Week 44 - Disney Studios Hollywood and Vine Review (Oct 25)

Today we visited Disney Hollywood Studios including a dinner reservation at the all-you-can-eat buffet at the Hollywood and Vine restaurant. We visited here as a "make-up" anniversary celebration because of our disappointing experience at Yak & Yeti over at Animal Kingdom.

Hollywood and Vine offers character meals for both breakfast and lunch. The dinner buffet does not include characters.

We had reservations for the opening of dinner. There are two sides to the buffet, however, only the right side was immediately opened. The food items are identical on both sides. We were seated on the left side of the restaurant. Everything we sampled from the original right side was moist and delicious

About half-way through our meal, the left side of the buffet opened. When we tried the left side, many of the items were dried out. I assume from being held for a longer period at a hot temperature.

Here is a sampling of what we put on our plates:

My husband chose from the large selection of cold appetizers including a variety of salads including a very delicious cold bowtie pasta and chicken salad. The bowtie chicken is the only item I took from the cold side (except for 2 green olives I plucked from one of the salads).

As a picky eater, I mostly bypassed the cold section and headed straight to the main entrees where I picked up two different kinds of baked chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, prime rib and a crusty (in a good way) dinner roll with whipped butter. Everything was super.

The second time around I grabbed second helpings of my favorites (the prime rib and garlic mashed), and tried some new items including Parmesan crusted chicken breast, pasta with meatballs, rice, mac and cheese from the kid's buffet and roasted pork loin. This time I topped by prime rib with a red wine demi-glaze sauce - awesome!

My husband's favorite entree selection was the salmon. He also raved about the green beans and broccoli. Other items on his plate that I did not try included a cornbread spoon bread and a seafood pasta

Let me just say, there was hardly any room left for dessert, but I managed to take a few tiny bites of a chocolate mousse, a red velvet cake square (my favorite) and cookie and an apple cobbler with vanilla sauce. There were several other options including carrot cake, a berry cobbler and self-serve soft-serve ice cream.

We were much happier with our meal at Hollywood and Vine. The food was well prepared and plentiful with lots of options. Be aware, that the menu for this buffet is always changing so you are unlikely to have the exact same items shown above.

Prices for the buffet vary by meal time and season but hover around $28-$36 per adult. Our final bill after taxes, tip and a small Disney annual passholder discount was just under $70 for two of us. While the dining room is not very romantic (it feels a bit like a diner/cafeteria inside) we both agreed that we had a much better experience at Hollywood and Vine than Yak & Yeti.