Narcoossee's

Narcoossee's is a signature table-service restaurant at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa at Walt Disney World. Set in a freestanding octagonal pavilion on the shore of Seven Seas Lagoon, near the resort's boat dock, it serves coastal American cooking centred on seafood, in a Victorian seaside setting. It is the Grand Floridian's waterfront restaurant, more relaxed in character than Victoria & Albert's in the main building but operated at the same signature level.

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History

Narcoossee's opened with the Grand Floridian on 28 June 1988, as part of the resort's original dining line-up. Contemporary newspaper coverage of the resort's opening singled it out from the main-building restaurants, describing a seafood restaurant in a shoreline location with an open, beamed interior and a show kitchen where the day's catch was broiled, steamed, sautéed and smoked in view of guests. From the beginning, the restaurant was conceived as an oyster bar as much as a dining room, an origin Disney would later make a point of honouring in its decoration.

The restaurant takes its name from Narcoossee, an unincorporated community in eastern Osceola County, Florida, on the shore of East Lake Tohopekaliga. That community began as a late nineteenth-century settlement founded by E. Nelson Fell, and its name is derived from a Creek word for "black bear". The choice fitted a wider pattern in the Grand Floridian, whose outer lodge buildings were named for places in the Florida Keys and whose identity was built around Florida's own resort history.

Narcoossee's traded in broadly its original form for more than three decades. It closed in June 2022 for the most extensive refurbishment in its history, as part of the multi-year transformation of the Grand Floridian, and reopened on 1 April 2023 with a refreshed dining room, a new bar and a substantially revised menu under chef Noah Estabrook.

Setting

The pavilion stands apart from the main hotel, reached by a short walk along the lagoon shore. Its octagonal shape and wraparound windows exist for one reason: the view. Tables look across Seven Seas Lagoon towards Magic Kingdom, and a veranda runs around the water side of the building for guests who want to step outside between courses.

That view is worked into the rhythm of an evening meal. Diners who time a reservation well can watch the Magic Kingdom fireworks across the water, and the Electrical Water Pageant, the nightly parade of illuminated barges that has circled the lagoon since 1971, passes the restaurant on its circuit.

The 2023 interior was organised around a theme Disney described as the harmony of land and sea. Soft cerulean colours, artwork that moves from landscape to seascape as guests progress through the room, and blue-toned upholstery replaced the darker earlier scheme. The new bar was built using local oyster shells, a deliberate nod to the restaurant's origins as an oyster bar.

Cuisine

The menu is built around the cooking of Florida and the south-eastern coast of the United States. Sustainably sourced seafood is the centre of it, with dishes at the 2023 reopening including an ocean-inspired charcuterie board of ahi tuna pastrami, charred octopus and house-made seafood sausage, plancha-seared scallops, and blackened redfish served with a chorizo and sunchoke hash, hominy and Florida sweet corn — the last presented as the chef's signature dish.

The "land" side of the concept is not an afterthought. Steaks, including a long-running New York strip, beef and ricotta tortelloni, roasted vegetable paella and other meat-based and plant-based dishes sit alongside the seafood, and a bisque that predates the refurbishment was retained among the starters. Desserts are produced under the Grand Floridian's pastry team. A wine list curated to match both halves of the menu, with an emphasis on bottles that work with seafood, completes the offer.

See also

• Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa
• Victoria & Albert's
• Cítricos
• Seven Seas Lagoon
• Electrical Water Pageant