Bread Pud­ding

I can­not believe we missed our 9.00 am flight back to Hous­ton on Christ­mas Eve. Still in the hol­i­day mood, I fig­ured our loss was some­one else’s gain. The next 3 flights were over­sold so we got con­firmed on the 6.30 p.m. flight back to Hous­ton. The past week in Orlando was great — 3 days in Dis­ney world. We took a seat in the air­port and thought about what we’d do with the rest of our day. After con­sid­er­ing our food options in the air­port and the fact it was Christ­mas Eve, we decided to rent a car and spend the bet­ter part of our day at either Down­town Dis­ney or Uni­ver­sal Orlando. P.S. We had already returned our $45/day rental car to Alamo; 1 hour later they wanted $95 for the same car.I declined, then called the 1–800 num­ber to National and got the same car for $60.

We had wanted to be back in Hous­ton to do Nochebueno with some deca­dent food; we knew the food offer­ings at Down­town Dis­ney would not be too excit­ing as well as being expen­sive, so we headed for Uni­ver­sal Orlando’s City­walk which has some pretty good restaurants.

It took us less than 15 min­utes to get to Uni­ver­sal Orlando, and a maybe 10 more min­utes to get parked and walk to City­walk. From a pre­vi­ous visit we had remem­bered eat­ing good at NBA City and the Bob Mar­ley Jamaican restau­rant; so one of those would be just fine.  To our sur­prise when we entered City­walk we saw a menu for Emeril’s at the Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter. The menu looked great and we saw that they had a kid’s menu avail­able — good news for us!

My wife opted for the set lunch, which a good deal at $18.50. It includes an appe­tizer, entrée, and dessert. The gumbo appe­tizer was one of the bet­ter gum­bos I’ve had in a restau­rant. It was made using a rich dark seafood roux with ample amounts of andouille sausage inside and seafood stock. The short rib entrée was ten­der, but lack­ing the pro­nounced beef flavour that is more com­mon in Texas.

The chicken was nice — it was a french cut chicken with a crispy crust that held in the juicy meat below. The herbs were bal­anced, but in chicken was under salted. It could have been ben­e­fited from hav­ing been brined first. The dish comes with herbed mashed pota­toes and Kurobuta bacon smoth­ered green beans. I’ve been a fan of Kurobuta every since I had the world’s best pork chop at Brennan’s a few years back.  The use of pork seems to be pretty pop­u­lar in many of the dishes at Emeril’s restau­rant, so if you don’t eat pork you will have much fewer options. For dessert we shared her Almond Crois­sant Bread Pud­ding which was amaz­ing. It wasn’t too sweet and the tex­ture was velvety.

If you’ve been want­ing to try a Emeril’s restau­rant out, lunchtime in Orlando may be your best bet. You’re already on vacation.

6000 Uni­ver­sal Blvd. #702
Orlando, FL 32819
ph: 407 224 2424