Disney World, Part I

Hey everyone! I'm back from Disney World after a nine day trip... While I was there, I had a mission: to get fabulous vegan meals. With my guide in hand, I figured little could go wrong. Now I'm here to share the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let's get started:



Looks delicious, right? But what you don't see is the big, big problem that almost occurred. My mother, father, sister and I had our first meal at Wolfgang Puck Express, a counter service cafe in Downtown Disney Marketplace. We paid for the Disney Dining meal plan for 10 days, which entitled us to ten table service meals and ten counter service meals, each including a non-alcoholic beverage, an entree, and a dessert - and on the dining plan, we were also eligible for ten snacks each which would be designated by an icon at select dining locations and snack stands throughout Disney world and the resorts.

Disney is a very accomodating place food-wise for people with food allergies, vegetarians/vegans, and people with other health-related dietary restrictions. So I expected to be dealing with a pro when I asked the cashier at Wolfgang Puck what my options were as a vegan. I ended up choosing the butternut squash soup and a Granny Smith apple for dessert. When the soup was delivered, it was gorgeous with a red pepper and chive garnish. To be safe, I asked the food runner if the soup contained any dairy products. Thank goodness for precaution, because otherwise I would have taken a bite of soup with heavy cream! Yuck and sooo not vegan! The runner took the soup back uneaten and the chef came out to ask what I would like instead. We talked and decided that he would make me a wrap in a tortilla (because he was smart and knew that vegans don't eat honey, and all the breads at Wolfgang contain honey). What I was delivered was the most delicious roasted vegetable wrap I have ever tasted. The Mediterranean Vegetable Wrap was a blend of sun-dried tomatoes and sauteed eggplant, bell peppers, mushrooms, and zucchini. I hate oily vegetables, but whatever the chef did to them was absolutely wonderful. It tasted like some sort of thick-ish glaze with a vegetable oil base, and it was divine, divine, divine. I was so glad the chef was familiar with the needs of a vegan and that he could think on his feet and create a delicious meal and make me feel special. I made sure to find him after the meal and thank him, too, because I really appreciated it.

For dinner, we had reservations for our first table service meal at Spoodles, a Mediterranean-inspired restaurant situated on a white-picket pier right along Disney's Boardwalk Resort. Prior arrangement had notified the restaurant of my vegan status and the waitress sent the chef out straight away to talk to me about my options. Instead of creating a new dish, together we selected combining the Hummus appetizer (with animal-free lavash instead of the whey-containing pita bread) and the White Bean Moussaka entree into my meal. The moussaka (white bean puree, eggplant, spicy chunky tomatoes, olive oil) was originally a vegetarian entree and the chef agreed to eliminate the cheese for me.



The lavash turned out to be the perfect complement to the hummus and was doughy and wondrous. The hummus was a very good one - I even got my processed-lunch-meat-eating, doughnut-and-steak-loving mother to try hummus for the first time and it passed the taste test. She loved it! I've never had moussaka before, but it was assembled like lasagna - with a layer of eggplant instead of lasagna noodles. I dug in after inspecting my meal for cheese and was pleased to find that the white bean puree was a pretty "creamy" element itself in the moussaka. I loved the eggplant layers and was astounded that I had gotten such a protein-packed meal between the hummus and moussaka - and having beans other than soybeans was a nice break too!



I will say that the moussaka seemed like it was missing something, probably because it was "veganized" from the cheesy version instead of being created as a vegan meal in its own right. Of course, I was also curious to see if the waitress would offer me dessert. You should have seen how excited I was when she informed me they had Tofutti and Rice Dream "ice creams"! Can you believe that - from a non-veg restaurant?! I couldn't. I was ecstatic when I first tucked into my dish of Chocolate Tofutti, and the kitchen also surprised me with a bowl of strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. The dessert made my night, and I'd never had chocolate Tofutti before and decided it was so creamy and delicious that it's now my new favorite non-dairy ice cream.



So basically I felt like a queen that day. I had two chefs cater to my needs, which is such a change from my college city and my hometown. If you say "vegan" in a restaurant, they say, "Huh?"

I'll be back with more fun later! I hope you enjoyed my first day of dining at the Disney resort, and there is definitely more to come.