French Market Restaurant
French Market Restaurant was a quick-service restaurant in New Orleans Square at Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California. It opened with the land in 1966 and served Cajun- and Creole-inspired food from cafeteria-style counters to guests seated on a large outdoor terrace, where live jazz bands performed throughout the day. For more than five decades it was the principal quick-service restaurant in New Orleans Square. It closed in February 2023 and reopened, rethemed, as Tiana's Palace in September 2023.
History
French Market Restaurant was one of the original features of New Orleans Square when Walt Disney and New Orleans mayor Victor H. Schiro dedicated the land — the first new land added to Disneyland after opening day — on July 24, 1966.[1] Schiro marked the occasion by naming Disney an honorary citizen of New Orleans. For many of its early years the restaurant was hosted by Stouffer's, whose name appeared in its billing as "French Market Restaurant Hosted by Stouffer's."
The restaurant then settled into one of the longest and steadiest runs of any Disneyland dining location. Menus, prices, performing bands and even the colour of the shade fabric over the terrace changed over the decades, but the basic offer — a tray, a cafeteria line, a Louisiana-flavoured plate and a seat outside — remained recognisably the same for more than 56 years.[1] One brief misstep came in 1996, when real plates and silverware were replaced with plastic utensils and diners protested loudly enough that the change was reversed within the year.
Disney announced on January 12, 2023, that the French Market would be reimagined as Tiana's Palace, based on Tiana's restaurant in the 2009 animated film The Princess and the Frog.[1] The French Market served its final day on February 16, 2023, closing alongside the adjoining Mint Julep Bar, and construction walls went up the following day.[2] After a conversion of less than seven months, Tiana's Palace opened on the site on September 7, 2023.[3] The retheme closed a neat circle: the film's animators had modelled Tiana's dream restaurant in part on the French Market itself.
Setting
The restaurant stood on Orleans Street, close to the Haunted Mansion and the New Orleans Square station of the Disneyland Railroad, in the middle of the land's wrought-iron and balcony-lined streets. Inside the serving building, guests moved along twin cafeteria lines beneath a pressed-tin ceiling and a domed skylight, passing ceramic tile murals showing the 1803 ceremonies in New Orleans that marked the completion of the Louisiana Purchase.[1]
All of the seating — for around 250 guests — was outdoors on a shaded terrace, or veranda, under fabric canopy panels.[1] The terrace doubled as one of the land's entertainment venues: Dixieland and jazz groups, among them the Royal Street Bachelors and later Jambalaya Jazz, played sets for diners, a tradition of live music with lunch that stretched back to the restaurant's opening era.[4] At the back of the building, a separate walk-up window, the Mint Julep Bar, sold mint juleps and beignets to passing guests.
Cuisine
Disney described the serving style as a "buffeteria" — part buffet, part cafeteria — in which guests could see each dish before choosing it, a format well suited to a theme park crowd in a hurry.[1] The cooking centred on Louisiana, mixing genuinely Creole and Cajun dishes with American comfort food given a regional twist.
Long-running staples included seafood and chicken jambalaya served over rice, a slow-roasted Louisiana beef stew served in a sourdough bread bowl, corn chowder, a French dip sandwich with Cajun-spiced chips, Southern-style roast chicken, meatloaf with a Cajun accent, and salads such as a Cajun chicken salad and a Royal Street Caesar.[4][1] Desserts were a point of pride compared with most park quick-service locations, with items such as bread pudding and cheesecake appearing alongside seasonal specials. In its final years the menu continued to rotate, but jambalaya and the bread-bowl stews remained the dishes most closely associated with the restaurant.