Ep45: The Grand Floridian Cafe

Everything is needed out of the house to grown up and a mouse. This is episode 45 of Two Grown Ups and a Mouse. In today's episode, we will be talking about the Grand Floridian Cafe, located on the first floor of the Grand Floridian next to 1900 Park Fair. Hey there, I'm AJ.

I'm Andrew. And you're listening to Two Grown Ups and a Mouse. The podcast. The podcast.

That's why you're listening. Right. Unless you're watching and then it's the video cast. Right.

The vlog. So glad you found us, glad you joined us. Glad you subscribed it. If you haven't, why not?

I'm sure. Two Grown Ups and a Mouse, social media. Everywhere, Two Grown Ups and a Mouse, our website, two Grown Ups and a Mouse.com. Right.

So if you listen to previous episodes, you heard that we went to Walt Disney World, as we often do for Memorial Day weekend. It was busy, but not as busy as previous holiday weekends have been. Yeah. I mean, the same thing happened Easter weekend.

We thought it was going to be a little bit busier than it was. We think that we could be mistaken. This might have the contributing factor for why it's not been so busy. The park entrance one day ticket rates go up significantly when there are holidays or busier park days.

They do raise the prices. Right. Right. So it was the three day weekend.

So they had the more expensive prices. We took a picture of them and Animal Kingdom. Wasn't it 137 for one park one day? I think it was something up there.

135, 137. And that's a little on the expensive side when typically what's a one day pass, 110, 115? One at your kingdom is the most. I think the other one, I think they're still squeaking under 100.

Right. But let's say for arguments, even if it's on the high end regular 117 and now you're $135, $20 per person. If you have four or five people, that's $100 difference. That's a few meals.

You know, that's lunch for everybody or dinner for everybody or depending on where you eat. It could be lunch and dinner if you share food. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So it was busy, but it wasn't too too busy.

We went up Friday night so that we could start enjoying everything on Saturday. And on Saturday, we went to Disney Springs. We spent quite a bit of time at Disney Springs when we talking about that in future episodes. One of the things we did was we ate at the food trucks.

So that'll be an episode in and of itself. That was a good experience. We spent a lot of time there, then went back to go relax and then we're, you would think since it was just a day or two ago, I would remember this. What word we go to dinner Saturday night?

Where did we go to dinner on Saturday night? Oh, OK, so it's not just me. Yeah. So we went out to eat Saturday night and then Sunday we went to lunch at the Grand Floridian quick service again, another episode and for dinner on Sunday night, we ate at the Grand Floridian Cafe, which is what we're going to talk about right now.

So we actually drove home today is Memorial Day. We drove home this morning, hence why the podcast isn't being uploaded until Tuesday, but we're going to start posting on Tuesdays now, aren't we? Yeah, I think we'll try it and see what happens. Yeah.

So anybody that's used to us posting every Monday, don't be alarmed that we're posting late. We're just changing it. We're going to be posting on Tuesdays this way. When we do go away and we get back, it'll give us a little more time to edit this for you.

That's right. So the Grand Floridian Cafe, that's located on the first floor, the Grand Floridian, as I said, in the intro. And if you go on the Walt Disney World dot com website, you'll see that it gets $2 or $2.00, which means it runs between $15 and $34.99 per adult for the entrees. That's right.

And we have a menu pulled up here and it's actually 16 to 34. I think they use that as their guide. You know, like, the one dollar sign is anything under $15 and, you know, the $3 signs is anything, $35 and up. So this one covers the full gamut, then.

Exactly. And we started with the house braided for eigants and railroad with tomato jam and grilled artichoke. Well, do you like it? It was good.

It was, I thought it would have been a little, it takes it like a typical fried mozzarella. But there were only two pieces. They were only two. They were.

But they were good size. Well, they were about the size of a slice of tomato. If you took a medium size tomato and cut a slice out of it, that's pretty much out of the fried mozzarella was two and a half inches, three inches square. And it was funny because they served it with artichokes.

I'm not, I don't hate artichokes. I do eat spinach and artichoke dip and I enjoy that very much. But when I look at artichokes, they kind of have a very dull color. So they're not, they don't look that appetizing to me.

