McLarenblog

Coral Reef Restaurant located at Disney World, Florida, Epcot. (4-14-07).

Five of us had dinner at the Coral Reef Restaurant located at Disney World, Epcot. Upon entering we found the entrance to be a very colorful wide hallway.

The walls on one side were waves of color and the ceiling had colorful lights with tentacles cutting into the light beam.

Our wait for a table was not all that long as we had reservations. We were escorted down the rest of the hallway to the dining room. As we turned a corner into the dining room we found a really colorful very interesting layout. I was actually quite taken a back by the presentation of this dining room.

We appeared to be entering into a theater with four very deep rows angled down toward the stage or front of this theater. The stage area, for the lack of a better term, consisted of four huge openings bordered by huge pillars. We were looking into a huge single tank of fish all across the front of this dining room but cut into four “screens” sections of view.

The room was dimly lit, quite dark to enhance the visual appreciation of the fish tank. Looking into the tank it was also quite dark but a few lighted portions existed of light that was closer to white than the dark blue almost black portions not illuminated. I had never seen a fish tank so dark before. Each row of seating consisted of front and rear tables, so there were two sets of tables for each of the four levels, front and rear table rows. We sat at the very back of the restaurant in a curved booth, which was quite nice. We could not see the bottom of the fish tank because the back row did suffer that problem but most of the fish tanks were in full view.

At our table, single spotlights from overhead lighted each table in the room so the food was well lit on the table but the people around the table were not illuminated well at all. I have seen this before at other restaurants and it does seem to work especially if you have in attendance ugly people in your dining party like me. Coasters, napkins, ceiling and beverage glasses were all done in blue.

Our server arrived and was very good and explained a lot more about the place and our dishes than one normally finds at most restaurants.

Here is the food review:

The meal starts with bread and they do give you a good amount. The bread was refilled at our request with no problem. It tasted quite good but not remarkable.
The lobster soup was perfect. It was incredibly creamy a gourmet quality selection.
The Cesar salad was very good. The dressing was strong, probably due to the anchovy flavor. This is probably not a children’s salad. My son did not like it but Janice Edwards liked it, giving it an 8 out of 10 score.
The ahi tuna steak was very large in size. The ginger soy sesame flavor was quite strong.

I asked this steak to be medium rare and it came to me exactly that condition, I was quite impressed.

The mahi mahi was medium in size, great flavor but a bit dry. The sauce helped recover from the dryness.
The shrimp pasta had a strong fish flavor.

Janice Edwards declared it to be ok, not great.

Note: We noticed that a chef came out to consult with some people at a nearby table. It is stated on the menu that the cooks will work with any patron that has special needs. I thought that was a terrific policy.

Conclusion: This restaurant is great to recover from dining at buffet style restaurants. The ambiance is just simply remarkable and memorable. I recommend you come and enjoy the bread and the lobster soup and if you need an entree, I suggest you do a split of two dishes if more than one person is in your party and you can agree on the split.