On our trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL a few months ago we were excited to have reservations at the new Morimoto Asia restaurant. Having watched Morimoto over the years on Iron Chef, we expected great things. There were six of us, all of whom love Asian food. We arrived in Orlando late due to storms, grabbed a ride from the airport to the hotel, and then held the driver to take us straight to Disney Springs for our dinner plans. We did not want to miss this.
If you haven’t been to Disney World in a while you must go see the new and very much improved Disney Springs. This is what used to be Pleasure Island and the immediately surrounding area. Back in the day we really enjoyed Pleasure Island, especially the improv Comedy Club and the Adventurers Club. But they shut those down years ago, and the land just sort of languished for a long time. It is now back, with great dining, drinking and shopping options. They finally got around to it, and they did a fantastic job.
Morimoto Asia is in the middle of the new Disney Springs, and the vibe is upbeat and busy on the street. Inside, the restaurant is
View of the main dining area from above
visually striking, and deceptively large. A huge, curving staircase leads to the upper level sushi bar and an amazing looking cocktail bar even higher. There is a second bar downstairs. The main dining room boasts 30 foot ceilings and an open kitchen layout. It is soothing, mesmerizing and very comfortable. We give it ten out of ten for ambiance.
Duck Nasi Goreng
A nice table for six awaited us, and our server was prompt, courteous yet funny, and very attentive. This would be the theme for the entire dinner. We dove into the menus, tackling the drink menu first of course, and some specialty cocktails, a tall Kirin draft and a sake sampler found their way to the table. The wine menu is excellent, with a great by the glass selection that spans the world and focuses more on whites, as you might expect given the cuisine.
On the food side there are traditional favorites and specialty dishes from around Asia. Some of what we tried included:
– Edamame and incredible (and we mean INCREDIBLE) Morimoto spare ribs for appetizers.
AMAZING spare ribs
– Pork Dumplings, Sushi Rolls and the house Fried Rice
– Chicken Pad Thai
– Braised Black COD- prepared with the skin on in a tasty, sweet soy glaze
– Duck Nasi Goreng – duck with fried rice, a mango/papaya slaw and a sunny side up egg
– Lots of other stuff!
Duck anyone?
Everything was great, and we passed dishes around the table all night. We ordered a second round of drinks and spent the better part of two hours there. It was an excellent dining experience, and we highly recommend it. To make it even better the bill was much less than I expected given the number of dishes and the quality of everything we sampled. This was actually a great value as well.
Our wallet is out for Morimoto’s. In fact we changed some plans later in the trip and returned for a delicious lunch two days after this experience, although we do have to say we prefer it for dinner.
A votre santé!
Leave a Reply