What makes V&A so famous is its incredible attention to culinary detail. That includes appearance and presentation, but most of all it means taste. And such award-winning flavor only really comes about with a great amount of attention, so you have several sous-chefs and one master chef making every entree for every person a masterpiece. As you might imagine, that only becomes possible if two conditions are met: first, the meal has to last a long time (plan on 2.5 hours), and second, there must be a very limited number of patrons per night, and the dining rooms are indeed quite small. If you go, prepare to be pampered.

The prerequisite to gastronomical heaven, as V&A certainly is, would be fresh ingredients. The menu here is known less than 24 hours in advance, and changes literally daily. Moreover, the reach for the shopping is quite global. News of a particularly good type of fish in South Africa may lead to V&A purchasing several dozen pounds to last for a week or so, and the same is true of truffles, leek, caviar, anything. If you haven't experienced truly fine dining before - anything costing more than $50 per plate - than you'll marvel at what real freshness means when it's on your plate. Particularly when the preparation of the food is in the hands of a master.

There are six courses to each meal: amuse bouche, salad, appetizer, entrée, cheese plate, and dessert. Your menu for the day, which is printed up quite nicely and has your name stamped on it (it's a keepsake you get back later), includes two or three choices for each of the courses. Tally up your choices and settle back for the kind of feast that leaves you full but not overfull, and takes literally hours to get through. It's not dinner, it's an experience. The wine pairings are perfectly chosen, and the bottles of wine uncorked for you quite expensive. The average of $10/glass may sound expensive until you realize the cost of each individual bottle of wine. If you've ever hankered to at least try a glass of $50 wine, you'll tingle with excitement to think that you also get to sample five other similarly expensive wines.

The food is mind-blowingly flavorful. You'll experience several instances of taste bud interactions you've never even contemplated, but the result each time is nirvana. Portions are not overly large (a few are downright small), but 2.5 hours of snacking will definitely leave you full. On our visit, we found the duck and the Kobe beef to be particularly amazing. Each was far and away the single best preparation of that dish we'd ever had.

Service is refined and made all the more elegant by the fact that teams of two swarm each table at every course. They are not overly attentive, but they attend to you just the right amount. A very slight ding to their service experience on our visit was the dripping of red wine while pouring, a major no-no in fine dining.

It may sound odd to rate this restaurant high for "value", but the truth is that some experiences are worth the price, even if the cost was high. Consider paying your way to orbit as a space tourist. The cost would be huge, but you might still rate the value high, since the experience was so amazing. Something similar defines a visit to V&A. Sure, it costs about five times as much as other Disney restaurants. But it's at least five times better, maybe more. There's a reason this establishment is Disney's crown jewel in dining, and the mantle is well-earned.