“Butter? But it’s meant to be Greek!”

I should start off by saying that this is my second review of a restaurant where it didn’t meet expectations, but generally I love the restaurants in Walt Disney World! I don’t know why I’ve not written about some of the great ones yet! But here goes, anyway:

Kouzzina by Cat Cora is a Mediterranean restaurant that opened in 2009, replacing Spoodles, on the Boardwalk. On our last trip, we were really keen to try it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, just the fact that it was a new addition to Walt Disney World’s restaurants. Secondly, my husband is from that part of the world. He was raised in Turkey and while you’d be lucky to get any one in either country to admit it, the food in Greece and Turkey are extremely similar. (Seriously, don’t get him started on the subject of who created hummus!) While Cat Cora has Greek ancestry, the restaurant sells itself as being Mediterranean, so we eagerly awaited some fabulous cuisine of the kind my husband grew up eating.

Disney are using the fact that it is Cat Cora’s restaurant as a big selling point. The full name of the restaurant is Kouzzina by Cat Cora and in the waiting area you see her cook books and other references to the chef in question. It is probably worth mentioning that I still don’t have a clue who she is. I’ve read about her since and realise she’s a TV chef, but that’s as much as I know. As her show or network isn’t on this side of the pond, I’m afraid their marketing around her is slightly lost on us.

When we arrived we waited for about ten minutes. The wait itself was no problem at all (this is Disney after all) but when we were seated, the restaurant was actually fairly empty and it did make me wonder why they had kept us hanging around in the lobby. I’m guessing it was probably to stagger the seatings, if a few tables had arrived together for example, but surely it would have made more sense to explain that there might be a wait before our waiter was available, but ask if we’d like to be seated. Otherwise, you get our reaction, which was ‘why did they have us stand there for ten minutes when the table was ready’.

The restaurant has a ‘open kitchen’ type feel to it. The kitchen is located at the back and it is open enough for you to see into it and hear the hustle and bustle. I love this in restaurants! I love that you can see, hear and smell all the food being prepared and get the feel of the place. This case was no exception, it added a nice feel to the restaurant. The only problem with it was the noise. If something was dropped or a mistake made, the kitchen staff all cried out with a great “Opa” in traditional Greek fashion. The first few were fun – it made you turn round, smile, laugh at the joviality of it all. But by the main course we’d pretty much had enough of it. It felt like every two minutes the conversation was interrupted by the cries from the kitchen – and we sitting at the opposite side of the room. Not only was it loud and literally meant we had to stop talking or ask for things to be repeated, it was also so frequent that I started to wonder what the hell was going on in the kitchen for so many things to be going wrong or be dropped. I like the idea, it fits with the theme of the restaurant, but they definitely need to tone it down just a little.

The first thing to arrive was the bread and this kicked off my husband’s disappointment with Kouzzina – hence the title of this blog. It was standard, white rolls and butter and he was outraged! He has never really got used to the UK and USA offering butter with bread. In the Mediterranean it’s always the tastiest bread and if you get anything with it, it is always olive oil and perhaps balsamic vinegar. Often you’re meant to dip it in the sauce or dressing with your meal. In the UK this is becoming a more common offering by some restaurants trying to offer this kind of experience – perhaps that’s the case in the States too? If so, it definitely wasn’t offered in Kouzzina and he moaned to me about it for the entire length of the meal! He’d been looking forward to it as it is so standard that he didn’t think it was possible for a restaurant claiming to be Mediterranean to ever serve butter instead! I’m sure he could have asked for some, but apparently that’s not the point.

The food itself, I thought was pretty good. Tasty, certainly. I had Pastitsio – a Greek Lasagna as my entree. Our waiter was really friendly and he made a big point of telling me that this was Greek lasagna, not Italian, so could be quite different from what I was used to. Greek lasagna doesn’t use flat pasta for one thing, it uses a tubular, such as macaroni. I enjoyed it and I’d have given it a 3 out of 5. My husband deliberately decided not to have the lamb burger, which was his instinct to chose. His Grandmother makes kofte so well, that it seemed unfair to compare them. Instead he went with the steak, as it isn’t something that is especially regional. He didn’t give it rave views but said it was nice enough.

The second of the big faux pas for my husband came with the dessert. I had a scrumptious chocolate cake, so no problem there. He on the other hand, couldn’t quite resist ordering the baklava. Maybe that in itself was a mistake. Growing up with it he is very particular! His pet hate with baklava it if it is not fresh enough – he says it should always be made and served on the same day, which is rarely is when stores sell it. In this case, it wasn’t really the freshness of it that was the problem (although he did say it wasn’t quite as fresh as he’d expect). It was more the size of it – the pieces were too big and instead of lots of layers of pastry and filling, the filling was mainly in one chunk.   I know what you’re thinking – he sounds a right picky bugger! Or something along those lines. But he really isn’t – he’s found great baklava outside of Turkey and Greece plenty of times – unfortunately, this just wasn’t one of those times.

My husband jokes that Cat Cora must never have actually visited Greece. I doubt that’s the case so maybe it is simply trying to cater for a largely American audience and therefore their typical tastes as the food did seem to us that it was more an idea of what Mediterranean food is like, as opposed to the reality. Like someone has been given the recipes. Maybe although the recipes she uses have been passed down from her Greek ancestors, times have changed and things are different now. Or maybe, and this is perhaps the likeliest option, it hit the spot exactly and ”the Mediterranean’ is in actual fact far too large to sweep with one brush so although the food was different to what my husband calls Mediterranean, it is actually right for other areas. Although as he says – butter!!

I came away from Kouzzina fairly satisfied, having had a good (if not great) but slightly noisy meal. My husband on the other hand was very disappointed and is refusing to give it another go on our next trip. I think it may be that the restaurant itself is fine, it’s about managing expectations. If you’re looking for a restaurant where you can try out some different foods, you’re onto a winner, if you can put up with the noise. If you’re after authentic Mediterranean cuisine, perhaps this isn’t the place to find it. Or not as we know it