2006 - Present : Food Pics with Chat

[nouvellefleur]

Hi everyone! My sister and I visited Universal November 14 - November 18 and we have some food updates/reports for you. They'll be posted over a bit of a timeframe; I'm posting this while on break at work and must get back to being productive very shortly.

Strong Water Tavern at Sapphire Falls

We ordered:

A very respectably average Cabernet Sauvignon and a Hemingway Daiquiri (quite strong, a little sweet but not overly so).

CHEESY AREPAS
$14.00
Tossed in salsa verde, pico de gallo, fried egg, duck cracklings

The cheese arepas were delicious when hot, but rather stodgy once they'd cooled. I'd order this again if I had enough people at the table that we could quickly devour them and do them justice. The salsa verde was lovely - very bright and lightly spicy. I ended up scooping up the salsa verde and trying it on everything else at the table. The eggs were perfectly cooked for the dish - solid whites, runny yolks. 7/10

GRIOT
$15.00
Marinated and fried pork chunks, sweet plantains, pikliz, spicy chimichurri.
SPICY

I had mixed feelings about the the griot. I think the pork was overcooked but the flavor was lovely and I did actually really like the crispy edges, it's just that the interior was rather dry - all the fat had been rendered away. The chimichurri and the pikliz were exceptional, and worked beautifully with the pork and plantain. I discovered that I don't actually really care for plantain, but my sister does and said they were very good. They were a bit too sweet for me on their own, but if you had a bite of the plantain with pork, or plantain with pikliz, or plantain with chimichurri, then it balanced better for my palate. The pork itself was not spicy. 7/10

SURF & TURF PINCHOS
$18.00
Chimichurri-marinated steak, shrimp, yellow squash, zucchini, bell pepper, kalamata olive oil, garlic bread

This was lovely. The steak was cooked to well done (though we both prefer medium-rare), and everything else on the skewer was beautifully seasoned and cooked. No notes tbh, it just really hit the spot. 9/10

We really wanted to eat at Strong Water a second time during our visit but unfortunately just couldn't manage it. The menu pictured below has a few small differences from the menu currently online.





ETA: I've tried a few times to make the menu photo bigger so it's more legible but I think it's auto-resizing down when I upload it?

 

[nouvellefleur]

Breakfast at Amatista Cookhouse, Sapphire Falls Resort | November 15-17
Much to my delight, Amatista Cookhouse now offers an a la carte menu in addition to their breakfast buffet. Breakfast is probably my favorite meal of the day, but also during this trip I was still recovering from a bout of pneumonia and my appetite was unreliable. However, the one thing I wanted every day was breakfast.

TWO EGGS ANY STYLE*
$19.00
Choice of Applewood smoked bacon, country sausage or grilled ham. All egg entrées are served with Yukon Gold breakfast potatoes.



I'm so boring. I had this exact same breakfast twice during our trip, and so did my sister. You may swap out breakfast potatoes (yuck) for hashbrowns at no extra charge. Toast and jam are also included. The jam comes in little glass jars with a selection of three flavors: bitter orange, strawberry, and grape. The bacon was reliably crispy. One day my scrambled eggs were a little overcooked (pictured), the other day they were perfect. It's a lot of food.

One morning I just ordered a side of scrambled eggs and a side of toast ($13) as I wasn't hungry enough to justify the bacon and hashbrowns. Bless her heart, our server was horrified I was spending $13 on just eggs and toast, but I just didn't want to waste the extra food.

My sister did get the buffet one morning. Our server said it's not a problem for one person to order from the menu while another orders the buffet. This was a pleasant surprise as that's not always the case. I don't have photos of her buffet but her verdict was that it was good but only worth it if you're very hungry. The gravy for the biscuits and gravy was odd, and not like any sausage gravy I've ever seen before. It almost looked grainy? The fruit selection was very good. The oatmeal was not to her liking. The buffet eggs and breakfast meats were all good.

Egg, Bacon, Cheese Croissant at New Dutch Trading Co, Sapphire Falls - November 18



It's a dreadful photo but this was a nice little breakfast sandwich. I believe it was $9 but I'm afraid I neglected to snap a pic of the New Dutch breakfast menu. It reminded me a lot of the Dunkin Donuts croissantwich. My sister got the sausage, egg, biscuit and reported that it was also quite good.