Living the DLuxe Life-Sep 2019 (Universal & WDW DTR)-Completed 12/27

Raeven

DIS Veteran
Joined
Sep 15, 2015

We're back from our 10th trip to Orlando, and are ready to review some food!

We’ll cover it all: The delicious, the awful, and everything in between. We review food from both an allergy and a non allergy perspective since Josh is gluten free and I'm not. (Although for the first few days of this trip I was with @xlsm, and then Josh joined us a little later so not all of these will have a gluten free perspective).

If you want to follow along on my TR it's here:



"What Is This, a Crossover Episode?"-HHN 29, Universal, & A Little Disney

Introductions:

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My name is Raeven, and here I am proudly displaying my box of Voodoo Doughtnuts. :rotfl: I'm 27 years old, and I'm the planner, photographer, and DTR writer for our trips.

My food likes include pasta, chocolate, burgers, nachos, steak, and trying all kinds of french fries. This trip my goal was to try all the extra snacks we never seem to get to, to try a few new places, and to try some new things at some of my favorite places.

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My trip partner is my boyfriend, Josh. He’s 33, and is gluten free due to an allergy. His food likes include steak, BBQ, burgers, coffee, and Erin Mckennas. Besides lettuce and tomato on burgers there’s not much he doesn’t like :rotfl:

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For the first few days of the trip I also had another guest with me...@xlsm! She's very familiar with Disney dining, but was mostly new to Universal dining so I got to show her all my favorite places. She's my snack buddy so when we're together we split and share allll the snacks. :rotfl:

We spent the first few days of the trip at Universal, then the rest of the trip is a mix of Disney and Universal dining.

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As usual some food plans changed between the PTR and the trip, but we didn't change anything too significant this time around. This DTR will have snacks from HHN & MNSSHP, stops at Food & Wine, brunch buffets, lounge dining, old favorites, and a few new restaurants.

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The quote in the title is from a show Josh and I were watching on vacation. :rotfl: This one lady was very interested in living the life of someone wealthy, but she called it the "deluxe life". We were talking about the show with @amalone1013 and Zack when we had lunch with them, and the next day we went to DLuxe Burger, so I told them we were living the DLuxe life. :laughing:

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We ate at:

 
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Sorry! I accidentally posted this on the wrong board. I thought I was under "reviews" when I hit post. Is there anyway someone can move this thread? Not sure of the right mods to tag. @crazy4wdw
 
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Sorry, must have been too early in the morning when I read your request! :faint:
 
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Following along. I always enjoy your dining reviews. Staying at HRH in Nov so curious about Kitchen brunch. I am not on brunch but DH is. This will be his first time to Universal so want him to be happy and like it so he will go with me again. I have only gone to NBC Grill , Toothsomes and bread box so also looking forward to your current Universal reviews ( I have read your past few but you know things can change - for better or worse )
 
Joining in! DH and I are spending 2-3 days in Universal in March so definitely looking forward to some recommendations!
 
Looks like its going to be a fun read. I’m following!

Thanks for following! :wave2:

:banana:Here for it

Thanks for following along! :wave:

Following along. I always enjoy your dining reviews. Staying at HRH in Nov so curious about Kitchen brunch. I am not on brunch but DH is. This will be his first time to Universal so want him to be happy and like it so he will go with me again. I have only gone to NBC Grill , Toothsomes and bread box so also looking forward to your current Universal reviews ( I have read your past few but you know things can change - for better or worse )

Thanks for following! I think he'll like the one at The Kitchen if he likes brunch. It's different from their regular breakfast buffet (in a a good way, but I'll go into detail in the post). Although I think between all our trips we've tried every place at the Hard Rock except the Velvet Lounge and the pool bar if you have any questions.

Joining in! DH and I are spending 2-3 days in Universal in March so definitely looking forward to some recommendations!

Thanks for following along! :wave2:
 
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Starbucks (Airport)

I like to start these before my TR's so I can link back to these posts so let's get this show on the road!

Since I like to include all the dining we do, I always start with my very exciting airport breakfast. I've decided this does not need it's own post since anyone reading these will know I pretty much always get the same thing. :rotfl:

An extra wrinkle of excitement was added to my breakfast this morning because they're doing massive construction to our airport, and when I looked the Starbucks was no longer where it's always been.

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But it just so happened it was now behind a wall, and there were plenty of signs pointing to it, so crisis averted!

I got my usual bacon, egg, and gouda sandwich with a water. As usual it was a fine breakfast which takes us to the next time I ate...


Toothsome Chocolate Emporium

Before HHN, @xlsm and I, headed to Toothsome to eat. This had been one of the places on her list to try at Universal, which makes sense because it's one I always recommend to people. We decided to sit at the bar because they told us they could seat us there immediately.

We ordered all our food at the same time so it all came out in sort of random order, but we started with a milkshake. I wanted to introduce Samantha to my favorite milkshake:

Strawberry Cheesecake
Sour cream ice cream, cheesecake, graham crackers, fresh whipped cream, chocolate dipped strawberry


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I love this one because it's not too thick (like milkshakes usually are), and the sour cream ice cream is really good. It's my favorite flavor there, tastes exactly like it says, and even the cheesecake on top is delicious.

The problem was they only gave us one straw so we had to ask for another because our plan was to share it like lovers in a 50's diner.

