Monthly Archives: November 2012

2012 Food & Wine Top 25 – #6 to 15

Let’s do some F&W “catch up”! I know, if I don’t get this done soon, it’ll be time for Food & Wine 2013. By the way, today is 300 days until that fine event should start. Bring on the pork sliders!

#15 – Seared Filet of Beef (South Africa)

Pre-Festival: #3

Change: -12

In 2011, South Africa’s filet finished in 2nd on my list. That didn’t surprise me. It was the only filet in the festival, and I love filet. This year, however, like Japan’s Sukiyaki Beef Pan, it was a huge disappointment. Neither my wife nor I liked it.

Frankly, it had two things going against it. First, it never had a chance with Le Cellier’s filet in the festival as a comparison. Second, it was dry, dry, dry. I’m sure it was just a bad serving, but we were disappointed nonetheless.

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Pick Your Resort – The Results!

The voting has really slowed, so I went ahead and closed the polls early, folks.

The first phase of our quest to identify WDW’s “Most Coveted Deluxe Resort” has come to an end, and I would like to extend a sincere and hearty thanks to all of you who participated. I’m blown away by the response – and the hundreds of people that voted. Hundreds! THANK YOU!! Without further delay, here are the winners:

Group 1

206 votes

1 – Beach Club  (95 votes)

2 – Bay Lake Tower  (78)

3 – BoardWalk Inn   (24)

4 – Old Key West Resort  (9)

My sentimental vote, here, was Beach Club.  We’ve stayed there twice with our son and his fiance for special occasions – this past New Year’s Day and his 21st birthday – so it holds a special place in our family.  In truth, my vote was for BoardWalk Inn, however.  The room we had there on our visit in October for my 50th birthday was just that good.  We really enjoyed the location.  OK, we really enjoyed Leaping Libations and The Belle Vue Room.  The bartenders, at both, are fantastic.

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Deluxe Resort Voting Update

After just one night of voting, we’ve had a phenomenal response.  Thanks very much, everyone, for participating!

If you haven’t voted yet and would like to, here’s the link: Pick Your Deluxe Resort!

At a high level, one of the categories has received 151 votes and is a “run-a-way”.  One of the categories is “too close to call” as three resorts fight for two available spots.  To give you a taste of where we stand right now, I present the current leaders by group.

Our favorite bar!

Our favorite bar!

Group 1

Beach Club and Bay Lake Tower

Group 2

Grand Floridian and Animal Kingdom Lodge

Group 3

Polynesian and Contemporary Resorts

Group 4

Beach Club Villas and Animal Kingdom – Kidani

Pick Your Resort!

Pick your Deluxe resort, WDW fans!

Let’s have a little fun. I have presented four groups of four resorts, each, below. Vote for one in each group. Maybe it’s your favorite resort. Maybe you just want to stay there!

The Top 2 resorts in each group will move on to the next stage as we work towards deciding which is the Most Coveted Deluxe Resort. Respond to the poll to show us which you’d choose. There are some tough choices buried in here.

If you would like to go a step further, please leave a comment and tell us why you chose who you did. We’d love to see the interaction!

We’ll leave the polls up and open through Friday night. Saturday, we’ll finalize the results!

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2012 Food & Wine Top 25 – #16 to 20

Good news. Lots of pictures with this edition of my re-cap. One of the questions I was asked was, ‘Why don’t you have pictures with every dish’? Easy answer – I was so anxious to eat that I forgot to get out the camera. Whoops.

As we start moving towards the middle of the 2012 F&W Top 25 list as we head back to Morocco.

#20 – Merguez Sausage (Morocco)

Pre-Festival: #17

Change: -3

This one came in right about where I expected. Also, I figured that I would like it better than Morocco’s other offering (the Kefta Pocket), and I was right. Both my wife and I agreed that this was the better of the two plates. We also agreed that, although the spice of the sausage mixed well with a generous amount of peppers and onions to provide a nice taste, the sheer amount of pita out-numbered meat and vegetables. Classic fail in bread to meat ratio, here.

Next, we take a short flight to …

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