Celebrating St. Patrick's Day at Walt Disney World

Raglan Road may be the perfect place to celebrate St. Patrick's Day at Walt Disney World. After all, it was named after Raglan Road in Dublin, made famous by poet Patrick Kavanagh.

We'd heard that visiting Irish to Disney World would vouch for the authenticity of this restaurant and bar. After hearing this, we were anxious to give this place a try. You can see the dark, woody, clubby atmosphere as soon as you enter the reception area. Unfortunately, we had a rather rocky start when it came to the service. But it all turned around once we insisted on what we wanted.

First, we waited a little too long in an empty waiting area. Finally, we were led past the main room, where it appeared the action and fun would take place, to a small room in the back next to a waiter station and two people conducting a business meeting.

Our waitress arrived immediately and set down two drink coasters before we had a chance to protest our table. When we broached the subject to her, she asked 20 questions about what was wrong with it and attempted to talk us into staying, in a rather snippy manner. We were anxious to really love this place, and if we were going to have any chance of doing so-plus the fact that spending that amount of money and not enjoying ourselves wasn't on our agenda-we insisted on a change.

We were much happier with our new table located in the main dining room and with our new waitress. In fact, from here on the experience was excellent. She was savvy enough to realize I really didn't want a glass of wine with dinner, but was thinking about ordering one of the specialty drinks. When trying a new place, I like to try some of the specialty items.

I had the Double Berry Tini and my companion ordered a glass of Boddington's-I tasted it and the head was creamy and smooth. The martini was awesome; I'm a new fan of a flavored martini, although I usually prefer a traditional vodka martini on the rocks.

The wait staff brought us a plate of Irish Soda Bread (not to my liking) and olive oil with Guinness sugar syrup, which was quite tasty.

We ordered a fabulous appetizer, which we could have made a meal out of a couple of these:

SmokieCity-Oven-baked layers of smoked cod with mature Wexford cheddar and double cream, served with crusty bread.

Then we moved on to our entrees:

Entrée 1: Kevin's Kudos-Chef Kevin's signature dish. Oven-roasted loin of bacon with an Irish Mist glaze served with braised cabbage and creamed potato

Entrée 2: Raglan Risotto-Shiitake mushrooms, leeks, onions, parmesan cheese, cream and a drop of white wine for good measure

The food was incredibly delicious and we would definitely return, especially since there are several more items on the menu we'd like to try. And Raglan Road participates in the Disney Dining program so we were able to have our meal discounted.

There's also live entertainment in the main dining room if you're there late enough. We were early diners so we missed it. But if you're going to be at Walt Disney World on St. Paddy's Day (or any time really), I recommend you give Raglan Road a try. The food is that tasty.