San Angel Inn Restaurante
San Angel Inn Restaurante is a table-service restaurant inside the Mexico Pavilion at EPCOT in Walt Disney World. It sits within the pavilion's Mesoamerican pyramid, overlooking the Plaza de los Amigos marketplace and the waterway of the Gran Fiesta Tour boat ride, in a setting of perpetual twilight. It opened with EPCOT and the pavilion on October 1, 1982, and is the sibling of the San Angel Inn in Mexico City, a restaurant whose hacienda home dates to 1692.[1]
History
The EPCOT restaurant was modelled on — and operated in partnership with — the original San Angel Inn in the San Ángel district of Mexico City. That restaurant occupies the former Hacienda Goicoechea, built by Carmelites in 1692 and later a retreat of the colonial aristocracy, a pulque factory and, from around 1906, a hotel and restaurant under the San Angel Inn name. The Debler family took over the Mexico City restaurant in 1962 and made it one of the country's best-known dining rooms; the same family interests became the operating partner for the Mexico Pavilion's restaurants.[2]
San Angel Inn opened with the Mexico Pavilion on October 1, 1982, as the pavilion's flagship restaurant, and its name was later extended to the pavilion's lagoon-side restaurants, La Hacienda de San Angel and La Cantina de San Angel, which opened in 2010.[3] In 2011 the dining room was refurbished and the menu revised to be more traditional: the round tables were replaced with long tables, and new flatware and china were inspired by the original restaurant in Mexico City.
Setting
The Mexico Pavilion is unusual in World Showcase for being almost entirely indoors, enclosed in a pyramid modelled on Mesoamerican temples. Inside, the pavilion is staged as a Mexican village plaza at dusk, lit to suggest a permanent evening. The restaurant occupies a terrace at one side of the plaza, modelled as the courtyard of a hacienda, with lanterns, wrought iron and stucco walls. From its tables, diners look across the plaza's fountain and market stalls to the pavilion's indoor river, where boats of the Gran Fiesta Tour — originally El Río del Tiempo — drift past against a backdrop of a distant smoking volcano and a second, smaller pyramid. The low light and the moving boats make it one of the most atmospheric dining rooms in the park, and one in which it is always the same romantic hour of the evening.
Cuisine
The menu presents traditional Mexican cooking rather than the Tex-Mex style more common in the United States. Meals typically begin with guacamole, queso fundido or tortilla soup, and the restaurant's margaritas — following the tradition of the Mexico City original, which is famous for them — are a signature. Main courses have included mole poblano, enchiladas, carne asada, cochinita pibil and fish preparations such as mahi mahi with traditional sauces, accompanied by rice and beans. Desserts have included flan and churros with chocolate and cajeta sauces. A notable curiosity carried over from Mexico City is the presence of Caesar salad, a dish created in Mexico in the 1920s and served at the original San Angel Inn for decades.