Dinner - Kres Chophouse (Orlando Church St Station area)

Dinner took us way out of the tourist zone to the Church Street Station area of Orlando. This small area area around the station looked authentically local and Southern (very reminiscent of French Quarter New Orleans in style) albeit literally just the block around what must have been one of the city's original stations.


For once Orlando felt like a real place not just a tourist megacentre and with the locals clearly gearing up for a big Saturday night there was a bit of a vibe. They even have a Spoons


Kres was just a few buildings down from the station and had a grand old facade. This was a restaurant we picked based on generally very good Tripadvisor ratings, it certainly looked the part when we arrived


Inside was dark and luxurious, the classic look for a classy American chophouse. From the cocktail menu I decided on a Bandita (Tequila, Jalapeno, Apricot Liquor, Blood Orange) and DW her usual Jamesons and Diet Coke.



The Jamesons was a big pour of whiskey and had to go back for more DC. Cocktail was excellent with a hint of spiciness from the Jalapeno but otherwise a nice sweet flavour from the fruity ingredients.

The menu featured plenty of classics:


I started with the lobster bisque. This was very good without being perfection, I like it a lot alhough I've had better (including at the Disney signatures). In critical fine dining mode they should wipe away the splashes from the side of the bow before serving but I only noticed because of the photograph


DW's order of Wild Mushroom & Chevre Arrancini were absolutely massive. We doubled checked that chevre was goats cheese - I knew it was a non cow's cheese but couldn't decide between goat and horse based on my dodgy French. Is there such a thing as horse cheese?


Anyway these were beautiful Not photogenic but extremely tasty with the well cooked risotto inside a crispy crumb. We ate all of these and probably shouldn't because it was heavy (even after passing on a bread course to save space)

Onto mains, DW has lined up . the 12oz veal chop from long before we left the UK so ordered this with the potato gratin on the side as whe wanted a mash side instead (which I ordered).


This came with a couple of sprigs of asparagus on top and was extremely tasty if a little tougher than you might expect from veal you get in Europe (the definition of veal may be different). A good dish but not a great one.

Here are the sides, parmesan mash which was excellent and crispy Brussel sprouts served with yet more parmesan. Also pictured is the side dish of 3 cheese potato rosti.



As I said the mash was good but the sprouts were amazing. I'm a fully paid up sprout hater and had committed to trying these to see if the rumours were true that America had made sprouts edible and I have to say they are These were crispy and fresh with a bit of cheese and didn't taste remotely of sprouts as I know them. We only tried a tiny corner of the 3 cheese rosti because it was insanely rich, that side dish alone would have filled most people up if they finished it.

My main was an 8oz filet mignon cooked medium-rare and served with a little garlic butter. It came rare-ish which was fine, it was lovely anyway - tender as you like and super flavourful for filet. In the end we opted to finish the veal chop and put the last bit of steak aside for slider duty back at the hotel.


Annoyingly we ran out of steam midway through the main and dessert was never on the card, blame the loverly arancini starter for that. Having some problems with the photo for the receipt but it was $154 before tip.

If I compare Kres Chophouse with Disney's Yachtsman Steakhouse last year, that cost $249 for 3 so per head Kres was a little cheaper but we had more courses at Yachtsman so about the same price overall. Kres had a better ambience (not that retirement home vibe), levels of service were similar at both and the Yachtsman food just edged it overall so a narrow win for the Disney signature

Breakfast tomorrow is at Perkins

Oo just catching up with this thread, I’ve got to get me some Red Lobster scone mix. We have also had Slap Ya Mama in this house for many a year (after being introduced to it in Australia of all places!), it’s great on scrambled or poached eggs and freely available on Amazon here

Can't wait to make those cheddar biscuits at home Slap ya Mama on eggs, got it! Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy the rest!

Breakfast - Perkins (I-Drive)

Listening to recommendations on this thread we changed the morning’s breakfast from IHoP to Perkins and visited the branch on I-Drive again near Pointe Orlando, the wheel etc. This turned out well, we liked the ambience of the place and the extensive menu. It also helped that they had a special strawberry crepe dish on as part of a strawberry season promotion (DW having been craving crepes all week ).

Drinks-wise I went for coffee and DW had tea.


Then my breakfast order which was a BLUEBERRY BUTTERMILK PANCAKE BREAKFAST - I didn't shout it, that's just their menu (Two buttermilk pancakes loaded with juicy blueberries, served with scrambled egg whites and two turkey sausage patties. No sides.)


This was delicious. Huge blueberries and the turkey patties and egg were great. I also ate the bacon from DW’s order and this ended up like a much nicer version of that weird McDonald’s big breakfast that used to come on a tray with a muffin. Very nice.

DW made a lot of changes to her order. Mainly she insisted on everything being on separate plates? Here’s what we ended up with:



This was okay, the strawberries needed a little sweetener on them. Eggs and bacon were very good, only the crepes disappointed, they were supposed to come with a vanilla cream but she’d nixed that to have them plain however they were oddly crispy which doesn’t really work for crepes so not sure what happened there.

All in all we liked this and would definitely come back, bill came to $26 so about the price of one Hilton breakfast! Thumbs up for the Perkins tip from Jannyjan, Taffy1959 and Mexy02.


SeaWorld visit and lunch/snacks will be next

Ooo love Perkins , it’s our go to But did you get the cookies and muffins from The bakery bit for later?

Anyway Kres does look lovely . I always have a fear of wandering into the non tourist areas though so you are braver than us . Ever since over first visit and we went all the way down the 535 which I think went into the dark depths of the 192 somehow? . Queue gun shops, porn shops and quite a few undesirables hanging about and us ending up in a pharmacy car park , locking all doors immediately and making dh panic to get the hell out of there ah the memories lol .

No we didn't get any take-out. Should have done, a missed opportunity.

When I booked Kres I didn't realise it was in Orlando proper but it was fine aside from a brief google maps detour through the hood to avoid all the construction work that's going on downtown. I think we've all had one of those holiday experiences my family had one in Miami

Interesting to see that Church Street Station is back. We first went in the 90s when it was a nice place to visit. We went a few years later and it was really run down and haven't been back since.

Is the area around it still very rundown? What is the parking like? You used to park under a flyover and had a quite disconcerting walk to the station

Amazing report so far.

They must have completely refurbed the area round the station because that block could pass for the nice bits of New Orleans and everything was pretty shiny. We parked in a new multi-storey parking garage, there were several of these - cost $10 but felt very safe and a lift dropped us off right next to Church Street. You could see the place was going to be rowdy later though bit of a Tenerife style party vibe looked to be building up with groups of lads going into the Irish bar/club etc. There was a wedding at the Spoons when we went past

Round there is a construction site everywhere which foxed the satnav so it's probably changing season by season but we'd definitely go again DW is completely fearless with these sort of things, I'm more cautious but never felt any danger (might have been less confident if DD was with us I guess but still I think not)

thank you for reading and commenting, glad you're enjoying. Only the briefest of trips this time, it's almost over already

Don't say that! Just enjoy it and keep the pics/report coming.