Believe it or not, I actually visited Disneyland in Anaheim, California (below), in its first year of opening, 1955, and as a wide-eyed ten-year-old, I put great food way down my list of interests. Not when there were so many other attractions, from a Jungle Cruise to a rocket ship take-off, spinning Mad Hatter teacups and cool race cars to putter around in.
    Yet I still remember the fried chicken and honey biscuits served at the Carnation Ice Cream Parlor off Main Street as a delectable alternative to the burger-and-hot dog fare found all over the park. It really wasn’t until the opening of Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, in 1971, that the entertainment giant started paying serious attention to food. Then, with the opening of the new international pavilions at EPCOT Centre (below)  in 1982, they really upped the quality and diversity of food—even wine—by contracting established restaurateurs and chefs to open places like Chefs de France, Alfredo the Original of Rome, Nine Dragons and more, with themed restaurants like The Hollywood Brown Derby at Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney’s Hollywood Studios) and some highly innovative restaurants in the hotels and resorts like the California Grill at Disney's Contemporary Resort  and Victoria and Albert's at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. The latter were very, very good; the former EPCOT restaurants better than previous efforts.
    When my two sons were little boys I returned to Disney World several times and watched the evolution of the dining segment throughout the vast resort, not least at the annual Wine and Food Festival, which has grown (and is still growing) into one of America’s largest and most respected events of its kind. To be sure, fast food and family restaurants still dominate the landscape, but Disney’s clientele is far more upscale than it was in 1955, and every year older restaurants have been retired or re-concepted and new restaurants opened as whole park attractions are added, like the new Pandora--The World of Avatar, which has a vast Satu’li Canteen built to look like a Quonset hut mess hall and serving dishes like chili-spiced crispy fried tofu bowl and a Sustainable Fish Bowl.
    Disney Springs has expanded to include a plethora of new eateries—52 of them—from Aristocrepes and a series of food trucks to a House of Blues and Raglan Road Irish Pub. When I visited this year I had lunch at the two-year-old BOATHOUSE, which is situated, as you’d expect, on the docks and configured like the kind of seafood restaurant yachtsmen and casual boaters alike would hang out in and celebrate during the America’s Cup races. You can get there in a 1950s Amphicar, and there’s a sleek (immobile) speedboat in the middle of the dining room.  I dined at a handsome white and green semi-open room overlooking the water, which looked like it would fit into the classiest beach club in Palo Alto.
    The Boathouse is run by Chicago’s Gibson Restaurant Group, whose portfolio has always included first-rate seafood menus, and this is their best effort in that genre to date. With several people at my table I sampled a great deal, from “large” Florida stone crabs (priced by the pound) that were closer to “jumbo” or “colossal” in size, and a Maine-style lobster bisque ($8 or $12) that tasted intensely of sweet lobster, not tomato or cream.
    Frying seafood well is not as easy as dunking it in hot oil, but at The Boathouse the panko-dusted cod ($18) was as crisp as it could be, with the white fish beneath steaming hot and juicy. A thick slab of swordfish ($31) was broiled with the same attention to detail, served with a butternut puree, roasted Fuji apples, fingerling potatoes, petite peppers and pearl onions in a rich garlic butter. I applauded the abundance of succulent meat in the New England lobster roll ($29.95), but that day the roll itself was dried out. Soft shell crab, a tad small in size, came with a peach salad, aromatic Old Bay seasoned remoulade and the crunch of pecan-smoked bacon.
    For dessert, you won’t find better Key lime pie or strawberry shortcake in the entire resort.
    This being Disney, there are sandwiches and children’s menus offered, and a whole section of steaks and chops. Except for a few Champagnes, the wine list at The Boathouse is all American, about equally white and red, with plenty of bottlings under $50 in both categories. Mark-ups are overall quite reasonable—mostly about 100% above retail. The bar has a dozen specialty cocktails and about two dozen beers.
    Tiffins is a new restaurant within the Animal Kingdom Theme Park and has an adventure theme fit for “seafarers, fortune hunters and vagabonds,” its walls hung with African elephant art, its ceiling held up by carved wooden totems, with an Asian bar/lounge with rattan chairs, hanging pendants and gauzy curtains, like the coolest Tiki Bar in Florida. Artwork is inspired by actual notes and field sketches of the creators of the Animal Kingdom, and the restaurant’s name refers to the light lunch meal served in tiered containers and consumed by working men in India.
    The food at Tiffins is a great deal more sophisticated than that, however, all of it brilliantly colorful and beautifully presented. (Nothing leaves Disney’s development kitchen called the Flavor Lab without every detail being worked out hundreds of times.) I enjoyed an array of dishes from the international menu that began with a Peruvian dish called  called causa made with mashed blue potatoes, Aji-spiked vinaigrette, lime mayonnaise, cilantro and quail egg ($15); Hokkaido scallops came with a green garlic panisse, peas and smoked bacon ($38), while tender marinated octopus was grilled and complemented by salsify, saffron aïoli and a lemon-caper olive oil ($16).
