Taste of Disney

For dinner on Wednesday night, Nov. 4, I headed back over to the Beach Club, this time to dine at their buffet restaurant…

This was my first time here for dinner. Previously, I had thought this seafood buffet was all about the crab legs and steamed mussels and clams, none of which really appealed to me. Mostly because when it comes to eating seafood, I’m lazy. I don’t like to crack open legs or dig my food out of shells. I can do peel ‘n’ eat shrimp, but that’s about as far as it goes. But in my search for new WDW restaurants at which to dine on this trip, I noticed that Cape May did have some easy seafood options on their dinner buffet menu, like fried shrimp, clams, and calamari…all of which I like.

So I thought I just had to choose which of these three were my favorite and then make my dining reservation for the appropriate night. It was a tough decision but I finally decided on the fried shrimp and made my reservation for a Wednesday night, my last night at the Boardwalk.

After being seated at Cape May, I was greeted by a very nice server. He encouraged me to give the crab legs a try and even offered to show me how to crack those suckers open. He also suggested a few other “not to miss” foods for me to try and took my drink order, and then I was off to explore the buffet line. Here is some of what I found there, starting in the Salads & Other Cold Items section of the buffet…

Caesar Salad

The Cape May House Salad – Mixed greens tossed with candied walnuts, Craisins, blue cheese, and an orange vinaigrette

Watermelon & Feta Salad

Artichoke & Wild Rice Salad

Marinated Olives

And I think this was a Spinach salad with feta cheese, tomatoes, red onion, etc…

From this section I tried the Cape May and Watermelon & Feta salads as well as a few of the Peel-n-Eat shrimp (which I seemed to have failed to take a photo of while at the buffet)…

All three of these were very good. I especially liked the shrimp, as they tasted fresh and the cocktail sauce was tasty.

Now on to the Hot Food offerings, starting with some of the side dishes like Brussel Sprouts topped with cheese sauce…

 

Mashed Potatoes (with skins on) and brown gravy…

As well as whole red potatoes…

Corn on the cob…

 

And this pasta dish…

Alfredo Cream Pasta – Penne Pasta with Tomatoes, Portabella Mushrooms and Arugula with a Two Cheese Alfredo Sauce

For breads, there were both dinner rolls and corn bread…

 

And at the carving station there was Strip Loin with Horseradish Cream…

For soup, there was seafood chowder…

 

A couple of items from the Kids section were Mac & Cheese and Cheese Pizza…

 

But the most popular section of this buffet was the Seafood section, where many choices were available like Crab Legs…

Old Bay Shrimp…

Clams in the shell…

And Mussels in the shell…

Dijon-Maple Marinated Salmon with Pecan-walnut crust…

 

Seafood Paella…

And to my surprise they had both fried shrimp and fried clams…

 

Here was my first plate…

For seafood, I had both the Old Bay and the fried shrimp, as well as the fried clams. I didn’t really care for the Old Bay seasoning but I loved both the fried shrimp and clams. I was very happy to see the fried clams there on a Wednesday night. I rarely have the opportunity to have these so this was a definite bonus. If brought back fond childhood memories of having fried clam strips every time my family ate at a HoJo’s (Howard Johnson’s restaurants). Do they even exist anymore? I think not. But anyway, back to Cape May and my first experience with using a crab cracker (is that what you call it?? ). As promised, my friendly server assisted me with the cracking open of the one crab leg which I took from the buffet. The crab meat inside was pretty tasty, I must admit, but not quite worth the hassle of digging it out of its shell. Especially if you factor in the risk of having my crab leg fly off my plate and me dying from embarrassment… which I could definitely see happening to me if it weren’t for the expert assistance of my server. Ok, that’s all I have to say about that, so moving on now to the non-seafood contents of my first plate. The mashed potatoes were pretty good and the mac & cheese (which was one of my server’s recommendations) was fine. My favorite other item on my plate though was the cornbread. It was delicious, so delicious that I got another piece of it when I returned to the buffet for round 2…

 

I also got second helpings of my other favorites, both the peel-n-eat and fried shrimp as well as more fried clams. Plus I tried a slice of the strip loin from the carving station and it was pretty good.

Now for their dessert offerings, starting with the Cookies…

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies