Even when you visit the Most Magical Place on Earth, you’ll sometimes feel a bit homesick. You’ll miss your family and friends and maybe even your pet(s). While you’re vacationing, you’ll want something that reminds you of home. Some of the cuisine on the Disney campus can do exactly that! Here are the top eight comfort food restaurants at Walt Disney World.
8. Casey’s Corner
The old saying goes that nothing’s more American than baseball and apple pie. The implication is that since baseball is America’s game, citizens will find reassurance from any reminder of the sport.
Casey’s Corner is the practical application of that philosophy. It’s an entire restaurant dedicated to baseball, and its cuisine reinforces the notion. What are you most likely to eat at a baseball game? Hot dogs! Which snack is indelibly associated with baseball? Cracker Jacks! Not coincidentally, you’ll find both at Casey’s Corner, and they’ll remind you of the first time you went to a game. Plus, hot dogs are great when you need a simple food that will lift your spirits.
7. Liberty Tree Tavern
Image: DisneyQuick, what’s the family meal that’s most likely to remind you of home? For many people, the answer is Thanksgiving dinner, a time when people sit around the dinner table, watch football, and argue the merits of various stuffing recipes. Liberty Tree Tavern delivers that experience every day.
This Magic Kingdom restaurant in Liberty Square has the perfect theme for Thanksgiving dinner. It’s styled like a colonial New England inn, with the type of cuisine you would have expected the founding fathers to eat on a major holiday. It’s a meal of turkey, mashed potatoes, pot roast, and macaroni and cheese. This food will remind you of happy holidays spent at home, even though you’re right around the corner from Haunted Mansion!
6. Splitsville
Image: DisneyOnce upon a time, a favorite gathering place for teenagers was the bowling alley. While league night is still a thing in this country, an afternoon of bowling isn’t quite as popular today as it was just a generation ago. Still, a lot of us remember those days spent throwing gutter ball after gutter ball, usually after we’d bragged about our bowling prowess.
Whether you’re too young to remember the glory days of bowling or you lived through them, the appeal of Splitsville is still the same. It’s a fun hangout with a time-tested group activity that will entertain everyone. And the food at bowling alleys is notoriously tasty, whether you choose pizza or a burger. Since Splitsville is at Disney Springs, it even plussed the menu with sushi. Now, I’m not sold on the concept of bowling alley sushi, but it is a wonderful demonstration of just how far the bowling alley hangout has come.
5. Beaches and Cream
Image: DisneyHey, what’s the number one comfort food when you’re feeling blue? I’ll give you a hint. In every romantic comedy ever made, a depressed woman and her slightly less attractive best friend hang out and eat it together as they commiserate over men.
Yes, I’m talking about ice cream, the time-honored tradition for recently dumped people. It’s the most reassuring food for the emotionally fragile, and it has a secondary purpose, too. When kids are sick, the only good part of the deal is that their parents buy them ice cream.
What did you think the “cream” in Beaches and Cream stood for? It’s an ice cream joint! Sure, they sell burgers here as well, but the Kitchen Sink and its more reasonable companion dishes are the true identity of the restaurant. When you eat here, you’ll feel better about life because ice cream possesses that sort of mystical power.
4. Olivia’s Café
Image: DisneyThis restaurant at Disney’s Old Key West Resort embodies the familial atmosphere of the Disney Vacation Club. The Walt Disney Company constructed this resort as the first in their de facto timeshare program, and they added a lovely, homey touch to the main restaurant. It features an entire wall full of pictures of DVC members taken since the resort’s opening in 1991. In other words, Olivia’s Café is a timeless memento to the joy of family at Walt Disney World.
Comfort food is an integral part of the menu, also. Olivia’s has a carefully themed backstory about how one woman, Olivia Farnsworth, feeds the residents of Conch Flats. Her favorite dish is chicken, and she invites them into her home to eat it. The others in the community love it so much that they bring their own tables, chairs, and eating utensils.
You’ll appreciate the sentiment when you dine here. It’s like a home-cooked meal complete with specialty as a dessert. You’ll want to try the Key Lime Tart.
3. Woody’s Lunch Box
Image: DisneyWhen Disney announced Toy Story Land, the attractions were the stars. Slinky Dog Dash stole headlines for its brilliant design, while Alien Swirling Saucers delighted younger riders with its sliding effect. What nobody could have anticipated is that some of the longest lines at the new themed land would be for…a Quick Service restaurant.
Yes, Woody’s Lunch Box is the surprise hit of Toy Story Land. Nobody’s eating here for the ambience, though. It’s a counter service diner in the most literal of ways. You order at a counter and hope to grab one of the few tables available. The reason why they’re so scarce is that the place is always packed.
This restaurant caters to children, albeit with elevated recipes. The result of this unusual style is some of the tastiest comfort food you’ll ever eat. The main foods here are grilled cheese sandwiches and tater tots (aka potato barrels), the stuff that everyone loves as a kid. And the dessert is a glorified Pop-Tart, only Disney has added bacon bits to make it that much better!
2. 50’s Prime Time Café
Image: DisneyNo Disney restaurant goes out of its way to create a family atmosphere more than 50’s Prime Time Café. Cast members here are trained to act like your family members. They’re not working hard to be your favorites, either. You know that horrible way your aunt always made you feel? You’ll find that here. Do you remember getting chastised to sit up a straight? Someone will do that here.
50’s Prime Time Café recreates an era that may have never existed, the 1950s nuclear family as shown on black-and-white sitcoms like The Donna Reed Show, Leave It to Beaver, and Father Knows Best. The feel-good premise of these programs is that family can solve everything, although you will fight a lot along the way.
The food is the kind shown on those sitcoms that no reasonable human being could cook every day. I’m talking about heavy entrees like pot roast, pork chops, chicken pot pie, and meatloaf. You may microwave them out of boxes now, but they were once staples of family dinner. At 50’s Prime Time Café, you’ll discover the tastiest versions of these treats, ones that will remind you of the home life you once had…or always wanted.
1. Art Smith’s Homecomin’ Kitchen
Image: DisneyFittingly, the best comfort food at Walt Disney World comes from fresh from the oven of a former cast member. Before becoming a famous celebrity chef, Art Smith, was raised in Florida and worked in Disney’s college program. When the company chose to rehabilitate the image of their entertainment district by converting it to Disney Springs, they called on a native son.
Smith answered the call with a restaurant that exemplifies all the best parts of southern charm. It serves comfort food that won’t ever be described as good for you. That’s what makes it great, though. One of the signature dishes is fried chicken and donuts, a combination so decadent and delicious that folk songs should be written about it. Biscuits are fittingly a key component of a meal here, also. This place is exactly what you would expect from a famous southern chef service dishes at a restaurant he calls Homecomin’. It’s the best place to go when you want to feel a genteel reminder of home…and home cooking.
