Hungry Bear Restaurant
Hungry Bear Restaurant was the name, from 1977 to 2024, of a counter-service restaurant in the western corner of Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, in the land now called Bayou Country. Set on a two-level rustic terrace overlooking the Rivers of America, it began in 1972 as the Golden Bear Lodge, spent nearly five decades as the Hungry Bear Restaurant serving American counter-service food, and reopened in October 2024 — after a Country Bears retheme — as the Hungry Bear Barbecue Jamboree, the name it carries today.
History
The restaurant opened on September 24, 1972, as the Golden Bear Lodge, in the new land of Bear Country, the home of the Country Bear Jamboree attraction.[1] Bear Country was Disneyland's smallest and most deliberately rustic land, and the lodge-style restaurant, built beside the river at the far end of it, was its only substantial dining location.
In 1977 the restaurant reopened under the name Hungry Bear Restaurant, the name it would keep for 47 years.[1] The land around it changed names — Bear Country became Critter Country in 1988, when Splash Mountain was built alongside — but the restaurant changed little, settling in as the quiet, spacious eating place at the back of the park. Its terraces watched a procession of river traffic go by: the Mark Twain Riverboat, the Sailing Ship Columbia and, for many years, the Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes launching from a dock below.
In July 2024 the Hungry Bear Restaurant closed for a reimagining tied to the transformation of Critter Country into Bayou Country for the arrival of Tiana's Bayou Adventure.[2] It reopened on October 25, 2024, as the Hungry Bear Barbecue Jamboree, themed to the Country Bears — Disneyland's own Country Bear Jamboree having closed in 2001, the new theme drew on the characters and on the Country Bear Musical Jamboree show then playing at Magic Kingdom.[3] Weeks later, in November 2024, the surrounding land officially took the Bayou Country name.
Setting
The restaurant stands next to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, at the point where the land's path turns toward the river. It is a two-storey lodge-style building, and almost all of its seating is outside, spread across covered terraces on both levels.[1] The upper and lower patios look out over the Rivers of America toward Tom Sawyer Island, which has long made it one of the most peaceful places in the park to eat — removed from the crowds, shaded by trees, and quiet apart from the riverboats and the birds the seating attracts.
The 2024 retheme kept the building and its terraces but layered Country Bears detail through them: portraits of the show's bears, references to the bears' supposed tours of America's great music halls, and Ursus H. Bear billed as the restaurant's official "grill master."[4] A soundtrack of the Country Bears' songs plays while guests eat; the bears themselves do not appear, and it is not a character dining location.
Cuisine
For most of its life the Hungry Bear served straightforward American counter-service fare — burgers, sandwiches, chicken tenders and salads — of a kind suited to its out-of-the-way, family picnic atmosphere, with funnel cake fries among its long-standing sweet items. The menu changed seasonally and for park festivals, but the formula stayed deliberately simple.
The 2024 Barbecue Jamboree menu was a wholesale change, built around house-smoked barbecue presented as the regional dishes the Country Bears had gathered on tour. Its centrepiece is a smoked barbecue combo platter — a choice of two meats from pork spareribs, pulled pork, sausage link and beef brisket, served with baked beans, house slaw, white bread and pickles — alongside a barbecue pulled pork sandwich, a smoked beef brisket sandwich, a burger topped with pulled pork, and a plant-based corn ribs plate, most served with beer-battered fries.[4] Desserts and drinks followed the theme with items such as banana pudding and funnel cake fries.