But because it was on the plate, I decided to try it and they did serve the artichokes with a nice thick balsamic and a red and it was very tasty. Sure. And I said to, I was like, I'm not going to eat this. I said, this is actually enjoyable, but I knew I want to dessert.

So I didn't want to fill up on anything. Right. And I actually wanted to try the seasonal heirloom apple salad, which is organic baby lettuce, heirloom tomatoes, sharp cheddar, pecan brittle and crispy prosciutto with honey apple, then a red, which sounds really good. You said heirloom tomatoes at time for the heirloom apples.

Oh, sorry. Heirloom apples. I'm tired. We drove home today.

And that is, that makes you really tired being on the road. So yeah, I wanted to try that, but I did not because again, the dessert was more important. That's right. I was basically eating everything, knowing that I wanted to get dessert at the end.

So what can I say? Some of the entrees that they have are lobster thermador burger, which is lobster Parmesan, Thermador sauce on the burger. They have grilled pork chops, miso glaze salmon, buttermilk fried chicken, and more. You want to talk about the fried chicken?

We didn't need it. No, but it looked like a, a, a normal piece of chicken on top of the side, which is the way the guy described it was a crispy potatoes, kale, bacon, and sriracha, honey drizzle, kind of all mixed together. And but the, the piece of chicken that was on it was, it was quite, quite large. So one of the servers brought two servings out to another table and we're watching him bring it by and we're like, that looks really good.

So then when he walked back towards us, we're like, what is that? And he's like, Oh, that's a fried chicken. He described it to us and we thought we should have gotten that. That looked really tasty.

So I wanted a lobster burgers as well. And it's basically just a typical burger, but they had some, actually a good chunk of a lobster sitting on top of it as well. So if you want kind of a low rent surf and turf, there you go. Right.

Well, I got the Serline steak and scallops because I mean, definitely talked about this before. I really enjoy scallops and they do prepare them pretty well at Disney. This came with three scallops and a nice portion of the Serline steak. I had ordered a medium rare and it seemed to be prepared properly.

Mine came with cheesy potato gratin asparagus and on the steak was a scandy butter sauce and some roasted tomatoes. I pulled the roasted tomatoes off. Um, I don't mind them on like a pizza, but I'm just not a big fan of roasted tomatoes. And I did take a bite of the steak with the butter sauce on it, but I didn't think it really added anything necessarily.

So I blotted that off, but I'm sure that in the cooking, it probably helped. Yeah, probably. You know, that's why as much as I don't like something, sometimes I'll order things the way they come so that they can prepare it and it can infuse into the flavor, but then I'll just take it off when it gets to me. Sure.

So that's pretty much what I did. And what'd you get? Well, I got the New York strip, which was New York strip was probably a 12 to 14 ounce piece and it comes with mashed potatoes, which they call smashed sour cream and chive red bliss potatoes. Uh, some roasted onions, broccoli, and a house made steak sauce.

It was very light on the sauce on mine, actually on yours as well, what there wasn't that much on it. No, no, the butter, the the scampi sauce, which is basically a butter sauce. It wasn't too much. But I mean, we've had stakes at Disney before that were drowning in it, which is, they don't do that that often.

So which is good because, you know, good steak really doesn't need a lot. Um, the potatoes were good. Uh, some cream and onion type flavor to it, but it still was mashed potatoes. Yeah, I really liked my potato gratin that I got in the asparagus.

I mean, everything was prepared well. But again, I, it's no, no, it wasn't hungry because I was, but I ate half, you know, maybe more than half, but I definitely didn't finish my meal because I knew well, it's not even because you ate, well, you ate probably about half the potatoes, yeah, give or take about half the steak, you ate all the scallops. You had half of maybe your asparagus. I didn't think I had that much.

Maybe a third. Uh, you had about half, well, maybe a third of my brachalini. Yeah, I grabbed a piece of your beer. Yeah.

And then, yeah, you say it goes for dessert. Right. Ordering off at the kids menu can be a great idea sometimes because you can, if you know that there's a dessert you want, but you don't want to fill up. So either getting an appetizer or two or getting order off the kids menu, you can really get some of the flavor of the restaurant without filling up too much.

