Terralina Crafted Italian

Travel, Travel - Orlando 3 Minutes

Travel Edition – Orlando

Day 7

Magical dining month (or for us, week) comes to an end with a reservation at Terralina Crafted Italian in the heart of Disney Springs (Some of you may remember this as Downtown Disney).

The parking is easy with parking around the area as well as several relatively new parking complexes that tell you how many spaces are available in each level and row. Tonight, we decided it was easier to take a Lyft and it’s a good thing we did because there are huge lines of cars waiting to get into the parking garages on Friday evenings. Save yourself the time and aggravation if you can and get a Lyft. They drop you off on the east side so you also get to enjoy the walk past the grand stage (which often has live music) and we would recommend you take a walk past Rainforest café (with a huge fireball volcano) and across the beautiful marketplace bridge.

We arrived at Terralina and you can immediately see the outdoor bar area and outside seating along the waters edge of Lake Buena Vista. We entered the front and let them know we had reservations. They asked if we were OK with a high-top to which we responded no. Normally, high tops are the leftover seating around the bar and a last choice for fine dining. I guess I would understand if we did not have a reservation and they were terribly busy, which was not the case (plus my wife was wearing a dress so we were expecting normal seating). They seemed surprised that we said no and told us that we would have to wait 10-15 minutes (As if we didn’t have a reservation). I looked at all the open space on the outside seating area and asked if we could be seated out there, to which they responded sure, if you would like to eat outside (very confusing since it was a beautiful night). They seated us at a table where apparently everyone exited and bumped their strollers into so I moved the table myself 2 more feet towards the water so we could enjoy our dinner. Ok, so hostess team and seating was a fail, but we were looking forward to the award-winning food.

Our waiter was friendly, and we ordered our drinks. My wife ordered a white wine flight (which was good, but the glasses were a strange shape and she had trouble with them) and I ordered a nice red wine. For the appetizers we ordered the Crispy Eggplant Fries with lemon-caper aioli and the Bruschetta. Both were amazing so things were looking up. For the main course I ordered the catch of the day (which happened to be Salmon tonight) and my wife ordered Spaghetti Bolognese with beef, pork and pancetta meat sauce, tomato parmesan cream. They sounded excellent so we were excited (especially since this is a James Beard Award winning chef, Tony Mantuano). Apparently, he did not win the award for his food at Terralina because both main courses were just OK (sort of the food I would expect at Olive Garden for ½ the price). Neither meal was bad, or good and pretty bland. I get the feeling the Chef was not there this evening.

There was an extra ordinarily long wait between our underwhelming meal and when our server appeared again (we joked about a waiter in Palm Beach that always starts off great but then disappears once the food arrives) and it made the experience even more deflating. Neither one of us had any wine or water left when he came back (not great service). For dessert, my wife ordered the Cannoli and it was good (not great) and I ordered the Lemon Panna Cotta with candied thyme which was amazing and we both fought for every bite.

Overall, we would suggest you pass on this overpriced and underwhelming experience since there are plenty of great options in the area. At least Disney Springs was fun and made up for the disappointing meal. Oh well, I guess they can’t all be winners.

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Published by datenightspalmbeach

My wife and I have always been an unlikely couple and I think that’s why it works so well. We met in Palm Beach, became best friends, and eventually fell in love. We moved away and followed my career path which eventually led us back to Palm Beach. We had our ups and downs over the years, mostly to do with me working too much and traveling for long periods of time. I made a career change to travel less and spend more quality time with my wife and was lucky enough to find an amazing company in Palm Beach that made all the executives do a personal goal each week and report on if they accomplished it. I chose “Date night with my wife” since my career change was to spend more time with her. This was the best thing that ever happened, it made me accountable at work to do something for my personal life. And so, began “Date night with my wife”. We quickly realized that there were several things that made a wonderful date night and strengthened our relationship. The first thig was making it special. To us that meant a date night car, good food and a great atmosphere. Sounds easy right? Well, it’s tougher than we thought. No matter what you consider good food there are plenty of options in Palm Beach County so we thought we would share our adventures in date night and rate the different places we go. My wife is a wonderful cook 6 days a week and apparently, I can be “a little picky” about our special night out. We are happy to share our experiences and hope you find a way to make it special for your family.

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