The beautiful Kona Café reopened on November 1^st, 2022, after about two-and-a-half months of refurbishment. Walt Disney World’s website stated, “Kona Cafe at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort is currently unavailable due to refurbishment. We will reopen on November 1, 2022, with an enhanced table-service experience. What does an enhanced table-service experience look like? Depending on when you read this, the breakfast review will already have been published. I had breakfast and lunch advance dining reservations at Kona Cafe for reopening day. I then sat in Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort typing about my experience. This is the result of that quick typing.

A few weeks in advance, Disney Parks Blog gave us some clues about menu adjustments starting November 1^st. For breakfast, we received more information. However. very little information was gained from that report about lunch and dinner. Thus, I arrived with limited preparation for appetizer and entrée choices. I did enlist the help of Goo to You! in evaluating the dining options on reopening day. Disney Parks Blog told us that several items would be returning to the menu like the Big Kahuna Burger and Seafood Pu Pu Platter. Those words confused me since neither of those items currently exists on the lunch and dinner menus. Of course, then I remembered that the burger at least was on the menu before virus times. However, the Seafood Pu Pu Platter has been an on-again then-off-again type menu item.

Still, the new lunch menu looks like a very scaled-back version of the dinner menu. For example, only two appetizer options appear on it, pot stickers and chicken wings. Sure, you can get various options of sushi if you desire. In fairness, the Kona Café menu fluctuates. My comparison connects to the menu right before closing for refurbishment as shown on Disney’s website a mere few days before the November reopening.

The lunchtime menu offerings do come with a bread service at the beginning making a nice touch. For lunch, our group ordered the Big Kahuna Burger and the Kona Stir-Fry with Chicken. These cost slightly under $25 each. The stir fry tasted very similar to the previous version of stir-fry here. If you like a strong Teriyaki sauce-based stir fry, then this one will be great for you. The stir-fry features plenty of vegetables with large slices of carrots. The chicken provided a needed protein. Yet, I found this chicken a bit dry and did not have as much flavor as other places on-site at Walt Disney World, like Raglan Road for example. Overall, stir-fry makes a nice meal but would not be a meal to race to get.

The Big Kahuna Burger returned. It resides on the lunch and dinner menu. This well-prepared burger comes with sautéed pastrami, corned beef, pepper jack cheese, mustard aioli, and a tangy cucumber, on a brioche bun. This will be served with standard Walt Disney World fries. Yet, the portion size of the fries looked very filling. This burger provides a nice meaty taste. On this day, the combination of meats created a salty aftertaste on several bites. The burger qualifies as juicy which is always a good thing with a burger. The brioche bun made a nice touch but gets overwhelmed by other components. My GooToYou! companion thought this burger was a good option at the Polynesian Village Resort.  My hesitation about this burger relates to the $24 price point. That might be a bit high for this type of burger.

Overall, I thought my lunch experience failed to live up to the level of breakfast experience earlier in the day. The scaled-back menu does not offer enough variety for most guests in my opinion. On the GooToYou scale, I would give this a 3.3 out of 5. Yet, Kona Café serves its purpose at this resort. If I were wanting to dine here, I would select breakfast or dinner instead. As always, eat like you mean it!