And then you can enjoy everything. And with our meals, you didn't get a wine this time when we got to Gansman, you usually get a red wine. Well, that's a little different because that's a really good piece of thing. Right.

But, but you had a gin martini. Yeah, I did have a, I had a martini beforehand. A martini is actually really nice before dinner and say, how it's cleanser. You know, for sure, for the hoity toity type.

So, but yeah, and then the way they made it was really good. It wasn't overpowering. Sometimes they don't know how to make some and actually did a lemon peel in it instead of whatever the mollows. Right.

Right. So actually, you know, we just basically how I would like to prepare it. Right. So shout out to the bartender.

Right. Shout out to the bartender. I don't have a shout out. So I thought you had an applause.

Oh, wait. Yeah, I do have it. Thank you. My goodness, you know, I'm going to tell him he needs to move the sound board closer to me so I can do a shout out to the bartender.

Yeah. Yeah. Shout out to the bartender. Is that the secret word?

Well, I'm pointing at the sound word. If you say the word, I don't know. Can I have some green slime? Falling ahead.

That's Nickelodeon, not Disney. Oh, we'll get to. I did get a an alcoholic beverage. Oh, so I got a rum swizzle, which was a very sweet drink.

I do tend to drink sweet drinks. And that was really tasty. I enjoyed that very much. I had that with the meal.

We also had some sodas with our meal. So the, what I like at this restaurant is they have a few enhancements. That are, they range from $10 to $11. So not on the expensive side.

Uh, current, their current menu as a memorial day weekend, because you know, sometimes restaurants will change their menu. They'll do it on occasion. Currently they have a two ounce poached lobster, a shrimp skewer, or a scallop skewer. So how did I not wanted to get the sirloin steak?

I could have just gotten the scallop skewer. Well, or you could have gotten, like you said, you, you often order from kids menu. So you could have gotten, uh, you know, there's a, uh, kids create your own entree is basically, so they have a shrimp, shrimp skewer, a beef skewer, a salmon, a cheese flatbread. So you could have gotten like a beef skewer and, uh, you could have basically the same thing, uh, probably just in a much smaller size.

And the kids on trays run from $10 to $15. So again, we don't have kids. So it's not as important to us. No, I do often order from the kids menu.

Um, it's good to know if any of our listeners have children that, you know, $10 to $15 isn't bad, especially at Disney, because the kids on trays typically come with the an appetizer and a main course. Yeah. Or if not, if they don't come with the appetizer, you know, meaning like a soup or they'll come with, well, there's a kid's appetite. You know, one or two sides, right.

Like here they have a chicken noodle soup, fruit salad and a cucumber and tomato salad. And they're all $3 a second. So yeah, so not too too expensive, even if your kids want to eat a few things. Right.

Uh, what we were looking forward to for dessert was we got the chocolate fondue, which chocolate sauce. Well, no, I mean, it wasn't like a standard fondue. No, it wasn't a fondue where they brought out like a pot and a heat source and that kind of thing. Like if you've ever gone to melting pot and had the dessert there, that's, you know, that's a, that's a real fondue here.

They brought up, they brought basically the same kind of chocolate, but it was a pre-warmed. Right. Right. So, and it's, and it's obviously a lot less because it's, I mean, it's, it was $8.

It was only an $8 dessert, which is a fantastic value. All things considered. All of their desserts were $4 to $8, except for they do have a two person dessert sample there, which I thought was really nice. And that was $12.

Definitely something we could look into the next time we go. But the chocolate fondue, they served with marshmallows, pineapple, pound cake, bananas and strawberries. I don't think either of us touched the pineapple. I did have a piece of pineapple, but I'm not, I'm not a big fan of it.

Neither of us are big fans of strawberries. So I don't think we had any of those. You mean marshmallows. I had all the strawberries.

All the strawberries and all the bananas. You had a half of a piece of banana. I had a piece of banana and then I ate all the pound cake, which wasn't, well, they call it angel food cake. So it's not actually pound cake.

So that's why I was falling apart. Yeah. They should change it to pound cake because that really fell apart. It did, but pound cakes a little bit thicker.

It was, but overall, it was pretty good. So yeah, the flavor, the flavor was enjoyable. And I thought that the dessert price was really good. Yeah, for eight bucks.

