The new Island Tower at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort opened late last year, and with the new tower we were given a brand new restaurant! Wailulu Bar & Grill is an indoor and outdoor restaurant that is walk up only and also offers to go style meals via the My Disney Experience app. This restaurant is open all day long, but we went for lunch, which has the same menu for dinner.
To start your meal here there are two vegan options. The Sweet Potato Hummus comes topped with crispy chickpeas, an espelette pepper dust, and is served with crispy breadfruit tostones. The tostones were a great texture with a crunchy exterior, which held up well for dipping, and a soft inside. They were a lighter bite than I am used to with plantain tostones, and I think I actually prefer the breadfruit ones.
The hummus had a nice light sweet potato flavor and I really enjoyed the bites with the crispy chickpeas. It was a large sharing portion and was very enjoyable. I had to reframe from eating it all since I knew we had so much other food to eat. I was also told that this is the hummus that is offered for the kids meal.
The Grilled Shishito Peppers come with an eggplant-tahini puree. The puree was very light and smooth and easy to dip the peppers into. The peppers were cooked well and had sesame seeds and what I assume was a squeeze of lemon juice on them.
The portion of this was also very large and easily shared. Out of all of the peppers we ate we didn’t encounter any spicy ones, as occasionally shishito peppers can hold some heat. These were very good, much better than other plates of shishito peppers I’ve had on Walt Disney World property.
We have two vegan entrees to choose from and you won’t go wrong no matter which you choose. The Grilled Tofu Chow Mein Salad came with charred cabbage, shishito peppers, hearts of palm, picked sweet potato, tossed in a sunflower butter dressing.
This salad had some really great textures. The chow mein noodles were nice and crunchy and the chopped cabbage made for nice bites. The sunflower butter dressing was creamy and similar to a peanut butter dressing, but more allergy friendly, which I appreciate. It was sweet and had such a comforting flavor. This salad was also a very large portion.
The tofu had a nice char on it but wasn’t very seasoned. It also didn’t seem to be pressed, which is fine, but the texture was on the mushier side. The tofu was the same temperature as the salad, which I appreciated as I don’t like hot foods mixed with cold salads. They also gave you tons of tofu which was really nice.
The other entree is the Grilled Tofu Poke Bowl. This bowl features sushi-style rice, pickled cucumbers, vegetables, spicy poke sauce, macadamia nuts, and grilled tofu. There was also so much more to this bowl like hearts of palm, avocado, a soy/teriyaki style sauce, and wakami seasoning blend.
I am obsessed with this bowl, it had so many flavors, textures, and just was overall a flavorful punch. The flavors blended so well and it was such a hearty poke bowl. Majority of the bowl was the added vegetables and tofu, it was a nice balance with it not being a super rice heavy meal.
The spicy poke sauce was definitely sriracha based and offered a nice little kick. Just like the salad, the tofu was the same with texture/temperature, but it worked well with the bowl as a whole. Out of the poke bowls I’ve had on property, this is the best one.
Don’t worry, we also have a dessert here! Our option is the DOLE Whip Sundae, which is pineapple soft serve, hibiscus meringue and macerated pineapple and berries. Out of desserts at Disney, this wasn’t my favorite. The macerated fruit was good, but I can get Pineapple DOLE Whip so many places that this one fell short for me. The hibiscus meringue was very crunchy and hurt my teeth due to it being so cold from the soft serve. It was very pretty, but I would skip this next time and just see what’s being offered at Pineapple Lanai instead.
If you don’t want to wait for a table if it’s busy you can order on the My Disney Experience app, on here you can get both entrees and the hummus. So you can grab this then go find somewhere at this beautiful resort to enjoy it.
Price $$
Review from February 2025.
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