Aloha from Kona Café in Disney World’s Polynesian Village Resort!
Kona Cafe
Kona Café is about as classic as it gets. Though ‘Ohana grabs more of the headlines when it comes to dining in the Polynesian, Kona Café has been its own beloved spot with fans all its own for many years.
Kona Cafe
We’re visiting today to explore some recent changes to the menu and to taste what’s new on the menu! Before we dig in, though, the meal — as always — starts with fresh soft rolls served with that completely addictive sweet macadamia butter.
Rolls and Sweet Macadamia Butter
Okay, NOW let’s take a look at the menu. Our visit was for lunch, which all falls under the category of All Day Offerings. (Just click on any of the menu images to enlarge.)
All Day Offerings Menu
Though it was not our mealtime, the Dinner menu, naturally has seen changes, too, including the addition of a Perfect Porterhouse Steak featuring an 8 oz tenderloin and a 14 oz New York Steak entrée for $95.00. Much like a more traditional steakhouse, sauces and sides are also available for an additional cost.
Dinner Offerings Menu
A highlight here for many guests is the Sushi menu including Specialty Rolls in addition to your regular Dragon and California. (This is available during both lunch and dinner.)
Sushi Menu
First up, appetizers! We went with the Fire-Roasted Pork Wings.
Fire-Roasted Pork Wings
These are wrapped in honey bacon, and served with pickled rainbow carrots. From a flavor perspective, the dish comes together wonderfully.
Fire-Roasted Pork Wings
The bacon has a nice candied quality from the honey glaze, and the pork was well prepared.
Fire-Roasted Pork Wings
We did feel, though, that with only three “wings” it was small for the $12.00 price.
The new Polly Lolly Roll from among the Specialty Sushi Rolls is striking in its presentation and generous in its portion.
Polly Lolly Roll
This stunning dish features fried soft shelled crab, shrimp tempura and crawfish tails plated with grilled asparagus, chives, a spicy mayo, and garnished with more than a sprinkle tobiko (fish eggs).
Seriously, it’s HUGE. Even better, it is really good.
Polly Lolly Roll
The shrimp tempura, in particular, was completely on point; in fact, the overall variety of textures was great. And the spicy mayo is an terrific addition to the whole thing, offering a fun kick.
Polly Lolly Roll
Polly Lolly Roll
As for entrees, we went some seriously substantial sandwiches starting with the Crispy Cheddar Burger served with fries.
Crispy Cheddar Burger
The menu says this burger is “smothered” in crispy cheddar… and it’s NOT KIDDING. Yep — that’s all crispy cheddar! Amazing!
Crispy Cheddar Burger
It’s further topped with maple bacon, roasted tomato, and braised onions.
Crispy Cheddar Burger
The presentation is pretty great. Unfortunately, the sandwich itself didn’t live up. The patty itself was way too small to hold up to all the cheese and bacon. And it was also overcooked, to boot (our order was medium rare).
Crispy Cheddar Burger Patty
The burger patty basically tasted like your regular counter service patty with nothing special about it. Altogether, the dish doesn’t live up to the hype of its appearance.
Things started looking up again with the Hawaiian-style Reuben which begins with the expected corned beef and it is — as anticipated — incredibly tender. The portion is, once again, impressive and easily could be sharable.
Hawaiian-style Reuben
The “Hawaiian-style” twist includes the addition of kalua pork to the meat along with kimchi, Havarti cheese, root veggies, and a mustard-tomato aioli. Both meats had terrific flavor.
Hawaiian-style Reuben
You can’t really tackle this as a regular sandwich, since the bottom piece of bread can’t really hold up the heaviness of the meats, but just grab a fork and dig in to enjoy (especially you kimchi fans out there, because it is awesome on this sandwich)!
There is a definite change to the desserts as well. Servers now bring out a dessert tray you can peruse full of individual glass servings. Our server shared that, because the portions are so large for the meals, the desserts are smaller for guests who still have room for just a little something sweet.
Presented Dessert Tray
There is not an actual physical menu to show you, but each of the above options is $5.00. These include Tiramisu, S’mores, Tapioca Pudding, Bananas Foster, and Key Lime. (Sadly, there is no more Kona Kone at Kona Cafe.) Note that Dinner may include other options such as a Strawberry Champagne dessert.
Of the three we tried, the Key Lime had a terrific burst of bright lime flavor that was really delicious.
Key Lime Dessert
But I actually would’ve preferred more of the graham cracker crumbs to deliver a little more of that traditional taste and texture of a key lime pie.
Key Lime Dessert
Still, it was tasty, and a very close second to the lovely Tiramisu which was rich in creamy texture and espresso flavor.
Tiramisu
Though it placed third among the three we tried, it’s still fair to say that the Tapioca Pudding was also yummy, complete with its fresh fruit toppings and a few popping pearls as a fun play along with the textured tapioca.