It's, it's a good, it's a good value. Even better value was the other dessert we ordered, which was the Mickey Dome. That's right. That was only $4.

Yeah, $4. And it was, look, he's magnetic. Anybody that's watching us, I have a. Are you about to do something with your hands again?

A little green man microphone stand, but this little green man fits, you know, in the palm of my hand, kind of like a tennis ball size. Um, well, I don't know where you're going with this, but the Mickey Dome was actually much bigger than tennis ball. You think so? Yeah.

It was probably, it's actually probably about small ball size. No, I didn't think it was that big cut and half maybe. It was about about that being around. Yeah.

Softball cut and half. Alrighty then. I'm always up for semantics. Yeah.

So anyway, Mickey Dome is made of cookies and cream moves and did it, but it was a soft chocolate outside. It wasn't like a fondant or anything. No, it wasn't a fondant. So it was a soft, it was a chocolate sauce kind of covering, right.

And then do chocolate ears and a chocolate tail. And there were two yellow, like M&M type candies for the buttons, and then they served it with the raspberry sauce and some whipped cream. Oh, and a Mickey face whipped cream. That's right.

Yeah. So, but that was only $4. So I thought that was a really great value. And we've said this before and we'll say it again, if we're talking about anything and you're like, wow, that dessert sounds really good.

You know, you're allowed to make reservations to a restaurant and just get dessert. That's right. So, you know, and along with dessert, I got cappuccino because they had cappuccino espresso, you know, all the typical accompaniments that they would have, you know, for dessert, the drink, trices. So I think cappuccino was good.

I was a little surprised. Well, first of all, our server wasn't bad. She wasn't the best because she brought me a cappuccino and no spoon. Well, I think she was a little, she appeared to be a little overworked because she was rushing around a lot.

Maybe that's what it was. I mean, it wasn't a big deal because she brought me a fork, but I was like, I kind of expected a spoon, you know, just because it's not the highest level, you know, it's not a signature dining restaurant. So it's not the highest level, but still it's, you know, it's two dollars line. So it's not the cheapest.

Um, so it's at the top of that middle tier. Yeah. So I was a little surprised, you know, because some of the other restaurants when you get a cappuccino, they'll bring you out like a, um, the sugar crystals. There's another word, rock candy.

Right. They'll bring you a rock candy stick of sugar. So I didn't care that I didn't get the rock candy because I don't use them anyway, but I was a little surprised I didn't get a spoon and I got a fork to stir my coffee with. So that was a little bit unusual.

But the coffee itself tasted really good. And like all the restaurants, they do have a no sugar out of dessert. There, it's the berry pyramid. They have a full bar, as we said, we did order drinks and we think we believe that they've been standardizing the menu for the bar.

Yeah. I used to be a when you go into every restaurant, they would have their own specialty drink in each restaurant and here. And we've noticed this for a while. There's there's the menus are all basically all the same, but put in their own branded folder kind of thing.

Right. Like the cover of that, because they have a separate drink menu and it's pretty extensive and, you know, you name it, they're pretty much all in there. Right. That was where I saw the rum drizzle, but I thought it replaced the bahama mama.

But then when we looked at the menu, we saw, oh, no, the bahama mama is still there as well. So it's, um, they really ran the gamut of the drinks that are available, which was nice. Right. So and we didn't, we didn't, we didn't really mention a lot of this, but the grandfathering cafe is open for breakfast and lunch.

Right. But we're, we mainly talked about dinner because that's what we per token was the dinner menu. But yes, they are available. And it looks like they might be open for like a brunch because if you look at the lunch menu, there is bacon and eggs and eggs benedict.

Steak and eggs. You know, so there's a few pancakes, if you go back, go back a page on the menu. So, but it's breakfast is, you know, the typical seven to 11 lunches, 11 to two dinners. So it's only 11 to two.

That looks like a brunch. Right. Especially because there's no break in between breakfast and lunch. So it might be.

Yeah, their lunch is more of a brunch menu, definitely. If you, and again, we're looking on the A World Disney World.com website or ideas, new experience website, you can access the menus. If you want more information on the grand flirty and cafe that we are talking about, the op-e-ons there was really nice also. It is a nice restaurant and it's what's in the lower level, as we said, the grand floridian kind of back in the, you know, as you're walking in, you kind of turn to the left at the end and you'll basically run right into it.

