Flying Fish Cafe

Although a number of Disney's signature restaurants are known for their excellent fish dishes, let's be honest, when it comes to the Flying Fish Cafe, the emphasis on their menu is highlighted in their very name. There are few restaurants that we visit where the fish choices easily outnumber the meat options, but this is one of them.

Therefore, it may come as a surprise to learn that our first visit to the Flying Fish Café in 2004 was far from magical. It probably didn't help that we arrived late, having been stranded waiting for a boat during a freak tropical storm, but the service was exceptionally slow that night, and although the food was good, to us, it was nothing outstanding and nowhere near as good as we had been expecting.

Disappointed, we avoided the restaurant for a number of years, but from hearing from people who had dined there, one thing shone through – that the Flying Fish Café always received glowing reports from diners. I don't think I ever read one review that was critical, which made us think that perhaps we had just hit it on a bad night, as it obviously has an excellent reputation with many.

Our recent return to the Flying Fish Cafe couldn't have been more different from our previous experience. We were seated almost at once, with a table close to the kitchen, so we could watch the chefs at work.

We were looked after by Tim, who must rank alongside Disney's best servers. He knew the menu back to front and was able to recommend choices that were perfect for us, after we described our tastes to him. Where we often need help is with wine selections. We tend to know what we like, but we've no idea whether the wine we like will go with the food we're choosing or not. Here, Tim came into his own and selected a superb Riesling that beautifully complimented all of our courses and we were only too delighted to go ahead and get a bottle to enjoy between the two of us.

He also did a wonderful job of timing our dinner superbly. We had told him when we first saw him that we wanted to be done to head into Epcot to see IllumiNations and he obviously kept that in mind. At no point did we feel rushed during the meal, but we did notice as it got towards the end, that we were ahead of other people that had been seated at the same time of us. In fact, we were finished with about 40 minutes to spare before the nightly show, which proved to be perfect timing.

Our table was perfect as well, near to where the chefs were creating our meals and, every so often, our attention would be grabbed by a flame exploding from the grill. When we had eaten here previously, we hadn't even realized that there was a show kitchen, so this was a real attraction for us. Somehow, I always admire chefs even more when they're cooking in front of the people who will eating those meals. To me, that takes even more confidence and is something I could never do. The last thing I want is people watching me when I'm cooking!