Ponderosa Steakhouse, Hwy192, Orlando
Home » Travel »Dining Date: 8th August 2011
Since several friends recommended Ponderosa for a good cheap breakfast, we decided to try it out…well, actually, we had planned on having breakfast at IHOP, but our sat nav gave us the wrong directions, and we ended up pulling into Ponderosa on the 192. Close enough! (IHOP is on the other side of the road)
We queued and paid for our breakfast. We all got the waffle add-on, but I don’t think we actually needed to do this. Oh well! We were shown to a booth, and then a waiter came over and introduced himself and we went to the buffet bar.
It is a squish around the buffet, very close to the booths on either side of the station. Having people’s butts in your face whilst your trying to eat can’t be very pleasant! I’m glad we were not so close to it! (I found the Golden Corral layout a lot nicer – that post comes later!)
There was a big selection of breakfast goods – eggs, bacon, sausage, cereals, fruit…along with more bizarre items like jelly, chocolate mousse and cake!
I had my first try of biscuits and gravy – another tick on the ‘foods to eat in Orlando’ list. They tasted a lot nicer than I thought they would. We actually ended up buying packet mixes of both biscuits and gravy to bring home to the UK, when we later visited Publix. It took a long time to actually prepare them, but we eventually did, and you can see about that here!
When we paid at the start, we bought three bottles of orange juice. We didn’t realise we had to pay for all our drinks up front; so when I decided that I fancied a coffee, the waiter asked it it was on our receipt, which it wasn’t…no coffee for me then! I assume I could have gone up to the till again and paid for one? Oh well!
Our waffles were then brought out, and Liam nommed his all up. I warned the boys that the blob of what looked like ice-cream or cream, was actually butter…most of that was flicked to the side of the plate!
I couldn’t manage my waffle at all, which is when I remembered my friend telling me to just have the buffet and not pay for the add on. *slaps head*
We weren’t overly impressed with Ponderosa. I know it’s a cheap meal, but it also tastes and looks like it. The bacon was swimming in a vat of oil and looked rank. I remember not actually wanting to try anything much because it didn’t look too clever. We decided we probably won’t be going back there, but glad we at least tried it to formulate our own opinion on the place.