Birthday Dinner at Disneyworld

We celebrated our son’s birthday dinner at Disneyworld at a restaurant called Citrico’s in the Grand Floridian hotel.  It’s pretty casual, as most Disney restaurants are, but the food is surprisingly good.  With five reasonably sophisticated eaters, there were a lot of fun choices.

Dinner started with an amuse bouche from the chef of venison with capers.

amuse bouche of venison with capers

There were a variety of appetizers ordered, including arancini (crispy risotto with crimini mushrooms, asiago, and charred tomato coulis),

arancini

a charcuterie plate (with prosciutto, beef bresaola, duck breast prosciutto, and palacio chorizo),

charcuterie plate

a cheese plate (with murcia al vino from Spain, fourme d’Ambert from Auvergne and petit agour from the Basque region),

cheese plate

a macerated heirloom tomato salad,

macerated heirloom tomato salad

and sautéed shrimp in lemon, white wine, tomatoes, and feta cheese.

sauteed shrimp

I’ve also included a photo of the cheese plate description.

description of cheese

There were only two different main courses ordered at the table (evidently, we suffered appallingly from a lack of originality when ordering that night).  The most popular dish was Berkshire pork two ways, consisting of a rotisserie pork tenderloin and roasted pork belly with aged white cheddar polenta, escarole, Brentwood corn salsa and cherry gastrique.

Berkshire pork two ways

The other main course was Madeira-braised short ribs served over trofie pasta with wild mushroom ragout and truffle crème fraiche.

madeira braised short ribs

There was a celebratory birthday treat of miniature vanilla ice cream cones with sprinkles on top.  Unfortunately, these were consumed before I could get a photo of the dish (I often lose dessert photos that way).

The birthday boy was quite happy with the birthday festivities.  Of course, popcorn and hot dogs would have been fine since he was already at the happiest place on earth!