Liberty Tree Tavern
Liberty Tree Tavern is a table-service restaurant in Liberty Square at Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. Presented as an 18th-century colonial American inn, it serves a family-style, all-you-care-to-enjoy meal of traditional New England-inspired and Thanksgiving-style food for lunch and dinner. It has operated since the park's opening day and takes its name from the Liberty Tree that stands outside it in Liberty Square.
History
The Liberty Tree Tavern opened with the Magic Kingdom on 1 October 1971, and on the park's opening-day map it was listed as Liberty Square's only restaurant. Its name refers to the historic Liberty Tree in Boston, an elm beneath which colonists gathered to plan protests in the years before the American Revolution, hanging lanterns in its branches to mark their successes. A large oak in Liberty Square represents that tree, and thirteen lanterns hang from it, one for each of the original thirteen colonies.
For its first two decades the tavern changed relatively little, serving colonial-style food in a series of small rooms. In the early 1990s two lasting changes were made. The dining rooms were refurbished and each was dedicated to a figure from the Revolutionary era, and character dining was introduced at dinner, with Minnie Mouse, Pluto, Goofy, Chip and Dale appearing in colonial costume.
Character dining ended on 5 January 2009, and the restaurant has not offered it as a regular part of the meal since. The characters made one brief return, from 3 January to 15 February 2010, when they were hosted at the tavern while the nearby Crystal Palace was closed for refurbishment. The exterior of the building was extensively refurbished in the same period. In later years the meal settled into the format it retains today: a fixed, family-style bill of fare served at both lunch and dinner, rather than a conventional menu of individually ordered dishes.
Setting
The restaurant is built as a colonial inn of several connected rooms rather than a single dining hall, and the low ceilings, wood panelling, plank floors, fireplaces and candle-style lighting are intended to suggest an 18th-century New England tavern. Servers wear period costume, and in the restaurant's earlier years a town crier announced each party by family name and home state when its table was ready.
Its six dining rooms each honour an American historical figure: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Paul Jones, Paul Revere, Betsy Ross, and George and Martha Washington. Each room carries a name plaque and portrait, its own fireplace, and objects associated with its subject, so the John Paul Jones room has a nautical character, with model ships and navigation instruments, while the Thomas Jefferson room is filled with books and documents.
Cuisine
The Liberty Tree Tavern serves one meal, in the same form at lunch and dinner. It is a prix fixe, all-you-care-to-enjoy feast brought to the table on shared platters, from which guests serve themselves and may request more of any item.
The meal opens with rolls and the Declaration Salad, a tossed salad of mixed greens with apples, cranberries and cheese. The centrepiece is the Patriot's Platter, which combines roasted turkey, pot roast and oven-roasted pork with mashed potatoes, seasonal vegetables, herb stuffing and house-made macaroni and cheese, accompanied by gravy. The combination is deliberately reminiscent of a Thanksgiving dinner, and the restaurant is often described as serving Thanksgiving all year round.
Dessert is included, and its signature item is the Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake, a vanilla toffee cake served with chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream. A plant-based alternative, the Tavern Keeper's Feast, centred on a meatless meatloaf with mushroom gravy, is offered in the same family-style format, and allergy-friendly versions of the platter are also prepared. Because the neighbouring The Diamond Horseshoe has at times shared the tavern's kitchen and menu, the same Patriot's Platter meal has also been served next door during periods when that venue has opened for dining.