Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Café
Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Café is a quick-service restaurant in Frontierland at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, Florida. Named for Pecos Bill, the exaggerated cowboy hero of American tall tales and of Disney's 1948 film Melody Time, it stands at the junction of Frontierland and Adventureland, near the Country Bear Jamboree. It opened with the park on October 1, 1971, as Pecos Bill Café, and took its present name in 1998 after absorbing the neighbouring Mile Long Bar.
History
Pecos Bill Café was an opening-day restaurant. For its first decades it operated alongside, and was connected to, the Mile Long Bar, a separate Frontierland dining location at the exit of the Country Bear Jamboree whose name described its long, narrow room. The two locations functioned as a pair serving the western side of the park.
In January 1998 both closed for a major reworking. They reopened in May 1998 as a single, much larger restaurant under the combined name Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Café, gaining substantial indoor seating from the former bar space. A portrait of Disney's animated Pecos Bill, as he appears in Melody Time, was placed above the fireplace as part of the new identity.
For most of its life the restaurant served burgers and other standard American counter-service food, and it became particularly associated with a self-service toppings bar where guests dressed their own burgers and sandwiches. On October 1, 2015, the menu was replaced wholesale with a Mexican and southwestern menu, shifting the restaurant from burgers to burritos, tacos, fajitas and rice bowls, a format it has broadly retained since, with periodic revisions.
Backstory and setting
In the restaurant's fictional history, Pecos Bill was persuaded by his friends in 1878 to open a watering hole of his own, an origin reflected in the 1878 date displayed on the building. Its stated motto promises the tastiest food on his side of the Rio Grande, and the dining rooms are presented as a gathering place for Bill and other figures of frontier legend.
The interior is divided into several rooms decorated in a southwestern and Old West saloon manner, with stucco, heavy timber, lanterns and artefacts associated with cowboy life and with the tall-tale characters said to frequent the inn. The building's scale makes it one of the largest quick-service dining rooms in the park, and its position means it serves guests moving between Adventureland, Frontierland and the nearby Tiana's Bayou Adventure and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad areas.
Food and drink
Since 2015 the core menu has been Tex-Mex and southwestern in character: beef, chicken and pork served as tacos, burrito-style bowls and nachos, along with salads, churros and other desserts, and children's versions of the main dishes. The earlier burger era is still remembered chiefly for the toppings bar, which for many years let guests add a wide range of vegetables, cheeses and sauces at no separate charge and which was widely regarded as one of the better-value features of Magic Kingdom dining before its removal.
Other locations
A counterpart restaurant of the same name operates in Westernland at Tokyo Disneyland, that park's equivalent of Frontierland, with a menu adapted to its own market.