Marianna

This is our first time visiting Longboat Key. After 4 years of Christmas week in Ponce, Puerto, we decided to try something else. We decided to make a Christmas dinner reservation and selected the Colony Restaurant at the Colony Resort. Since we have never been to the area, we would like to know if we made a good choice. We know there are many wonderful restaurants in the area (we plan to try them all!) but we wanted a water sunset view (if there is any sun on that day) and thought this would provide that for us as well as excellent food.

Thanks for any help amd Happy Holidays!

Patrick

The Colony indeed does still get very good ratings for its restaurant.
Is it order, or a buffet, hopefully the first.

By the way, I'm not a buffet person, but I must say I love the buffet brunch at The Colony. Rather than tons of stuff sitting there all day, there are a number of small dishes of constantly freshly prepared interesting items. It gives an idea of what the chef is capable of -- not just the usual overcooked and long steamed standard fish, chicken, and dried out eggs benedict things.

Marianna

Hello Patrick, the Colony has a special menu for Christmas Day. It is not a buffet. We usually do not like buffet style service so we were glad to hear it was not that but a special menu for Christmas Day with a fixed price of $40 per person. However, I don't think it is their regular menu. I think we will be happy with our choice. We did not want to be looking around for a restaurant on Christmas Day so, since this one was mentioned several times here on Fodors, we chose it and made our reservation. Columbia was also opened, but the Colony seemed more appealing to us for Christmas Day dinner.

Thanks for your help, Patrick, and the Happiest of Holidays to you!

Patrick

Gee on a scale of 1 to 10, for Christmas dinner I'd give the Columbia a 3 and the Colony at least a 9.5.

Postal

I've never been disappointed with anything at the Colony. Please write about your experience!

LN

I hope you'll post what your thoughts are on your Christmas dinner at The Colony.

If you're looking for dinner at other local restaurants you might try Pattigeorge, Harry's, and MarVista has some great burgers.

Marianna

Thanks for the feedback on the Colony. I'm sure we will be very pleased with our dining experience. Now, if the weather would only improve... seems a bit on the cool and rainy side according to weather.com, but maybe they are wrong. I guess it is far better than the 30 degrees and snowy weather here in the Boston area!

Cassandra

Were at the Colony for Thanksgiving dinner and were quite pleased -- even the turkey (which can be mass-produced, dry and tired for large-quantity events like T'giving at many places) was special.

I'm sure you'll have a very good dinner, with a lovely view (esp. if you're there for sunset).

Merry Christmas.

Marianna

Cassandra, thanks so much for the information. I'm sure it wil be wonderful. Our reservation is at 5:30 so I think it is around sunset time...that is if the sun is out on Christmas Day! Weather reports do not show a very sunny or warm week. We are looking forward to the trip no matter what the weather. There's always shopping!

A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, too!

Marianna

We just returned from our week at Longboat Key, Florida. We had a wonderful time. We stayed at the Hilton which was right on the Gulf of Mexico and we were lucky to get one of the few rooms which directly faces the Gulf.

We didn't think we would arrive for our first night since we had a long delay in Manchester, NH and thought we would miss the connecting flight in Detroit so we made a hotel reservation in Detroit, cancelled the first night at the Hilton, extended a day on the other end and changed our flight home to give us an extra day. Well, as luck would have it, we just made the connecting flight by about 3 minutes but our luggage didn't so we waited at the airport for it to arrive on the next flight which didn't land until 12:30 AM. When we arrived at the Hilton at 2 AM Christmas Day, we were greeted by the manager who gave us the sunset facing room with 2 balconies, one facing the pool and a large one facing the gulf and the sunsets. We were delighted!

We enjoyed our Christmas turkey dinner at the Colony. The dining room was lovely and elegantly decorated for the holiday. It rained all Christmas Day, but just as our wine was served, the sun appeared and we actually watched a lovely sunset from our table by the window. We also dined at Cafe L' Europe, 15 South Ristorante Enoteca (loved the live entertainment), Pattigeorge's and had pizza at Ciao Italia - all delicious.

We walked for miles and miles on the lovely beaches and enjoyed the sunny and warm days after the rain and the wild, very windy Christmas night storm. We had a relaxing and enjoyable visit and will look forward to returning sometime in the future.