http://www.poscribes.com