Napa Rose Lounge

Name: Napa Rose Lounge
Address: 1600 S. Disneyland Dr, Anaheim, California 92802
Phone: (714) 781-DINE (3463)
Web site: (on Disneyland Resort Web site)
Date & Time visited: Saturday, October 13, 2007 at roughly 8:00 PM
Guests: A whole lot of MousePlanet staff and/or crew people
What we I had: Diligently Selected Cheeses.

This review will be in a different style than usual. Rather than going over the appetizers, small bites and drinks that everyone in our party of nine enjoyed, I'm going to focus solely on my cheese platter. Trust me, everyone else liked what they had.

The "Diligently Selected Cheeses" were served on a platter with various bits of dried fruit and candied nuts, and came with a printed handout naming and describing each cheese in detail. Here they are in order: (typos and odd phrasing are straight from the handout!)

• Brie Val De Saône (vol dee Sone) - France
  This is a rare and hard to get brie cheese, from Vale de Saône near the river Saône. This particular brie has a long history dating back to Charlemagne in 774. Many Bries are around 40% - 45% butter fat, this is over 60% and perfectly ripe. The cream-colored soft interior oozes at room temperature. The flavor is sweet and buttery with hints of almond.


• Bucheron, St. Saviol (boo-share-OH) - France
  This Goat's milk cheese is from Burgundy, France, made in the village of Poitou. This is a fresh, unripened chèvre. This cheese is a pleasant cheese to snack on, which is somewhat tart and chalky on the palette.
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• Etorki (eh-tor-KEE) -Aquitaine, France
  This is an Aged A.O.C. 100% Sheep's Milk cheese from the high mountains of the Western Pyrenees of France. This is a true world class cheese with a nutty almost fruity character. The cheese has remained unchanged for well over a hundred years due to the remoteness of the area.


• Mimolette (MEE-moh-LETT) - France
  A relative of Dutch Edam, made from pasteurized Cow's milk, Mimolette has a vivid orange color and a distinctive nutty taste. It is aged over 1 year and has a firm, yet flaky texture.


• Grana Padano - Emilia-Romagna, Italy
  This Cow's milk D.O.C. cheese is made througout Lombardy andPiedmont regions of Northern Italy. The name padona means "of the Po River". This cheese is aged over two years and is a Parmesan style. The color is a straw to cream color. The flavor is that of classic Parmigiano-Reggiano, but with wonderful nutty notes and less salty flavor than other parmesans.


• San Joaquin Gold - California, USA
  This is an artisan cheese made from unpasteurized cow's milk by Fiscalini Family Creamery in Modesto, California. Its milk comes from it sown herd of 1500 Holstein cows. It just recently won a gold medal at the prestigious London World Cheese Awards. Aged for 15 months, it is semi-hard, with a natural rind and sweet, salty, buttery taste and a rich, nutty flavor and pleasingly crumbly texture.


• Roquefort "Le Papillon" (roke-FORE) (LAY PAPP-ee-yone) - France
  "Le Papillon": the butterfly. The worlds premiere sheep's milk blue-veined cheese. It has a creamy interior with an intense, complex and spicy flavor with hints of bitterness associated with rye bread crumbs, which as used to distribute the bleu veining.


• Shropshire Blue (SHROP-shur-blu) - England
  This cheese was invented in England at the beginning of the centure and currently regarded as a world class cheese. Shropshire is a farmhouse Blue-Vein Cheddar made from Cow's Milk. It has a crumbly, yet firm and creamy texture. This cheese is aged 1 year, and is great with red wine!

Without exception, each one of the cheeses was wonderful. Each cheese's associated paragraph pretty accurately described the flavor and texture, and I made sure to try most of them along with the bits of fruit, candied nuts and toast points. Pure pleasure, completely decadent. I loved it.

Service: Disappointing to start--the server saw a large party and must have assumed we were going to hang out, not order much and therefore tip low--but she perked up once we started ordering drinks and food. The odd thing was that she offered opinions on just about everything ordered. Actually that's not the odd thing--the odd thing was that her opinions were fairly negative and she was somewhat insistent about her preferred alternative. Again, though, she did get a lot better after the initial round of orders. One other sour note was that it was basically impossible to get a glass of water, and once having received one to have it refilled.

Would we go back: Yes, but perhaps in a smaller group.