Tapioca Pudding
As we mentioned, Kona Cafe is a classic dining destination, with dishes that many guests — including us! — have grown to love over the years. From the previous menu, these include Sticky Wings and Asian Stir Fry, along with the Kona Kone for dessert. But as far as quality goes, our meal today was — Crispy Cheddar Burger notwithstanding — still very solid. Sushi fans, in particular, should still be pleased (seriously, try the Polly Lolly Roll!), but the regular All Day menu has some good dishes.
And we do want to stress again that the new items we had are all part of the All Day menu. Whether or not the semi-steakhouse from the Dinner menu will fly? Time will tell on that one, and we’ll be curious to see where today’s Kona Café goes from here!
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What do you think of the new offerings at Kona Café? Please let us know with a comment!
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Are the new dinner offerings eligible for 1 under the Disney Dining and Deluxe Disney Dining Plans? I would imagine the Porterhouse isn’t but what about the others?
Thank you for your help.
Marc, I called Disney dining about this yesterday and I was told that Kona is still a one table-service credit restaurant, and you can order any entree off the menu EXCEPT for the $95 steak. You can order the $55 ribeye, however! I’m curious if AJ has heard anything different, though.
Last year they took away my Island chicken. This year they’re taking away the Kona Cone.
The reuben sounds interesting, but little on the menu appeals to me now.
I agree with CraiginPa,,,they have taken basically everything away that use to make this place great. What is on the menu looks just ok, if one has to go there, but not worth the effort to go to from what I can I can see. The french fries look horrible!!!! for what your paying, they need to do better than this!!! Its a ripoff to customers and turning into counter service food to a degree. Thats a major thumbs down.
Had the worst meal on property I’ve ever had here in December 2017. My kids returned in October 2018 and said it was again the worst.
I think I’ll pass on Kona for a while.
I just made a reservation at Kona then saw these changes. They are very disappointing. The last thing Disney World needs is another over priced steak! In my view, the desserts were also some of the best and most unique at WDW.
I’m disappointed in the menu changes. I enjoyed the stir fry and they used to have a steak on the luncheon menu that came with crispy rice. The prices seem pretty extreme too. Charging for sauces? Really? I remember back in the day when the restaurant was the Coral Isle Cafe, they had these amazing coconut shrimp that came with a side dip of creamy coconut sauce. I wish they’d go back to their roots and bring back some old favs. ( Duck wontons anybody)? If they do away with the Lapu Lapu I’ll just cry.
Eean, thanks for sharing! We haven’t heard anything different!
We stopped by Kona island on 1/23 to check it out. The cast member said we could order various items from Kona Cafe in the more casual setting — first come first served, no reservations. I decide to eat there a few days later I went (alone) sat down , no one else, but was told that the cast memeber who handles such requests was not there & I needed to go to Kona Cafe & see if I could get a reservation as they were bartenders. I left – no sushi.
Jim, did you go to Kona Island for lunch or dinner? There is only a server there for dinner, starting at 5pm.
Yes, everything except for the Perfect Porterhouse, sides and sauces is included in the dining plan; still only one point for each plan (standard & deluxe).
The porterhouse is definitely for sharing, and also comes with bone marrow (to melt over the steaks), 2 loaded twice baked potatoes, a salad and crostini. You also get a choice of 2 sauces at no charge. It is WELL WORTH the price.
The stir-fry may be gone, but there are now 5 noodle options; one being a cold chicken noodle salad. If you don’t want your noodles to be “soup”, just tell your server you don’t want the broth or to only pour a little in the bowl.
These prices look signature; the food pictures don’t. Yikes.
It would be nice if there were more vegetarian options. Also, in the past, we always ordered the Big Kahuna ($12) for breakfast, with no meat, even though it was the same price with the meat! We then headed over to Magic Kingdom with full stomachs. The last time we were there in December, 2018, not only was it no longer on the menu, but when we were told we could just order the indvidual components, one egg, one piece of french toast, one pancake, and 5-6 potato wedges, and no meat. Charge $22!!!!! We now wake up and go straight to magic Kingdom with an extra $88 in our pockets.
I noticed that the steaks do not appear to come with sides and the sides are listed for an additional amount.
If I am using a DDP credit, does a steak include a side or do I need to be prepared to pay extra for a side?
We are booked at Kona for supper in April 2019 but if sides are not included in the DDP and all an additional cost, we may choose to go elsewhere.
Please don’t ever make me eat there with that menu. Our party of 10 will have to cancel reservations for the nights we planned on eating there. What happened to gluten free noodles? Oh this sounds awful
I am so saddened to hear that they replaced the magnificent desserts with tiny portions – Disney needs to let the guest decide how much dessert they want, not offer only what looks like sample smaller than the Food and Wine festival. I’m not crazy about paying $10 for two tiny desserts to equal one regular dessert elsewhere and $25 for a lunch entree….They had the best desserts on property and I referred many guests there. This was my favorite place to dine.