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Or Vinny and Pauly D. :rotfl:

(I guess that's as close as I'm getting gif-wise to what I was looking for. Apparently there aren't a lot of gifs out there of people sharing milkshakes).


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Samantha's face just screams:

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Then our appetizer arrived:

Avocado Bruschetta
Fresh avocado, fried avocado, avocado crema, tomatoes, balsamic reduction, toasted ciabatta


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I had told Samantha about having this on a previous trip, and she was excited to try because she loves avocado too. (I was very happy to learn on these last 2 trips with her that our food likes/dislikes/food quirks line up very well). I still think they missed out on calling it "avocado 3 ways", but it's a delicious dish. The favorite for both of us was the piece of fried avocado on top, but all that avocado with the hint of balsamic dressing on it is really flavorful and delicious.

Finally for an entree we were feeling adventurous so we decided to go with a passholder exclusive. I've tried many things on the entree portion of the menu (I think I recounted them in my last Orlando DTR) and haven't found any to be exactly what I was looking for. Samantha had been looking at flatbreads before we went which I've had a time or 2 at Toothsome, and can vouch that they are not to great. During the month of September some of the restaurants have passholder exclusive menu items (they can be found in a blog post and anyone can order them because they didn't really verify if we were passholders or not when we ordered).

Chicken & Waffle Sliders
Tasty sliders layered with lettuce, tomato, fried chicken, strawberry & Sriracha maple mayo with Applewood bacon.


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Now the picture in the blog post shows them looking much smaller, with a lot more sauce, and with the bacon on the side. Portions at Toothsome are always huge however so keep in mind they are basically the size of regular sandwiches. (Which the bartender let us know before ordering). We had decided to split everything here though so that worked out fine.

Picture for reference:


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One of the weird food quirks we share is we don't like to mix sweet and savory which is why it was adventurous of us to order this. But it all worked really well together. The chicken was the star of each sandwich. The chicken and waffle weren't bad together, but there was definitely too much waffle compared to the other ingredients so we didn't eat all the waffle. The waffle was nice and soft, but I think it needed a little more sauce in the sandwich. Samantha liked the how the bacon mixed with everything while I would've been okay without it. And finally the sauce had been what we were most unsure about, but it pretty much blended right in, and I don't think there was quite as much of it as was shown in the picture above.

As we were finishing up Jacques came around! He's my favorite character at Toothsome, and I've had nothing but fun interactions with him. Of course @amalone1013 & @CatNipRules will remember the interaction we had with him a couple years ago where he asked Michelle's son if he were cold or terrified or robots and then covered him with a napkin. :rotfl:


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This time when he heard we were going to HHN he tried to prepare Samantha by giving her a little scare, and even though she knew it was coming his boo got her a little. :rotfl:

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Afterwards Jacques asked me about my favorite scary thing, and somehow we got on the topic of scary movies. I told him my favorite scary movie was Nightmare on Elm St: Dream Warriors, and he seemed quite taken with the idea of dream warriors.



He ended the interaction by telling me I'm on my way to becoming a dream warrior. :rotfl:




To sum it up though we had a great meal at Toothsome! In my opinion it's one of my the most impressive and well themed places on Citywalk. The portions are very easy to split. The Strawberry Cheesecake milkshake and the Avocado Bruschetta are always fantastic (if you like those flavors), and for once my entree was equally impressive. (Though sadly, it's only temporary but maybe they'll decide to put it on the menu one day). Our character interaction was fun, and the only strange thing that happened to us was the people next to us at the bar decided to break into song for awhile. (And don't worry we'll be back later on to try some of the snacks in the store. We saw them on the way out, and knew we'd have to come back before the weekend was over to try some).
 
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I love this one because it's not too thick (like milkshakes usually are), and the sour cream ice cream is really good. It's my favorite flavor there, tastes exactly like it says, and even the cheesecake on top is delicious.
I didn't realize this was sour cream ice cream, and now I'm just really intrigued by that and want to try the ice cream! I went with a Brownie milkshake this trip and it wasn't bad, but I definitely wished I had just stuck with the Hazelnut :cloud9:
As we were finishing up Jacques came around! He's my favorite character at Toothsome, and I've had nothing but fun interactions with him. Of course @amalone1013 & @CatNipRules will remember the interaction we had with him a couple years ago where he asked Michelle's son if he were cold or terrified or robots and then covered him with a napkin. :rotfl:
We talk about this every trip.
Our character interaction was fun, and the only strange thing that happened to us was the people next to us at the bar decided to break into song for awhile.
:rotfl2:
I've tried many things on the entree portion of the menu (I think I recounted them in my last Orlando DTR) and haven't found any to be exactly what I was looking for.
The closest I've gotten is the meatloaf. Normally I don't eat meatloaf except when Zack's mom makes it (just to be polite and eat it, not that it's anything special :rolleyes:) but their brisket meatloaf I think is very good. My biggest problem is... I'm not always in the mood for meatloaf... :rotfl: I had it this last trip, but only because I couldn't really decide on anything else and at least I knew I'd like it. We took Zack's mom and aunt here and ordered the Totchos and horrified them when we told them they had pork belly, I don't think they ate any :rotfl: Like they didn't even try it, I don't think they believed us when we told them it's not a strange part of the pig... not sure what part they think their bacon comes from... if they'd tried it and didn't like it that's fine, but they acted like we were trying to feed them tongue :rotfl2:
 

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