When it comes to dining inside the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, there’s no shortage of places to grab a snack, burger or a full meal. Whether you’re looking for breakfast, lunch or dinner, there’s a quick service, buffet or table service restaurant that will appeal to everyone in your group.
But is the food itself appealing?
For the most part, the food inside the Magic Kingdom is average at best. After all, what kind of quality and creativeness can be expected from the culinary team responsible for feeding tens-of-thousands of people a day?
Towards the end of 2016, Walt Disney World began to loosen its age-old tradition of making the park an alcohol-free zone. While Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and Epcot have served alcohol, the Kingdom was “dry” until the addition of Be Our Guest in 2012.
But there’s a catch.
Beer or wine is only available at Be Our Guest, Jungle Skipper Canteen, Liberty Tree Tavern, Cinderella’s Royal Table, and the spot I’m talking about today – Tony’s Town Square Restaurant. Alcohol is not allowed outside these restaurants but a cold Pinot or brew can be ordered at these table service restaurants during lunch or dinner hours. The only exception is Be Our Guest, which only offers alcohol during dinner hours, as lunch is quick service.
Tony’s Town Square Restaurant is at the front of the park inside the Town Square Theatre, which happens to be the location where park guests can meet with talking Mickey Mouse. The park’s only Italian restaurant offers up pizza, pasta, seafood and more and is the place where Lady & The Tramp shared that famous bowl of spaghetti.
The restaurant offers indoor seating as well as a few outdoor tables. The décor is pretty sterile, very bright and with its kid-friendly menu, can be loud. If you’re looking for that romantic Lady & The Tramp type meal at dinner time, forget it. The place is way too bright and with all the kids around, it’s definitely not conducive for intimate chit-chat over a glass of Chianti.
On our recent visit, we were seated next to a table of four adults and four children. The kids were running around with the adults constantly chasing after them. A few times servers had to tell them to turn off the bubble blowers and a near miss with a server carrying food nearly resulted in someone wearing a bowl of pasta.
Being in a theme park you can expect there to be a lot of kids. I accept that the above was just a bit of warning that this could be a very “busy” spot to be.
For starters, Tony’s offers up Italian restaurant standards: soup, salad, fried calamari, and a pepperoni/sausage or vegetarian pizza that you can order as an appetizer or entrée.
We started out with the pepperoni pizza ($20) which was an 8-cut oval flatbread that was not one of our favorites. The crust was crispy, the cheese was pretty bland and the sauce was just OK. Kids may appreciate it, but any Italian pizza maker would cry.
The traditional Pasta Fagioli soup was not bad for $8 and had a nice broth to pasta/beans ratio.
In between courses, focaccia bread with olive oil to dip it in was brought to the table. That wasn’t bad, actually.
I ordered a wedge salad what came with almonds, onion, and bacon, but opted out of the traditional bleu cheese crumbles and bleu cheese dressing and went with Balsamic vinegar and oil.
For entrees, the menu offers a seasonal fish, a strip steak, chicken parm, pasta and a shrimp scampi. Our server recommended the 10oz New York Strip ($34) that was served with roasted potatoes and an arugula salad.
I was hesitant to order this, thinking it may be similar to the very salty version of the New York Strip over at Be Our Guest. Fortunately, it wasn’t salty and came out cooked to the desired temperature. To be honest, it wasn’t a bad steak. On par with something you would expect to have at a TGI Friday’s.
The second entrée we tried was the Chicken Parmigiana ($26) that was served with spaghetti. The old Italian classic was pretty boring and the sauce was… well… it needed work. This was probably the equivalent of something you’d get at an Olive Garden (at a cheaper price).
We passed on dessert but did enjoy a bottle of wine and a beer during dinner.
Is this the best place in the park to grab something to eat? No. But it does cater to families and has a menu that kids are going to enjoy. For the price, you can do better, but you’re paying for the convenience of a sit-down Italian dinner in the world’s most visited theme park. If you happen to be over at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Mamma Melrose’s is a much better choice for an in-park Italian restaurant.