It's kind of a bright and cheery-ish. Well, there's a lot of windows. So you could see the architecture of the other buildings and that is a beautiful architecture at the grand floridian. It's a very Victorian style.

So it's really something pretty to look at. And I could see a topiary for my seat because we had walked around earlier in the day. We saw so on topiaries. So I could still see that.

And if you do decide to dine there, definitely plan for either before, after your meal to take a walk around the property and don't just walk in the main building because, for example, our cooses, that's, is that signature dining? That is a good and that's located near the boats, near where the boats take off to bring you to the Magic Kingdom. Is it? Yeah, it's $3.

Right. So you'll want to walk around and experience the other things on property. You definitely want to go into the stores there. Right now they're undergoing some renovations.

So the second floor, there was a men's store that's currently undergoing some renovation, but they still have the typical, you know, I'll use my air quotes Disney store on the second floor that has like a little bit of everything, or geared more towards kids and jewelry almost. Well, that's always been there. The more the downstairs is a lot of the foods and snacks and so a little bit of hotel merchandise. Well, grand flirting is considered DVC or part of it is that new building that they put up a number of years ago, but the new where building that's DVC, the rest is just a hotel.

And whenever there's a DVC, they make sure that they have more, okay, air quotes, real food, you know, they'll have a refrigerated section where you can get food that you can put in your refrigerator in your room. Right. And food that you can prepare so they have eggs and they'll have, you know, things to make sandwiches, etc, etc. So as opposed to right.

So the one small store, as you're passing it, when you're going towards the restaurant, it's a very small store. They have the food there, but they also do have a decent selection of DVC clothing. They had Duni DVC purses and some other knickknacks and kitchen essentials. You know, it's a small store.

They actually fit a lot of merchandise in there, which is really nice. Sure. So I got a little knickknack for a little memorabilia type ornament that we got in there. They have an assortment of pins in there.

So if you're going to go down at the restaurant, definitely take, make sure you you plan with your itinerary that you'll have time to go look at the stores and go look at the architecture and go look around the property because even with the renovations they're doing, it's still a beautiful property. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So while we were there, they had a full band playing.

So I mean, sometimes they just have a pianist, but I think I feel like they had the full band playing to kind of distract you from the, from what was going on on the second floor. You can look online. You'll see the schedule of when the band is playing versus and then when the pianist is there. Right.

But it was, it was really nice. And you can get to the Grand Floridian by car by Uber or Lyft. I believe the preferred vendor is Lyft, the minivans or New Year's Taxi. You can get there by Monorail or you can get there by boats.

You can get there by boat from Magic Kingdom or the Polynesian. Right. So if you are staying on property, but not at one of the Monorail resorts, basically, you could take a bus over to Magic Kingdom and then, you know, just make sure you get on the resort Monorail line and you'll be able to get there easily. I mean, Disney is really great about making it easily accessible.

So on that note, we've been talking about food and it's now in dinner time. It is. I want to go make some dinner for myself, but thank you for listening and or watching if you're watching our video of this. And as we said, we will be posting new episodes on Tuesdays instead of Mondays.

So that's why we're a little bit late today. We hope everyone had an enjoyable Memorial Day weekend. We did on a drive home. We did end up going past the beach and it was crowded.

Yep. That's a holiday. But it was crowded. We passed one inlet where they have a beach at the inlet and there were 20 to 30 cars waiting to get in.

Right. Cause it's either a state or a local park. So they limit the number of people that come in. So yeah, there was probably 20 to 30 cars sitting there.

And then as we as we drove by, I told you to look over and that whole that whole little beach section was just a mass of people and the boats and then out in the water, there was an enormous raft up. So there were a lot of boats, but it is dinner time now. So I'm going to go make myself from dinner. Maybe I'll even cook something for you if you're lucky.

Thanks, but no. See you again. We saw somebody make try to make alphabets the other day and I can't boil water. Well, sure.

On that. Thank you again for listening and make sure to subscribe, make sure to rate and review, make sure to send us feedback, give us suggestions. And I will say good night or good morning or yeah, good afternoon or just goodbye. All right.

Bye.