Carnation Cafe
Carnation Cafe is a table-service restaurant on Main Street, U.S.A. at Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California. One of the few full-service restaurants inside the park, it serves classic American comfort food — including dishes associated with Walt Disney himself — at indoor tables and on a shaded outdoor patio. The cafe is the direct descendant of an opening-day ice cream parlour and retains the name of its original sponsor, the Carnation company.
History
The restaurant opened with Disneyland on 17 July 1955 as the Carnation Ice Cream Parlor, sponsored by the Carnation company, then a major American dairy producer.[1] In its original form it was a soda-fountain parlour: guests sat on stools at an ice cream counter for sundaes, sodas and other fountain treats. An outdoor dining area was added in 1977, extending the parlour onto the Main Street pavement.
The Carnation company's ownership changed when Nestlé acquired it in 1985, and the Carnation ice cream brand was eventually phased out. The ice cream parlour closed in January 1997. Its outdoor area reopened in March 1997 as the Carnation Cafe, a full table-service cafe serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, while the old indoor parlour space was converted into the Blue Ribbon Bakery.
That arrangement lasted fifteen years. When the Blue Ribbon Bakery closed in January 2012 as part of a wider reworking of Main Street dining, the Carnation Cafe expanded back into its original indoor space, regaining indoor seating alongside its patio.[2] The cafe's longest association was with chef Oscar Martinez, who joined Disneyland on 29 December 1956, worked at the cafe from 1967, and retired on 27 September 2017 as the longest-serving cast member in the park's history — the only employee to receive a 60-year service award.[3] Menu items still carry his name, and a Main Street window honours him.
Setting
The cafe sits partway along the west side of Main Street, between the Gibson Girl Ice Cream Parlor and the shops near Center Street. Its best-known seating is the patio, where guests eat at tables under red-and-white striped umbrellas with a view of the passing Main Street vehicles, bands and parade crowds. The indoor dining room, restored in 2012, is decorated in turn-of-the-20th-century style to match the street outside.
The setting is deliberately nostalgic even by Main Street standards: the Carnation name, retained by agreement after the sponsorship era ended, the old-fashioned cafe menu and the long tenure of its staff made it one of the park's most direct surviving links to opening day.
Cuisine
Carnation Cafe serves hearty American cafe food across all three meals. Breakfast is especially popular and has included Oscar's Choice, an all-American breakfast of eggs, breakfast potatoes, a biscuit and bacon or sausage named for Oscar Martinez, along with eggs Benedict, omelettes and a large Mickey-shaped waffle.
The lunch and dinner menu centres on comfort dishes such as fried chicken, meatloaf, burgers and sandwiches. Its most storied item is Walt's Chili, a bowl of chili presented as following Walt Disney's own preference — chili was one of his favourite simple meals, and the cafe has long traded on that connection. Other long-running items include a baked potato soup associated with Martinez, sometimes offered in a loaded version, and old-fashioned drinks and desserts in the soda-fountain tradition of the original parlour, including milkshakes and ice cream sundaes supplied by the parlour tradition next door.