Dining Review -- AKL Jiko Dinner
If you have the chance to eat at Jiko, you should! It is simply amazing. A stunning restaurant, not only is it beautifully decorated (the lighting even changes to reflect the sunset!) but the food and service is phenomenal. It is now one of my favorite restaurants at WDW, and I'm sure it will continue to be for years to come. Upon arrival, I made sure my restrictions were noted on our reservation. After being seated, I had to mention it to the server Sassan, and he said he would get the chef. He said that they do wonderful dietary foods there and that I would have a great meal. A few minutes later the chef arrived with a menu JUST FOR ME! Ok, it was a pre-done menu for lactose intolerance, but still. It was nice to just look at the menu and pick what you wanted, not ask for substitutions. The chef said that everything but 1 item was GF on the Lactose free menu. (*Note: this menu did have goat cheese on it. I am lactose intolerant, but tend to just do CF as well; however, I can tolerate goat cheese and such, but I just rarely eat it. If you are CF you will most likely get a special menu for that...although honestly goat cheese was only in 1 dish everything else seemed truly dairy free). I decided on a dip sampler as an appetizer (as they could do pampadams instead of the bread basket and a chermoula dip in place of the marsala that typically accompanies it). My mom and I shared this, so they brought out a separate bread basket for her and a separate one for me. They brought out all three dips and the marsala separately for my mom. I will say this was very impressive. We didn't ask them to do that, and they said they wanted to make sure everyone was taken care of. Now, if you have a child who is GF/CF and you also eat that way (so that no one feels bad, etc.) you would probably want to mention that so you don't get tons of bread at your table. Me, I am perfectly fine with my own and others eating gluten and cheese as long as I get something tasty and wonderful too! Here's the dip:
You can see my stuff in front and my mom's stuff in the back. So, good she even is in the midst of eating it!
On to the entrees! I choice the Swahili Curry Shrimp (made with coconut milk) and it was fantastic. I could not believe how large of a portion it was. Their were 12+ very large shrimp in it. The rice and sauce were extremely tasty and the shrimp were out of this world! I highly recommend this.
I had the option for fresh fruit and sorbet for dessert, but I was too full to eat anything else. I did, however, get some Rooibos tea (it is said to have great anti-inflammatory properties, very good for Crohn's disease) and Jiko has a great tea menu. Here's my pot of tea:
What a wonderful dining experience and an amazing meal. An excellent choice for dietary restrictions and for everyone else too! 10 out of 10.