Black Cherry Cold Brew
Disneyland At Home
In May we spent 3 days in Disneyland (and California Adventure) with friends. We ate. A lot. My childhood memories of Disney food were not what it actually turned out to be. The food was dare I say, incredible? Amusement park food is apparently in the days of the past because this food was innovative and fun and themed and most importantly TASTY. It was things you actually wanted to eat and not everything was dripping in grease. Fresh off a spinning Mater ride in the baking heat of Cars Land and having a glorious bite of a freezing cold pineapple spear I’m coating in Tajin is a sensory masterpiece that I won’t soon forget. When we returned home I had to look into the delicious origin story.
It turns out that when Disneyland opened in 1955, Walt didn’t run the restaurants because they couldn’t afford to. Four dozen companies leased spaces inside the park and the food was sponsored. Given my own content origin story (hello those of you who arrived to me from Tinned Fish Date Night) I was excited to learn about the Chicken of the Sea full blown pirate ship in Fantasyland. The tuna company built a full 80-foot replica of Captain Hook’s Jolly Roger with their own mermaid as the figurehead, serving tuna burgers, hot tuna pie, and tuna salad in little boat-shaped dishes. It was the first thing Disney built on the premise that would define today’s theme park food: the restaurant is the attraction.
You may have even heard about Dorito’s origin story and its ties to the park. Taco USA writes about how the Frito Company opened Casa de Fritos in 1955 inside the park, sourcing tortillas from a local supplier called Alex Foods. According to the most-repeated version of the story - an Alex Foods salesman watched the kitchen throwing out stale tortillas and suggested frying them into chips instead. Guests loved them, a Frito-Lay executive noticed, skip a few steps and it became a national product. That restaurant is now Rancho del Zocalo, next to Big Thunder Mountain.
Fast forward to now and the brands are mostly gone and Disney is using food to create the culture. Every new land in the last decade has arrived with its own invented cuisine. Blue milk is served in Galaxy’s Edge from a planet that doesn’t exist and my son still carries around the $9 glowing light saber swizzle stick I bought him in Oga’s Cantina. An outrageously priced swizzle stick and an absolute steal as far as Disney toys go. Avengers Campus spent three months of R&D to engineer a comically oversized taco that I now regret not getting upon further investigation. The tuna pirate ship opened the park and now the modern day lands are running with the food as part of the world concept. Which brings me to an unforgettable coffee in Fantasyland.
Of all the things we ate this Black Cherry Cold Brew from Rose’s Tavern stood out.
I’ll set the scene: it’s the first couple hours into our first day at Disneyland and our baby is being a sweet angel but our four year old is seriously overwhelmed. He’s not the only one overstimulated. Our friends were in the same boat and looking around I’d say about 50% of parents were feeling it too. Disney is A LOT to handle when you are little and don’t know what to expect. We finally convinced Alden to try one ride with us - Casey Jr. Circus Train. I strapped the baby on and she loved it and after much convincing Alden liked it too. He started to warm up to the idea of rides but still was feeling wary. We left the ride mid melt down wondering what on earth we had signed up for for the next three days and the price of a Honeymoon. We decided to grab breakfast at Rose’s Tavern to regroup. This is the moment it all flipped. We walked in there a family struggling to hold on and we walked out of there die hard Disney fans. All four of us.
Alden got a gigantic mickey mouse pancake the size of his baby sister and some breakfast sausage that was so good it rivaled any fancy links I’ve found from any fancy butcher shop. The pancake was fluffy yet thin and easy for kids to eat. It had such a good dispersing of powdered sugar all over the top that it actually wasn’t that much sugar at all but made it look incredible through a four year old’s eyes. But the cold brew was the thing that got Sathya and I to buy in. It was perfectly balanced. Not too sweet and not too bitter. It tasted like actual good coffee. And the black cherry topping was unbelievably delicious. We tried many coffees throughout the park over the remainder of our time and many were delicious (hello cocoa puff topped coffee in Star Wars land) but nothing compared to this. I hope it stays a while. If you go, don’t miss the Fantasyland Faire Fold.
In the weeks after we couldn’t stop talking about this coffee so I knew I needed to figure out a way to replicate it at home. I tried and failed and failed and failed some more and THEN I succeeded. I’ve since learned this syrup is divine in matcha as well.
This recipe was hard. It challenged me repeatedly. Creating ‘black cherry’ flavor naturally is not easy. The key I have now learned lies in not letting the cherries get too jammy when you cook them. You must cook them to distill into a syrup but they must retain a hefty amount of pure cherry flavor. That’s the secret: do. not. jam.
Below this paywall you’ll find my recipe for Cherry Cold Foam Cold Brew. If you choose to be a paid subscriber to access, I thank you! Developing recipes (well) takes time and can be quite costly in ingredients. If you upgrade to a paid subscription, you will receive new recipes 2x per month, access to our group chat and the entire archive of recipes.
