Ohana

Originally posted Spring 2020

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Ohana means family. It is also an amazing restaurant at the Polynesian Resort in Walt Disney World. I thought it would be the perfect grand finale meal to our Disney Staycation and attempted Ohana- a Disney meal at home!

While the 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?

Ambiance

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

Updated September 2023- It looks like that set is no longer available on Amazon, try this one instead!

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. 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!

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. No one in my family has ever tried one. E and I aren’t big on pineapple and the boys just never got around to it I guess. This is a super simple recipe but I have no idea if it actually tastes like the real thing!

• 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…

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!

Pineapple Bread

At the real Ohana 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

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?!
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