    These are the kinds of dishes that might be found in modern restaurants both in and out of Asia, and there is an admirable consistency of Far Eastern techniques used in dishes like whole fried yellowtail with fermented black bean sauce and peanuts ($43) or a platter of wagyu beef strip loin and braised short rib with rainbow carrots, Peruvian potatoes and chimichurri hot sauce ($53). Lamb loin is infused with a coffee butter and comes with the South African sausage called boerwors, soubise onion sauce, chakalaka tomato-and-bean sauce, and leek ash ($41). And they are not holding back on the spicing, staying true to the food cultures presented here.
    Desserts are a bit less global but no less delectable, like the chocolate ganache with caramelized bananas and cocoa nib tuile ($12) or the passion fruit tapioca cream with chocolate crumble and citrus fruits ($9).

    Faithful readers of this newsletter’s New York Corner may have noticed that I’ve covered a slew of Indian restaurants lately, which has given me a good idea of just how the sub-continent’s diverse cuisine is now represented in NYC, which is a far cry from the dumbed-down 100-item curry houses of the past.
    For one thing, the owners and chefs of these new Indian restaurants are focusing more on their own regions, from Goa to Mumbai, from Benares to Jaipur, with far less reliance on the entrenched Mogul dishes derived from the days of the Raj that have so long dominated. Rahi in Greenwich Village, opened in May, does not only feature a wider array of Indian cuisine but, thanks to Chef Chintan Pandya, from Mumbai, is doing so in a colorfully modern, individualistic way quite a bit ahead of the pack. The menu is divided into sections called “In-a-NY-Minute,” which are snack-like appetizers, and “Leisurely” main courses.
    There is a five-course tasting menu at $68 and seven courses at $88, with wine pairing available. I’d recommend those routes.There really is nothing on the menu I’ve run across before except for Rahi's riffs on Indian themes like paneer tikka kebabs with mango, ginger, mint and goat’s cheese ($14), and eggplant bharta, a Punjabi dish of mashed eggplant smoked with charcoal, with onion, cumin, coriander and puffy naan bread ($17). Otherwise every dish arrives in a beautiful presentation on individual plate surfaces—ceramic, wood, marble. As the dish arrives, you may puzzle as to which one it is that you ordered. There are no copper pots of brown stews here, no sizzling platters of orange tandoori chicken.
     Instead you’ll find a Madrasi egg roast ($14) made of a yolk set on a lush onion-tomato mousse, spiked with chili oil and sweetened with maple. “Kheera on the rocks” consists of grilled cucumber and yogurt with dehydrated pineapple set atop ice cubes ($14)—cute idea but not really very flavorful. Chettinad octopus ($21), a Tamil dish, also gets mousse-ed, this time with coconut, kataifi crisps and lemon zest. Tulsi chicken is fragrant with basil, hot from Thai chili and spiced with pink peppercorns and sweet orange marmalade ($15). Chorizo seekh ($16) is ground lamb served with pepper jack cheese and berry compote, which could very easily be a dish you’d get in Seattle, and I was intrigued by what a Dalhousie Shepherd’s Pie ($25) would be. Named after a British Governor in the region of Himachal  Pradesh, it had the look of that British pub staple, only a lot prettier, with cumin-scented mashed potato and roulette cheese to enrich the seasoned ground lamb beneath.  Fragrant chicken steamed in a banana leaf ($25) with fragrant basmati rice and a coconut curry is derived from Kerala on the Malabar Coast.  Juniper berry lamb chops ($28) were all right, but needed the enlivening of the chipotle peppers, jaggery sugar, ginger and salad. The closest thing to a traditional curry was duck kozhi ($32), a Kerala-style dish, with vermicelli noodles and rosy slices of duck breast in coconut milk scented with cardamom.
        Desserts are all done with the same modern flair, not least the lovely cubes of scented cheesecake set with fresh flowers on a vermillion plate (right).
        The façade of Rahi is a pleasing white storefront that could house any kind of West Village restaurant or boutique, but inside it looks little like any other Indian restaurant in the neighborhood. The walls are white brick, flanked by a white marble bar, and beginning at the entrance there is a series of dreamy photos that evoke the name Rahi—traveler—which owner Roni Mazumdar has chosen to distinguish his vision and Chef Pandya’s cuisine. That they have succeeded shows how receptive New Yorkers and Americans have become to these new styles of Indian cooking from a country that is one-third the size of the U.S. but with three times the population.

Rahi is open nightly for dinner, Sat. and Sun. for Brunch