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, entree, 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 entree 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