Quick May Trip and too much food: Columbia (Celebration), Narcoossee's, Il Mulino, GF Cafe among others

kittylady1972 · May 14, 2024

Just returned from a very quick trip earlier this month. Honestly I planned this trip around ONE dining reservation: Narcoossee's. We had not eaten there in many years, so when I got a decent reservation for it a few months ago (I did end up moving it from April to May) I decided it was a good excuse for a quick trip. The plan was to leave the day before dinner, have dinner the following evening, come home the following day. We did end up extending it a little bit to a 3 night stay versus a two night stay.

Quick reviews to come include:
Columbia (Celebration restaurant)
Trader Sam's Grog Grotto (evening snacks and drinks)
Narcoossee's (Dinner)
Grand Floridian Cafe (Breakfast)
Il Mulino (Dinner)
Yorkshire County Fish Shop (lunch...it's Fish and Chips of course)

kittylady1972 · May 14, 2024

COLUMBIA
If you have the means to travel off-site at WDW, and want a nice tapas experience, take a short trip over to nearby Celebration and check out Columbia. My HS friend who lives in Florida now took me there years ago, and I've been wanting to return for a while. With just my husband and I on this trip, it was a great time. So our flight from Maryland landed around 2:45pm and on our way to our resort (Polynesian) we were hungry...so we stopped in Celebration for lunch.

Sorry for no other menu photos, but this is the menu and there were a few daily specials that I can't recall. The only thing I knew I wanted was their famous 1905 Salad:

Columbia's Original "1905" Salad®
The Columbia’s legendary salad tossed tableside. Crisp iceberg lettuce with julienne of baked ham, natural Swiss cheese, tomato, olives, grated Romano cheese, Lea & Perrins ® Worcestershire sauce and our famous garlic dressing. The award-winning salad won honors from USA Today as “One of 10 Great Places to Make a Meal Out of a Salad.” The signature salad, named for the year the restaurant was founded in Tampa’s Latin district of Ybor City, was inspired by immigrants to the Cigar City: Romano cheese from the Sicilians and the famous garlic dressing used by Cubans to marinate fresh roast pork, plus Florida tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, julienne of baked ham and Swiss cheese.

Husband I think got some Sangria and I stuck with iced tea. He enjoyed the Sangria for sure.

We ordered the salad which is prepared tableside and then we selected the tapas sampler...where we could choose 2 or 3 tapas items.

The salad is just SO refreshing and delicious! Oh and they also served each of us our own little loaf of fresh bread...which was insanely good. Honestly this could have been the meal for us, as we scarfed down the salad and bread quickly.

However we did have the tapas to enjoy also:

I let DH select the items so from top to bottom:

Empanadas de Picadillo
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Our mother and grandmother, Adela Hernandez Gonzmart, always had her empanadas ready when we visited. The empanadas start with her recipe for picadillo, made with spiced ground beef, garlic, tomato, onions, raisins and olives, wrapped in two pastry turnovers.
Ybor City Devil Crab Croquettes
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A simple croquette made from seasoned cooked blue crab meat, paprika and garlic, then breaded with Cuban bread crumbs and fried. These four crab croquettes are always served with a side of Columbia salsa picante
- Scallops "Casimiro"
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  Fresh sea scallops baked in a clay casserole with lemon butter and topped with seasoned bread crumbs and white wine.

I have to say, the most flavorful was the Empanadas. I'm not a big fan of onions, but these weren't overpowering and had a nice flavor overall to them. Now the Devil Crab Croquettes were okay, and being from Maryland we are all about blue crab and we love our crabcakes with lump crab. These were a nice appetizer but nothing super special. The scallops I was hoping to enjoy a little more, but I just don't think they had a ton of saucy flavor that I might have enjoyed. They were good scallops and they tasted like scallops.

Overall I'd still come back for the salad and the bread, and they have a huge menu of so many other items to try.

As a bonus, they are within walking distance of a Kilwins which is a little shop with homemade ice cream and chocolates. We stopped by there after lunch, and despite being SO full we left with several boxes of chocolates to take to our room which we enjoyed during the week!

kittylady1972 · Thursday at 7:46 AM

Trader Sam's Grog Grotto (evening snacks and drinks)

So when we last left, we finished our Columbia meal and headed to our resort. We unpacked and snacked on our chocolates, and later that day headed over to try to get into Trader Sam's Grog Grotto. It was around 6:30pm and I think the wait was estimated at 1.5 hours, but we had nothing else to do so we sat at the outside pool bar and grabbed a drink.

I didn't want any of the menu options, so the bartender mixed me this blue raspberry lemonade with vodka. My husband is a fan of the lime dole whip margarita so that was his choice, though it was not as frozen as he would have liked.

After our drinks, we played a few games of table tennis and our table was called...wait was about an hour. We were seated at the very center table with other people. We've been in here before, but it's been a while. The atmosphere is very cool.

We ordered drinks, and I'll admit I was boring and got a glass of wine. Honestly I'm not sure what DH had but we also ordered the pan-fried dumplings ($10). They were small, and we shared them, but they were good and a nice snack to have while enjoying our drinks.