California Vegetarian

An absolutely wonderful meal, even with crunchy peas!

During a recent trip to southern California, George and I ate at Catal Restaurant in Downtown Disney. Catal, which is upstairs above Uva Bar and Café, has a Mediterranean menu.  The atmosphere is pleasant, with indoor and outdoor dining on a covered patio.  The wine list is nice. The service is excellent. And most importantly, the food was outstanding. This is a great place for vegetarian dining.

We shared a starter: warm asparagus bundle with tomato fondue, extra virgin olive oil and fine herbs–$12.  I have to say that we both love asparagus.  So, this one was an easy winner.  It was cooked to perfection.  The “tomato fondue” was not over-bearing, but instead was a great compliment to the asparagus. 

We shared our salad (split for us by the chef onto two plates): compressed salad of Manchego cheese, arugula, red apples, dates, walnuts, and pistachio vinaigrette–$13.  We also love Machego cheese and apples and walnuts and … ok, so, we love all the ingredients for the salad.  So, again, this one was an easy winner, as well. There is always a risk of over-cheesing a salad like this one, but the balance of the elements was well done.

We had the same entrée, but didn’t share: sweet pea ravioli with baby carrots, chardonnay cream and wilted pea sprouts–$19.50 each.  The sauce was, again, perfectly balanced with the other components of the dish.  The ravioli were excellent—filling was superb and the pasta was perfect.  The carrots were tender and delicious.  The ONLY short-coming of the entire meal was the slightly undercooked sweet peas in this entrée.  Everything else was so perfect, we refused to let the server take our plates back to the chef.

For dessert, I ate carrot cake with a scope of coconut gelato. George ate a milk chocolate torte with almond brittle and a scope of coffee gelato.  The desserts were lovely–$9 each. George had a glass of Taylor 20 year with his dessert.  I had a dolce de leche dream cocktail.

With dinner we drank a great wine: Domaine Rene Engel a Vosne-Romanee.