Dinner - Yachtsman Steakhouse (Yacht Club Hotel)
Last night’s dinner in my everlasting quest to catch up with our eating! We were at Yachtsman Steakhouse in the hotel. We had a quick drink at one of the hotel’s many dire bars (Ale and Compass Lounge rather than Martha’s Vineyard/Graveyard), negronis and an apple juice for DW.
When we got there, the check in process for Yachtsman was like god’s waiting room, great if you like being bossed around by pensioners ‘Your table isn’t ready yet. Go and sit on that bench over there.’ Apart from the quality of the food this restaurant is how I imagine it would be to live in a care home. We were put in a little side room that lacked the light of the main seating area which has the large glass windows onto the lake etc.
As our DDP drinks DD and I both went for red wine. We would have liked to have ordered a bottle for the first time in the holiday, my suggestion because the service looked like it would be slow. Anyway this isn’t possible on the DDP without either having a bottle plus 2 glasses of wine (way too much for us with DD in tow) or giving up the DDP alcoholic drinks to a value of half the bottle of wine
(not going to happen). So we stuck with the glasses and Disney missed out, dumb!
DD was advised to try a non alcoholic strawberry daiquiri, pictured above. She loved this and we might have to try to make this for her at home at some point. Bread came next and the onion brioche was just wonderful, DW and I fought over these and had to negotiate our claims over the one that went back in a take-out box! Our server meantime was lovely if a little fussy, DD passed on a starter leaving DW and I to order respectively:
The cheese tasting plate is for DW. This was equally as good as Narcoossee. I went for the French Onion soup with a request to greatly reduce the amount of bread and cheese in there. This worked well, I got lots of gorgeous soup without having to dredge it out of a swamp, in future I’m going to try and always have it this way.
As a main course I ordered the filet mignon after agreeing with DW that we would share between this and the prime rib, in the end this didn’t really happen. I wanted the special baked potato side but they were out so the server gave me a substitute regular jacket that was pretty hard and not great even with sour cream and butter provided
My sauce also came on the side despite me not asking for this I think the DD and DW reputation has got around the hotel!
My steak looked unloved but tasted excellent
DD ordered a monstrous 16oz ribeye (Truffle Fries, Black Garlic Aïoli, Point Reyes Blue Cheese Butter) of which she only ate the steak. The truffle fries were ok if a little overdone, in my experience these are usually awful but these ones did taste heavily of truffle and they aren’t scrimping on the most expensive ingredients, always a good sign. The steak was good of course, I am a bit worried DD will get iron poisoning from all this beef!
Then finally here is the DD prime rib which she ordered with mash and the sauces on the side.
Prime rib such a tender piece of steak this didn’t disappoint albeit a lot of steak went back for the slider goblin (a character DD and I invented to explain the mysterious overnight disappearance of steak and bread rolls from the fridge in our room
). Onto desserts and while we probably shouldn’t have done, we did. DW was the most restrained, she asked for and received a single scoop of strawberry sorbet.
I took the server’s recommendation of the creme brulee (he claimed best brulee at WDW and he may well be right). This was lovely, the caramel much thicker than usual but very tasty cream
DD chose the Lexington Sundae (Salted Caramel and Buttered Popcorn Gelatos, Crumbled Brown Butter Cookies, Caramel, Whipped Cream, Toasted Honey Marshmallow). I would have gone for this if I hadn’t eaten my whole steak. OMG this is incredible, a must order if you have a sweet tooth and come here! She attempted to eat the whole thing, failing gallantly then crawling upstairs with the rest of us.
The bill came to $249
Superb meal, boring, fashioned restaurant environment IMHO. It has that golf club/marina formal atmosphere that I can't stand even if the service is very good (albeit not particularly fast). It would be better to sit near the windows but they are not very flexible when you check in so it’s probably luck of the draw.