Ohana means Family- Remembering the Magic of the Polynesian Resort

Ohana means family. It is also an amazing restaurant at the Polynesian Resort in Walt Disney World. One of our favorite Disney memories is dining here in 2017. When Covid forced us to have a staycation, we chose to recreate this meal as our Grand Finale to “Disney at Home Week”.

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Originally posted Spring 2020

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While the Ohana restaurant serves breakfast and dinner, we have only dined there for dinner. It is served family style (of course) and there are 10 different menu items brought to your table.

So what was I thinking trying to replicate this at home?

That Ohana Ambiance

To begin with I decorated our table with this great kit from Amazon:

I also ordered two hollowed out coconuts from Etsy. At Ohana, the kids are invited to participate in coconut races during the meal. They all get to push their coconut around the restaurant with a broom. Sadly, as of January 2025 this still has not come back post Covid. I knew I wanted to bring that element to our staycation. We improvised with lacrosse sticks and raced up the driveway. The kids loved it!

Our Menu:

On the menu for our own halfway homemade Ohana was:

• Pineapple Bread
• Dole Whip
• Pork dumplings
• Teriyaki noodles & broccoli
• Chicken
• Shrimp
• Ohana bread pudding

How to (or how not to…)

Dole Whip

The dole whip is one of the most beloved snacks in all of Walt Disney World. I’m more of a an orange Dole Whip girl (sacrilage, I know), so I have no idea if this recipe tastes like the real thing or not! 2025- You can also find Dole Whip in a lot of stores now!

• 2 cups frozen pineapple (I suggest thawing it a little bit as it was really difficult to get it to blend)
• 1 cup vanilla ice cream
• 1 cup pineapple juice
• Optional: Vodka or Rum as is legal on your driver’s license…

1. Add pineapple, ice cream and half of the pineapple juice to the blender.
2. Blend until smooth adding more pineapple juice as needed.
3. Add liquor as needed. By the time I got done cooking, it was needed!

Ohana Pineapple Bread

At the real Ohana restaurant, they serve a pineapple coconut bread. I went halfway homemade and added some diced pineapple to a honey cornbread mix. It was delicious! Just remember you are adding more moisture to the batter so you may want to adjust any oil or water your mix requires.

Pork Dumplings

Again, I do not have time to sweat over handmade dumplings (more power to you if this is your thing!). So I bought frozen potstickers that can be made in the microwave. They are still really tasty. If you like your potstickers crispier you can always toast them up in a pan as well.

Teriyaki Noodles

I actually followed a recipe to make the noodles. However, they were the least successful dish of the night so I am not going to share the recipe here! I think the soy/brown sugar mixture may have reduced too long leaving the sauce incredibly salty. I stir fried the noodles with broccoli in our wok. Unfortunately I was also making the bread pudding, cooking the proteins, microwaving the potstickers and blending dole whips all at the same time and the noodles were a little neglected. Please let me know if you have a good Ohana noodle recipe!!!

Chicken & Shrimp A La Ohana

Ohana serves chicken, shrimp and steak skewers but I had to draw the line somewhere and just went with chicken and shrimp! I marinated them both using this recipe-https://pin.it/5Kxu4Fe. Then I used skewers and put them in a hot frying pan. I promptly realized why the recipe said to grill them.

It’s hard to tell from this picture but the skewer was floating over the pan and there was no way the chicken would cook that way. I had to take it off all of the skewers and cook it in the pan. I then reskewered it-because presentation matters to children (bhahahaha). The shrimp was cooked in the same manner.

Ohana Bread Pudding

I am not a bread pudding person. That being said, Ohana has one of the best desserts anywhere on the Disney property. It is a warm bread pudding served with a caramel sauce, vanilla ice cream and bananas. It is to die for. I used this recipe https://pin.it/5RvRPAX and I think it turned out pretty well for a first timer.

If I were to make this again I would go for a bigger pan. The recipe above calls for a 10 inch cake pan. Now again, I’m no bread pudding expert, but I would try a 9×13 pan. With the cake pan there just wasn’t enough room for all of the mixture to sit evenly, which caused it to take forever to finish baking. Either way- it tasted good!

I spent the entire meal cooking and serving the kids and sipping my “special” Dole Whip. The kids complained about the food through every course. I was exhausted and very very sticky from all of the pineapple juice and brown sugar involved in the meal. The kids went outside and I reheated my plate of cold food.

Vacation was clearly over.

Comment: What was your favorite restaurant I “visited” this week? Did you like this series? What should I do next?!

Did you miss the beginning of our adventure? Click here to go back to Day 1.

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