Yak & Yeti Restaurant
Yak & Yeti Restaurant is a table-service restaurant in the Asia section of Disney's Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. Set in the fictional village of Anandapur at the foot of the Forbidden Mountain, it serves pan-Asian cuisine inside a two-storey Nepalese-style building filled with artwork and artefacts collected across South and Southeast Asia. Unusually for a restaurant inside a Disney theme park, it is owned and operated not by Disney but by Landry's, the company behind Rainforest Cafe, and it opened on November 14, 2007.
History
For its first nine years, Disney's Animal Kingdom had no table-service restaurant inside the park; full-service dining meant leaving for a resort. Yak & Yeti, announced in February 2006, was developed to fill that gap, with Landry's Restaurants as operator and Schussler Creative designing the location.[1] The restaurant opened to the public on November 14, 2007, initially on a walk-up basis only; reservations began to be taken in December 2007 for arrivals from January 4, 2008.[2][3] A companion counter-service location, Yak & Yeti Local Food Cafe, opened alongside it, along with a small shop selling Asian-inspired merchandise.
Contemporary reporting noted that it was the park's first in-park table-service restaurant and the only non-Disney-operated restaurant inside Animal Kingdom.[4][1] Its Landry's operation has practical consequences that persist: the restaurant runs its own reservation patterns alongside Disney's system and has historically handled Disney Dining Plan participation and discounts on its own terms. It has otherwise remained stable in concept and menu direction since opening, and is regularly ranked among the most popular table-service restaurants in the park.
Setting
The backstory places the building in Anandapur, the village that also frames Expedition Everest. In the story told by its designers, the building was the home of a wealthy merchant family, its rooms converted to a restaurant and inn serving travellers bound for the Himalayas.[1] The two storeys are divided into a series of smaller rooms rather than a single hall — dining rooms, a bar area and passages — each crowded with decoration.
Unlike most Disney interiors, much of that decoration is authentic rather than reproduced. The artefacts displayed throughout were gathered from around Southeast Asia by Schussler Creative during the design process, and include statues, masks, textiles, pottery, weaponry and carved architectural pieces from Nepal, India, Bali and elsewhere.[1] Large windows in the upstairs rooms look out over the Anandapur streets and toward the Forbidden Mountain, and the overall effect is calmer and more genuinely antique than the theatrical jungle atmosphere of Landry's Rainforest Cafe locations; there are no animatronic yaks or yetis.[5]
Cuisine
The menu is pan-Asian in the broad American sense, drawing dishes from across the continent rather than following one national kitchen: Chinese-style pot stickers, lo mein and sweet-and-sour preparations; Indian-influenced curries and tikka masala; Thai-inspired salads and noodle dishes; Korean-style ribs; and Himalayan touches in keeping with the setting, alongside Americanised staples such as burgers for less adventurous diners.[5][3] D23's summary of the restaurant describes it simply as "a pan-Asian feast in this Nepalese-style restaurant."[3] The adjoining Local Food Cafe serves a condensed counter-service version of the same idea — fried rice, egg rolls and similar dishes — from outdoor seating nearby.