If you want bacon and eggs or Mickey pancakes and dark colored water posing as coffee for breakfast in Disney World, you can go to just about any restaurant or quick-service location on property. If you want to try something a little different and get real, actual coffee, Kona Cafe at Disney's Polynesian Resort may be the only place in the "World" to get it....well, at least the actual coffee part.
Kona Cafe offers some unique breakfast options, including a guest favorite, the Tonga Toast. However, they also have some other options to challenge your palette, including the Samoan and Macadamia Pineapple Pancakes.
Let's start with the guest favorite. Tonga Toast is banana-stuffed sourdough bread, rolled in cinnamon sugar and served with a strawberry dipping sauce that adds that sugary kick to an already sweet delight. This is like French toast on steroids. Not being a sweet lover, myself, I just had a quick bite of my wife's to try it out. It's quite good, but also very, very sweet. There's also a lot of it, so be prepared for a rich, sweet, and filling breakfast when you order this one.
To give you an idea of my breakfast preferences -- probably more information than you need, but I like to "set the stage" for my review -- I order the low-carb, extra meat meal when I go to Cracker Barrel. In order to satisfy my morning protein requirements and try something a little different from the menu, I went with the Samoan. The Samoan is poached eggs with Hollandaise sauce served over smoked pulled pork hash. I've never been a huge fan of poached eggs and I could have done without the sauce and taters, but don't let the odd-sounding pulled pork ingredients scare you off from this one. It was delicious!!!! One of the best breakfast meals I've ever had. Although it appears small on the plate, it was very filling, the pulled pork was as full of flavor as any Southern barbeque stand I've had the pleasure of sampling, and the eggs added wonderful flavor to the overall meal. This one really blew me away. We were specifically trying the off-beat options on the menu and thought I would have to suffer through this one, but I was looking for seconds after giving it a try.
Beyond the food, Kona Cafe is also one of the only places at Disney World to get real coffee, rather than that NesCafe stuff (I'm withholding my more "colorful" adjectives to describe NesCafe). Take a look around the cafe and notice that coffee plays a big role in the theming of this Disney restaurant, including coffee beans and leaves for lights.
Kona actually offers a couple options for you coffee lovers, out there. The standard fare is a Kona coffee blend of 70% Kona beans and 30% Colombian. You can also get a 100% Kona coffee in a French press pot for $7-8, if you need the 100% stuff. You can also take home a bag of the Kona coffee, but it will cost you. $40 for a one pound bag. Doesn't Starbucks have 100% Kona for like $10? We said no, thanks.
We couldn't try the whole menu, so let us know your favorite Kona Cafe breakfast or give us your feedback on the ones we mentioned in our comments, below. We'll definitely be returning to Kona for breakfast, though. It was delicious!
Oh yeah, don't forget to say, "Hi!" to Lilo and Stitch on your way out!
