Posts Tagged ‘Hollywood Brown Derby’

Fabulous Art Deco design details both inside and out make Hollywood & Vine a visual delight.  Both breakfast and lunch feature the Play ‘n Dine program with Playhouse Disney friends.

Along with the Hollywood Brown Derby and Mama Melrose’s Ristorante Italiano, dinner here can also be booked as part of the Fantasmic! Dining Package which includes a voucher for a designated seating area at the show.

What it is: a fun and boisterous stop for the under-five set.  Meet, dance, and sing with Handy Manny and Little Einsteins Leo and June.  There’s lots of great character interaction and the children are invited to jump up and join in; often!  Be sure to attend with an appropriately-aged companion.  As I sat waiting for my table to be called, there were dozens of conversations swirling around me, and it was clear that not a single person had a clue as to who these characters were!  Little children are definitely the “stars” who dine at Hollywood & Vine.

What it isn’t: a top choice for adults and older kids.  Because of the target age group, during breakfast and lunch this restaurant has a much higher percentage of very small children than most other dining venues; very small, very excited children.  It is understandably noisy and hectic and the buffet is sub-par; few choices and poor food quality.  Depending upon the time of year, the adult meal can cost more than $30.00; very pricey for mediocre food and a frantic atmosphere if you are not on a Disney Dining Plan.

Hollywood & Vine

Disney’s Hollywood Studios

8:00 a.m. to park closing

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner

No characters appear at dinner; Play ‘n Dine is breakfast and lunch only

Nostalgia reigns at the Hollywood Brown Derby, appropriately located on Hollywood Boulevard in Disney’s Hollywood Studios.  It’s a recreation of the famous California restaurant – the walls covered with caricatures of the stars and the menu featuring some of the original  items, served by a crisply-attired staff.

The main dining room has a warm and clubby atmosphere with dark woods and dozens of wonderful drawings.

A meal at this Signature Restaurant is available as part of the Fantasmic! Dinner Package and the special experience, “Lunch with an Imagineer,” is held here in the small and private Bamboo Room.

Review: Disney has gone to great lengths to replicate the design and detail of the original, but the elegant ambiance of that Tinseltown icon, where diners dressed to impress, has been lost in a sea of shorts and sandals.  The “business casual” dress code of the Signature restaurants, never really enforced, truly falls by the wayside in this venue, the only one located inside a park.

Although I’m not personally blown away by the highly-touted grapefruit cake, the Cobb Salad, made from Bob Cobb’s original recipe, is a reminder of the reason this dish has endured.  Overall, the menu has escaped the homogenization that’s befallen so many other Disney restaurants and still features distinctive choices.

While the food is probably the best available inside the parks, the dining experience itself feels decidedly un-Disney.  This may be a plus for many but in Disney’s Hollywood Studios, which boasts the most amazingly-themed venues imaginable in the Sci-Fi Dine-In and 50’s Prime Time Café, it seems a bit colorless by comparison.

Currently, Disney has chosen to offer the same menu for both lunch and dinner which makes it a wonderful dinner option, but a rather expensive and heavy meal for lunch.

Menus

Lunch and Dinner
Dessert
Tea
Wine

Hollywood Brown Derby

Disney’s Hollywood Studios

11:30 a.m. to time depending on park closing

Park admission required