Friday we were heading to the Italian Regional Lunch at Tutto Gusto. We had very high hopes after the wonderful French Family Meal experience.
First up a small breakfast to take the edge off ... The Cronut!
And iced tea in a really cute cup
After a leisurely walk around the World Showcase we arrived and were seated at Tutto Gusto
I want to say that we enjoyed this meal but I cannot. Other than our table mates who were wonderful, the whole meal was a let down for us.
First up the (blurry) bread
First course was a lobster salad. Here is DH's
One of our tablemates had an allergy and was offer prosciutto instead of lobster. I asked if I could have the same as I do not care for lobster. This seemed to upset the maître de very much. He gave a huge sigh and then said something in Italian. I have never had an experience in WDW where they didn't happily substitute or make a change for whatever the reason. The others at our table agreed that it made everyone uncomfortable. But I did get the other salad
This ended up being delicious and the highlight of the meal
The pasta course was a pumpkin ravioli in a butter sauce
This also was good but a little bland. It needed a touch of acid or something to cut the richness of the butter. But all in all it was good.
These were the wines for the meal ... I remember being surprised that I liked the French wines so much more than the Italian as I assumed I liked Italian wines better. Who knew?!
Our (again blurry) entrée was venison. What? No one at our table normally ate venison and I knew I didn't care for it. After the weirdness of my salad substitution we all decided to give it a try
Just blech. I don't like game meats anyway and this did not change my mind. I ate a few bites of the meat and enjoyed the potatoes
Next up the cheese course ...
The cheeses were very good but it was served with a very sweet wine. None of us cared for the pairing. The sommelier said it was an experiment. Definitely a fail for all of us
Dessert was a semifreddo
This was good. Light and the fruit was refreshing after the heaviness of the other courses.
All in all a definitely disappointment. This year the number 1 F&W event I will book is the French Family Meal. This one will not make our list. I know the menu changes and if we had gone on a different day we would have had a different experience. But the whole experience felt off and uncomfortable with the host and the wait staff. Completely different from the French experience.