Gordbergs eat fancy in 2013, part one

I'm behind on my fine dining reviews, so hopefully I can catch up…first, Remy, from our Disney cruise last February.  It was a lovely, if slightly delayed by a stupid blizzard, trip. We did a couple days visting Grandma & Grandpa Ben in Fort Myers (we should have been there longer, but the aforementioned blizzard shortened our trip by two days), then a few days in Disney World (breakfast in the castle! (overpriced but Sophie loved it) dole whips! (i'm sure we went for at least two) caramel corn! (my favorite snack in epcot) etc!), then a week on the newest Disney cruise ship, the Disney Fantasy.  This was our first time on the Fantasy, though it is basically the same as the Dream - Remy is something they have in common.  If memory serves, Sophie had a hotdog that night, then happily headed to the kids' club (where she would rather be than eating dinner with us, anyway), and we headed to Remy.  It was a long time ago.  Hopefully I remember what we ate…

As with last time, we got amuse bouches of a little nugget of fried tomato soup.  I kid you not, in the middle of that cube was tomato soup.  I do not know how you fry tomato soup, but it was tasty.  You can also see some bread there.  I don't remember anything about it, except that it was tasty. We were served bread and fancy butter throughout the meal.

At this point, you also get your complimentary cocktail, the Colette - Champagne & pear vodka, with some little bits of dried fruit.  Yummy. Once we finished that, we followed up with a bottle of the same Taittenger champagne they used in the cocktail.

Up next, I think we both got a complimentary serving of ratatouille (because Remy is the rat from Ratatouille, get it?) with some olive oil ice cream on top.  Nice, light, tasty.  I think.  It's been a while.

Next, we moved to the first course.  What were the other two courses? Um, -1st and 0th, I guess.  I started with a shrimp that was magically fried in some sort of light rice-based crunchy stuff (Massago, i think it was called? Something Japanese). It was on a bed of fried Japanese noodles, with a sort of soy sauce-ish foam.  I think one of the sauces was an aioli, and the other was some kind of citrus-y ponzu sauce.  Very tasty. 

Steve had some kind of fancy tomato tart, with (I think) whipped mozzarella on top.  His came with something really amazing - a champagne glass filled with what looks like wine, but is really clarified gazpacho.  It was amazing - it is literally this clear liquid, but it tastes clearly of tomato, cucumber, and various other vegetables.  So, so good.  I wanted to steal all of it, but I resisted.

Up next, I had some kind of salmon. it was tasty.  I want to say the yellow sauce drizzled around it was some sort of lemon-based sauce, and underneath was sunchoke puree, maybe? Whatever it was, it was yummy. 

Steve had poulet rouge (aka, chicken), stuffed with some kind of mushroom duxelle, breaded & fried, on a bed with other mushrooms.  He is not a huge mushroom fan, but he still enjoyed this - I ate most of his big mushrooms, though, I think.

Up next, more fish.  I had something, he had something.  They were good.  I really should have written this sooner; I have no idea what they were, or even which one we each had.  I know Steve ate his, and, not being a fan of fish, that must mean it was good.  Halibut, maybe? I know he likes halibut...

Main course - he had wagyu beef "taco" - the orange crunches were seasoned with fancy taco seasoning, and it had fancy-pants guacamole with it.  And maybe sour cream? Something like that, it looks like...

I had…hm, bison maybe? with an extra bowl of very fancy mashed potatoes?  Whatever it was, mine was better than his.  His was delicious, but mine was better.  And had mashed potatoes that were half butter, so how could I lose?

Next came my very favorite course.  I'm not going to try to tell you what all the cheeses were, just that I loved them.  I think that of the 9 or 10 I had, there was maybe one I merely liked instead of loving.  My favorite this time was some sort of triple creme - so creamy, so delicious. Oh cheese, how I adore you.

Now, this time, we did not mislead our waiter into thinking Steve liked cheese, and thus, I did not feel like I was going to die after I ate all of his cheese in addition to mine - instead, he got some apple sorbet, which was light and refreshing.  But oh, that cheese…

Then, it was time for dessert.  I (once again) had Tanzanie chocolate mouse in a freaky chocolate eyelash thing (make note of this dessert; it will show up again in the near future). It also had a small amount of chocolate-orange ice cream, which, yum.  Very rich, very delicious.

 

Steve had something else chocolate-y.  It looked kind of like a cigar.  It had crunchy stuff inside, I think.  It was slightly less rich than mine, but still pretty darn rich.  And it had gold leaf! It evidently came with something frothy in a martini glass.  Honestly, I can't remember anything about it at all - what was it? I really have no clue.

With dessert, Steve had coffee & I had tea.  I had to take a picture of the menu - because where else have you ever seen Monkey Picked Oolong??  I had never seen it.  I had it. It was really, really good tea.  Those monkeys know what they are doing.

After dessert part one, they brought dessert part two - friandises (or mingiardises? not sure what the difference is).  Little bites of yum.  I remember a little lemon shortbread cookie with lemon curd, some caramel with macadamia nuts, nougat, various chocolates, some long cinnamon-y pastry cookie things, fancy lollipops, marshmallows (coconut, I think?), and canelles.  All were tasty.  I think we brought most of them back to the room; I can't imagine we were still hungry at that point…I seem to recall, they also gave us a small box of filled chocolates and I got a rose to bring back to the room.

All in all, it was an extremely tasty meal.  I fell like we had more memorable courses the first time we went, but perhaps I am jaded.  The clarified gazpacho that came with Steve's first course was truly extraordinary, and the cheese continues to amaze me. The service was impeccable, as last time, and the meal took us 3 hours to eat - but each course was small enough that we never felt like we were going to explode. 

I know this is unheard of, but right now, we don't really have our next cruise scheduled - but I think when we do, assuming it's on one of the newer ships, we may skip Remy dinner next time, and try their brunch - I hear it's delicious. And lest you think we are overly depriving ourselves, there will always be Palo...

Part two, our tenth anniversary dinner at Victoria & Albert's coming sometime soon...