A Day of Food at Disney Springs

My first Disney day on my Disney Birthday Week I spent at Disney Springs, mostly to eat food! There were several things I wanted to try, so I made little progressive meal stops throughout the day. Basically, I ate all day.

Food at Disney Springs

First, a word about Disney Springs. It’s pretty darn huge. You’ll get tired walking from one end to the other. For this reason, Disney operates a boat service at three points along Lake Buena Vista.

It’s also more confusing than it used to be when it was Downtown Disney. I really love the new “springs” area and theming but I always seem to get lost! I actually had to use Google maps at one point to get pointed in the right direction. It used to be more or less a straight line from one end to the other but since its big renovation in 2015, it gets about four “streets” deep around the middle part. One day I’ll get the hang of it!

Also, there are over 60 places to eat in Disney Springs! Luckily, there are options for every taste, from high-brow steakhouses to low-budget chicken fingers. And more than a few celebrity chefs have found a home in Disney Springs.

Guy Fieri’s Chicken Guy

My first stop is Chicken Guy, Guy Fieri’s new chicken tender restaurant. It’s tucked away on the side of Planet Hollywood, so that’s an easy landmark to look for. If this is your main goal while parking, the Orange lot is your best bet (though Google calls it the Watermelon, Mango, and Grapefruit lots, so maybe look for that in your app.) Be prepared to wait! I went at 3:00 in the afternoon and still had about a 20-minute wait just to get in the doors.

The menu at Chicken Guy’s is chicken tenders and chicken-tender based sandwiches with fries, a couple sides (mac n’ cheese & fried pickles) and milkshakes to round out the menu. On the healthy side, you can get your tenders grilled instead of fried and a few salads are offered.

The Big Deal at Chicken Guy is the SAUCE–you have 22 sauces to choose from! Everything from classics like ranch & honey mustard to Guy’s creations like Nashville Hot Honey & Donkey Sauce. Every order of three or five tenders gets two sauces to choose from. I got Donkey Sauce and Cumin Lime Mojo and really enjoyed both! Donkey Sauce is very mayonnaise-y and the Cumin Lime is thinner, so I think I liked the Cumin Lime just a hair better. And two sauces were certainly more than enough for my three tenders.

The tenders are really excellent and come out HOT and fast. I like that they aren’t too heavily breaded. I’m not sure if it matters, but Guy’s chefs fry the chicken in a pressure cooker, so it seemed less greasy to me. All the same, I’d love to go back and try the grilled chicken tenders instead. They also have a Mexican Street Corn Salad that looks really good.

The Daily Poutine

Next up is The Daily Poutine. Poutine is a Quebecois Canadian street/pub food–the kind of over-indulgent mess you’d eat during a night of drinks or during a festival. The basic recipe is fries topped with cheese curds and brown gravy.

At The Daily Poutine in Disney Springs, you can get this basic recipe or several variations on it, like Italian poutine with Mozzarella and bolognese sauce, Oktoberfest with sausage and sauerkraut, Latin with pulled pork over yucca fries, or French poutine with Gruyère cheese and mushroom sauce.

I opted for the traditional Canadian poutine, and oh dear, it was dreadful. The fries were very slightly above par for Disney fries and the gravy was tasty but the cheese curds were downright cold! I thought they would be all warm and gooey and I think they’re supposed to be in real life. But not at The Daily Poutine. At least, not on my trip.

The Latin Poutine still looks interesting enough to try out, but this trip was so disappointing that I may just never go back. The Daily Poutine is a walk-up window with tables located nearby. The nearest parking is the Lime Garage.

Sprinkles Cupcakes

Sprinkles Cupcakes are my absolute favorite cupcakes. There used to be a Sprinkles in Nashville that I could visit but now that it is closed, I can only get my Sprinkles fix at Disney Springs. Sprinkles is located nearest the Lime Garage as well.

The thing about Sprinkles Cupcakes is that the cake itself is so good. And the icing isn’t twice as high as the cake itself like the Disney ones are. It’s just a simple, very well-done cupcake.

A lot of people must agree with me since the line at the Disney Springs Sprinkles is always fairly long. If you visit a Sprinkles more than 40 times in a year, you earn one skip the line pass that is best used at the Disney Springs location. For the rest of us, you can take advantage of the Cupcake ATM, which offers almost exactly what is inside the shop. (No ice cream options, however.)

On my visit, I used the ATM to get a salted caramel cupcake and a corn flake oatmeal cookie. The cupcake became dessert after my disappointing poutine and the cookie may or may not have become breakfast later in the week…

Mickey Beignets

After my first three rounds of eating, I wandered around Disney Springs for a while until I got tired and started riding the boats. I ended up taking a boat out to Disney’s Port Orleans French Quarter where I tried a plate of Mickey-shaped beignets as a late-afternoon snack. Beignets come with one sauce–either caramel, raspberry, or chickory coffee ganache (which is the most like chocolate.) I got mine with the chicory coffee ganache.

Beignets have been a staple at French Quarter since it opened, but only recently have they become Mickey-shaped. I think I may have preferred them in their original rectangles. Not that they taste bad, fried dough is pretty much always going to taste yummy. But they lack the airiness that you expect in a beignet. These are much more dense, like a doughnut. On my own, I could only eat two out of the three on my plate.

You can get Mickey beignets in Sassagoula Floatworks, the resort’s food court, at pretty much any time of day. In Scat Cat’s Club, you can upgrade your beignet experience from 4 pm to midnight with Baton Rouge Beignets, which are three NORMAL beignets (i.e. not mouse-shaped) with little tubes of Bailey’s, Kahlua, or RumChata that you can squirt into them. I wonder if you can order them square without the liquor…

Chef Art Smith’s Homcomin‘

Later in the evening and in dire need of actual nourishment, I sat at the bar in Chef Art Smith’s Homcomin’ (no g) Florida-centric restaurant, specializing in southern favorites. I opted for a grilled chicken “harvest” salad with avocado and hushpuppy croutons. I paired this with an amazing fruity cocktail called the Florida Crush made with orange juice and vodka with muddled oranges and strawberries.

I’d love to explore more of their menu–they have a fantastic-looking moonshine cake, “church lady deviled eggs”, and homemade fried chicken every which way, including with homemade doughnuts.

Unfortunately, I could not fit one more single thing in me that day and I did not return to Disney Springs during this trip. One day, I would love nothing more than to eat my way from one end of Disney Springs to another! But until then, days like this will have to do.