Catal - DTD (2007) - DL

After so many trips to Disneyland over the years, I have gotten in a bit of a rut. I use to think Blue Bayou was the bomb until I ate at Club 33 and the Deluxe hotels at DisneyWorld. Now I know better. My second fav place was Thunder Mountain BBQ but then they closed it only to open it for private parties. That was a big blow.  At least there you could get fresh cooked food, lots of it and at a reasonable price compared to the frozen stuff at Blue Bayou.

So with the Thunder option down the tubes and Wolfgang Puck's Avalon Cove at DCA (the best place I had found) closed, we headed to Downtown Disney for lunch and picked Catal.

For lunch I had the calamari to start. The breading was delicate and not greasy at all. It had a picate chili dipping sauce that was nice but at times a tad too spicy. For lunch I had the Caesar Salad with grilled shrimp added. It has very good. The shrimp were on a skewer and there were four of them. I cut them up so I could mix them with my salad a bit. Our server was pleasant and the dining area had a California fusion flavor with a Mediterranean slant to the food.

We returned for drinks and nibbles later and sat in their outdoor wine/cocktail bar. This time I had Green Apple Martini's.  The first round was great, the waitress however was not.  I told her no maraschino cherries in my drink.  My drink arrives and there is a cherry in it.  I send it back.  It comes back again with the cherry.  I use little words and send her back again.  Why am I making such a fuss.  First, I hate them.  They are soaked in dye and preservatives.  No thank you.  The juice on the cherry also changes the taste of my drink.  The third time she returned with, you guessed it, my drink with a cherry in it.  I took the cherry, hurled it into the bushes and told her the next time she returned with a cherry in my drink, she would be wearing it.  My drink returned cherry free.

I was happy for a bit after that however the second round of drinks went downhill. The drinks tasted off.  We figured they were running low on Sour Apple pucker and where adding too much sweet/sour mixer to compensate. We sent one back and the one we got back was the same, too sweet, like a sweet tart.  I am starting to hate these people and that does not make me happy in the House of Mouse.

I had the escargot as a nibble. They were a bit pedestrian. The burgundy mushroom sauce was too heavy and overpowering for the snails and the garlic was not roasted enough. There were large pieces and they were still hard. My friend had the yogurt; cucumber dip with pita, which she said was OK. We thought the dinner menu looked a bit better.  Perhaps next time.

I would give Catal for lunch a B+ and the bar a C.  Now that DCA is open, there are many places to get booze.  You don't have to patronize a place with an idiot bartender that can't fix simple drinks or a waitress with the IQ of a 3 year old.