Tony's Town Square Restaurant
Tony's Town Square Restaurant is a table-service restaurant in Town Square on Main Street, U.S.A. (Magic Kingdom) at Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. Themed to the Italian restaurant in Walt Disney's animated film Lady and the Tramp (1955), it serves Italian-American food for lunch and dinner just inside the park entrance, beside the Town Square Theater. Its position at the front of the park, and its porch overlooking Town Square, have made it one of the first restaurants many guests encounter on a visit to the Magic Kingdom.
History
Dining has taken place on this site since the Magic Kingdom opened. From 1971 the space operated as the Town Square Cafe, a restaurant sponsored first by Oscar Mayer and later by Hormel. That earlier restaurant was known in particular for sandwiches, and part of its seating was open-air.
In 1989 the Town Square Cafe was extensively remodelled. The open-air dining area was enclosed, the restaurant expanded into part of the neighbouring Hospitality House, and on 24 July 1989 it reopened under a new identity as Tony's Town Square Restaurant. The new name and theme came from Tony, the proprietor of the Italian restaurant in Lady and the Tramp, where Lady and Tramp share a plate of spaghetti and, following the same strand of pasta, meet in the film's best-known scene.
The 1989 restaurant has remained in place ever since, which makes it, paradoxically, both one of the younger table-service restaurants in the park and a fixture of more than three decades. Its menu has been revised many times, but the Italian theme established in 1989 has never changed.
Setting
Tony's is presented as a turn-of-the-century trattoria that fits the Victorian styling of Main Street, U.S.A., while its interior tells a second story drawn entirely from the film. Framed artwork and sketches from Lady and the Tramp line the walls, and the centrepiece of the main dining room is a fountain topped by a statue of Lady and Tramp together. Black-and-white checked floors, wood panelling and stained glass complete a dining room that reads as a Main Street restaurant first and a film tribute second, with the references worked into the decoration rather than presented as a character experience. No characters appear at the meal.
The restaurant has both indoor seating and a covered porch at the front. The porch is the most requested area: from it, diners look out over Town Square and along Main Street, and a meal timed to coincide with a parade can be eaten while the parade passes in front of the restaurant. That combination of a central location and a view explains much of the restaurant's continuing popularity, and reservations are recommended for lunch and dinner.
Cuisine
The menu is Italian-American, built around pasta and familiar red-sauce dishes rather than regional Italian cooking. Spaghetti and meatballs is the signature plate, for obvious thematic reasons, and has been a constant presence alongside dishes such as chicken parmigiana, served with spaghetti, fettuccine Alfredo, shrimp scampi and rigatoni in a vodka sauce. A plant-based eggplant parmigiana has provided an equivalent main course made without meat or dairy cheese.
Meals typically begin with bread and Italian starters, among them fried mozzarella and garlic bread served with a Parmesan fonduta for dipping, which in recent years has become one of the restaurant's most talked-about items. Desserts follow the same Italian-American pattern, with gelato and tiramisu among the regular choices. The menu changes periodically as dishes are added and retired, but its structure — starters, a short list of pasta and parmigiana mains, and Italian desserts — has stayed consistent since the restaurant adopted its present identity.
See also
- Main Street, U.S.A. (Magic Kingdom)
- Magic Kingdom
- The Plaza Restaurant
- The Crystal Palace (Magic Kingdom)