Splitsville and 3 Pepper Calamari

Splitsville has been open at Downtown Disney for over a year and we hadn’t stopped in yet (for food or bowling that is, we’ve had drinks with friends at the outside bar a time or two). Our friends, Al & Judy and Harry & Sandy, bowled here last April – they had a great time and thought the facilities were very nice (if pricey). Anyway, we weren’t here to bowl, we were here looking for something to eat, specifically something spicy.

Our server, Autumn, was helpful and friendly. We both wanted a draft beer (our preference is for draft over bottled whenever possible)… and Splitsville offers both a rotating IPA and a seasonal Samuel Adams on draft – that’s us. I had the Mutiny IPA – I thought the hops were rather citrusy and Nick’s comment was “not bad”… it was pretty good for an IPA and in fact, it encouraged me to try more IPAs in the future. Nick had the Seasonal Sam Adams “Cold Snap” – he really liked it and I thought it was quite nice, Autumn had described it as having citrus and vanilla flavors and it did.

We ordered the 3 Pepper Calamari to share…

Splitsville 3 Pepper Calamari

The 3 peppers are Cherry Peppers, Jalapeño Peppers, and Banana Peppers and it is served with a spicy Thai drizzle (I don’t remember seeing  a description of the dipping sauce, it tasted like Thousand Island dressing without pickles, in other words it was bland and soothing to put out the “heat” from the spicy Thai drizzle). The peppers are in small bits, not really discernible at all in terms of heat or texture… We’d love to see these in bigger bits and more of them. The peppers were saltier than the calamari, perhaps they’re pickled before being breaded and fried.

Good sized rings and ample tentacle bunches (we like tentacles)

This was served hot and it smelled like Thai food. The spicy Thai drizzle was more sweet than spicy and we found that the dish was “Disney Spicy” … meaning not spicy at all to our palates, when Autumn came back by, we told her that it really wasn’t very spicy and she said she could go to the kitchen and get us some Voodoo Sauce. It’s made fresh daily in the kitchen on-site.

close-up

The voodoo sauce took a little while to come out, it saved the day! Nick really liked the Voodoo Sauce, it had a lot of umami and spice and was loaded with butter (I also detected hints of roasted pepper, maybe chipotle); it went very well with the sweetness of the Thai drizzle. There is only one item on the menu that uses this sauce “Mahi Mahi with Voodoo Shrimp” (Autumn says that “it rocks”).

We stopped in at Splitsville around 10:30 on a Sunday morning, the music on the patio wasn’t too loud (yes, we’re commonly put off by how loud the music is at dining venues). The service was good, actually it was very good; we’ll try to remember Autumn and possibly ask for her next time we stop in. I know that we’ll ask for Voodoo Sauce with whatever we get to eat there.

Footnotes:

We’d like to get something with Voodoo Sauce at House of Blues and compare it to what we had here. As far as I know, that’s the only other place at Disney World that has Voodoo Sauce.

The 3 Pepper Calamari were good with the extra sauce ($0.25) BUT the Calamri City at Raglan Road is still the best we’ve had.