Garden Walk: Roy's

 Wanting a break from Disneyland for the night, my family and I made our way to the Garden Walk and went to Roy's. This is a place I've wanted to eat at for a while and was happy to finally do so. Roy's specializes in Hawaiian food, and I love Hawaiian food, my family does too so it was a natural choice to dine.

It was a Saturday night, and by the looks of some guests, prom night, so it was busy. Luckily, we had made reservations thus making our wait time not long, but without reservations, I’m sure the wait would have been too long.

We finally got seated and I read in the regular menu that there was a gluten free menu so my aunt and I got one of those to chose from.

I had been craving sushi for a while and when I saw various sushi and sashimi offered, I had to get some. The problem I ran into though was that I wanted to do a three-course meal that was at a fixed price but my starter had to be a pea and pork salad. Luckily, my dad wanted that, so he ordered California rolls and we just swapped starters.

 (One is missing because I ate it before I remembered to take a picture).

The crab was fresh snow crab instead of krab, and it was very fresh yet slightly tangy, and perfect. It was better sushi than what I was looking for. I usually don't like California roll, but this was just amazing. It also didn't fill me up so I had plenty of room for my other two courses.

My second course was a pork chop with a vanilla bean and parsnip puree, and pineapple chutney.

The chop was huge, and there was a bone but I didn't find it till the end so that large slab is mostly meat. I'm also obsessed with things with vanilla beans in them and that puree was just perfect and creamy with a nice, sweet vanilla infusion. The chop was perfectly cooked, and everything went together nicely. The pineapple was tangy and added a different flavour to the dish. The only negative was that the sauce was a bit on the salty side.

I did take some of it home because I had to leave room for dessert. Also that chop, again, was huge.

For dessert I had the chocolate soufflé with vanilla ice cream and raspberry coulis.

Gluten-free, of course, and so delicious. I was the only one that got dessert so we passed the dish around the entire table and everyone loved it. Even the ice cream, which was a simple vanilla ice cream, was amazing. It just had more vanilla flavour than most ice cream. The soufflé was rich and warm and amazing, and with the hint of raspberry mixed in there made it a great flavour combination.

It was a bit expensive which is why I had put off dining at Roy’s. My three-course meal was $35, but it was so worth every penny, and perfectly delicious.

-Charlotte