Liberty Tree Tavern Dinner

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

From the Disney Parks blog...

Review: Liberty Tree Tavern Dinner

Oct 30th, 2011 by AJ.

If you’ve been following our blog for a while, you’ll know how much I love Liberty Tree Tavern in the Magic Kingdom. This is one of my veeeeeeery favorite restaurants to visit for lunch, because it’s simple, good food; usually great service; quick; easy; and relatively inexpensive. It’s consistently in our top 5 Disney restaurants at our house!

But I hadn’t been for dinner in a long time. A really long time. Like, “not in over three years” kind of a long time. So one night during our recent trip to Disney World, we decided on a whim to cancel our current dinner reservation and go to Liberty Tree Tavern. My husband had never been, and I was craving some mac and cheese, so… off to Liberty Square!

Liberty Tree Tavern

Atmosphere

When you walk into Liberty Tree Tavern, you can immediately tell that it’s meant to represent colonial days. The wood paneling, candlestick sconces and chandeliers, and thick glass windows along with the absolutely massive cooking fireplace in the lobby make you feel as though you might be in Colonial Williamsburg!

Liberty Tree Tavern Lobby

Table Setting at Liberty Tree Tavern

What you don’t immediately see is some of the best restaurant Imagineering in Disney World as far as I’m concerned. I’ve done an entire post previously about this, but I’ll recap it a bit here.

Each room in Liberty Tree Tavern represents a different figure from The United States’ colonial history. For example, you might dine in the George Washington room, the Thomas Jefferson room, the John Paul Jones room, the Betsy Ross room, the Benjamin Franklin room, or even the Paul Revere room (be sure to look for the lanterns…).

George Washington Room (I keep looking for wooden teeth on the mantle every time I go)

John Paul Jones Room

Wherever you’re seated, be sure to take a look at the decor on the walls — it will no doubt tell an intimate story of the historic life of one of America’s founding fathers.

Kite in Ben Franklin Room

Martha Washington Corner of the Washington Room

Also, just a reminder that Liberty Tree Tavern no longer has characters at this dinner meal. Guests used to be able to dine with Mickey, Minnie, Chip, Dale, and sometimes even Goofy dressed in colonial garb (it was always fun when they’d dress up for Halloween!); but a couple of years ago, these fun friends were ditched, meaning there aren’t ANY Magic Kingdom restaurants where you can eat with Mickey any longer.

Eats

So let’s get down to business! Liberty Tree Tavern is well known for its dinner meal. This is an all-you-care-to-eat prix fixe feast of what has come to be known as America’s “first meal.”

Menu -- click image for larger version

Yep — it’s pretty much your standard Thanksgiving dinner! (No wonder our readers chose it as their favorite place for Thanksgiving Dinner in Disney World!) Salad, roasted meats and cornbread stuffing, veggies, mashed potatoes, and…mac and cheese? Well, my family doesn’t usually do mac and cheese at Thanksgiving, but I’m “thank”ful that they do it here! YUM!

First up, we were served some delicious rolls with honey butter. These are very good, but be prepared for the sweetness of the butter! We weren’t, so it was a bit of a shock!

Rolls and Honey Butter

The salad here is a relatively standard tossed salad with house-made dressing. A nice, crisp way to begin your meal.

Salad

But soon your table starts to fill up! We were seated at a table for two, and we barely had enough room for all of the dishes our server brought! She mentioned that finding space for all of the food is a little like playing Tetris!

The biggest platter? The meat! You’ll receive a serving dish full of roast pork, turkey, and beef with cornbread stuffing and fruit chutney. I loved the pork; my husband loved the turkey. The cornbread stuffing is quite good as well!

Roast Pork, Turkey and Beef with Cornbread Stuffing and Chutney

Close-up - Roast Pork, Turkey and Beef

I wasn’t a huge fan of the chutney; it was a bit too tart for me. It seems like this is the replacement for the more traditional cranberry sauce, but we found out at a return visit later that week that you CAN order cranberry sauce to go with your meal; it’s just not on the menu… .

Special Order Cranberry Sauce

Also on the table: gorgeous mashed potatoes and some very fresh tasting green beans and carrots.

Mashed Potatoes

Carrots

Beans

But don’t forget the gravy!! A rich, brown gravy is served, traditionally, in a gravy boat. Use all you want — they’ll bring more!

Gravy

And, of course, the mac and cheese! This used to be Stouffer’s mac and cheese, and I would guess that it still is. Does anyone know for sure? Either way, it’s definitely not your mom’s homemade macaroni and cheese — it seems pretty processed with that neon orange cheese sauce — but we all know how I feel about that! Yum!

Mac and Cheese

Your meal ends up with a new dessert. Liberty Tree Tavern used to serve apple cobbler with this meal, but since Crasins dried cranberries took over as the sponsor of the restaurant, they’ve begun to serve what they call a “Johnny Appleseed cake,” which has apples and craisins in it.

The cake is very moist, and we loved the ice cream served with it. That said, I would have preferred the apple cobbler.

Johnny Appleseed Cake with Craisins and Ice Cream

Inside of Johnny Appleseed Cake

Overall

It’s official. We love Liberty Tree Tavern lunch AND dinner! I was really surprised my husband liked this meal as much as he did, but he was ready to return immediately after dining there for the first time.

As I mentioned, we ended up going back to LTT for dinner later in the trip, which is unprecedented. Writing a food blog, we don’t ever have the luxury of returning to a restaurant for a second time in the same trip (have to keep eating at different places so we can report them to you!), but he loved it THAT much that we went back the next week!

There’s nothing spectacular about this food; what’s compelling about it is that it is consistently good. At Liberty Tree Tavern you’re most likely going to have a better-than-average meal (sometimes a great meal!) that’s well worth the money. When it comes to Disney restaurants, that doesn’t always happen, so to have a guarantee like this one…well…that’s pretty great.

I think our only complaint about this dinner was that everything tasted SO good that we wondered if the sodium levels weren’t a little bit high. As they say, you add flavor to food by adding fat and salt, and this food had a LOT of flavor.

http://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2011/10/30/review-liberty-tree-tavern-dinner/

[DaveInTN 3,247]

Have never eaten there. Thanksgiving dinner isn't exactly INC's favorite meal, so we haven't wanted to pay big money to eat something like that. But someday, I would like to try it. Wish they still had the characters though.