Ultimate Review of Liberty Tree Tavern
After a very long, cold winter, a man with long hair and round spectacles sits at a candle-lit desk. His shoulders are hunched forward and he’s massaging his temples as he pours over what he swears is the last essay he will read before he breaks for supper. No matter how badly he wants to find the answers he needs to further his project he realizes that sentences have to be understood in order to be helpful, and watering eyes are making the scratchy writing blurry and hard to read. A look at the clock prompted by his rumbling belly tells him that more than 10 hours have passed since he began his day- his plan to commit to a reasonable workday has long since fallen apart. 8pm is just minutes away, and Benjamin Franklin hopes his friends at the Liberty Tree Tavern have prepared enough food to sustain him through his impending all-nighter.
That’s just the scene the Disney Imagineers hope your mind draws up when you enter the Benjamin Franklin room at Liberty Tree Tavern. In fact, the whole restaurant calls to mind scenes of America in its infancy, and when I visited for the first time just a few weeks ago, one step through the understated doorway will make you feel like you’ve just won your freedom in the American Revolution! A dark wood-stained floor and surrounding wooden furniture sets the time and place perfectly, though that’s not why I came. I came for the promised all you care to enjoy family-style feast! So, does the food and décor’s quality match in excellence? Or was the cute theming all this place had going for it? Read on to find out!
Welcome to the Liberty Tree Tavern!
I’m originally from Pennsylvania, so when the host called my party’s name and followed it up with “visiting from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania!” I knew they were taking the time and place very seriously. After all, Disney is known for fully immersing guests into an experience, so this grand welcome by the Cast Members at Liberty Tree Tavern was a great way to get my party and I immediately acclimated to the colonial vibe.
Photo Credit: www.orlandotouristinformationbureau.com
I was seated in the Benjamin Franklin room- a small raised alcove of a space with cute window seating in the back of the restaurant. Liberty Tree Tavern itself is smartly separated into multiple rooms which succeeds at giving it an intimate, pre-skyrise era feel. While the rooms are all decorated in accordance with the theme, one glace around is really all you need to to get a sense of your surroundings. Which means one thing: more emphasis on the food!
The Food
The food at Liberty Tree Tavern is served family-style and is all you care to enjoy. Translated to English, that means: the menu is set and each course will be served family-style. Everything from drinks to dessert are unlimited, and you can order more of everything or individual dishes as your taste buds desire. Yes, I said drinks are unlimited, but only the non-alcoholic variety. My family and I all placed drink orders with our waitress from the alcoholic beverage list that isn’t included in the price of the meal…but hey, when you’re traveling that far back in time you might as well enjoy it!
The first course was a house salad and warm dinner rolls. The salad was fresh, though pretty generic in terms of salads and can be best equated to a house salad you’d find at pretty much any chain restaurant. The rolls were served warm and while I wanted to eat 2, I kept it to 1 since I knew a bounty would soon appear on my table!
Did I say bounty? I might have understated! When the main course was presented and my family and I managed to wrap our heads around just how much food was in front of us, we glanced around the table at each other and shared big smiles before we dove in! First, I must say the presentation was perfect. Served in big ceramic bowls with metal serving utensils, each plate (or platter, I should say) was absolutely brimming with hot and delicious-smelling food. We received green beans, mashed potatoes, house-made mac and cheese, and a massive platter with roasted carved turkey, pot roast, and slow cooked pork piled around a scoop of homemade stuffing…talk about a centerpiece! Save for the stuffing, I helped myself to a big plate with a little of everything….
Most restaurants and dinner shows serving unlimited family-style food favor quantity over quality, and after my most recent trip to Hoop Dee Doo left me very unsatisfied with the food, my expectations were not exceedingly high. I took my first fork full of turkey and gravy with this knowledge…and immediately was swept away by the flavors! The turkey was perfectly cooked and the breast meat had maintained an impressive level of juiciness. The green beans were also cooked nicely and had a bit of a crunch to them- a telltale sign that a veggie has not been overcooked.
I dove into the pot roast and pork next. If I never had another pot roast in my life I wouldn’t miss it, so to bite into a thinly sliced portion of roast that had no fat, no heavy sauce, and was not overly salted left me surprised to say the least! The meat was fall-off-the-bone tender and fell apart in my mouth. There are fatty bits, but the lean pieces of meat surrounding it have sucked up all of that flavor without the any of the grease or guilt. The pork was underwhelming from my point of view: way too much fat to pick around made the blandly favored lean meat not worth the hassle with so much other food on the table.
The mashed potatoes were fine, though my favorite part of the entrée course was the house made mac and cheese! My table reached the bottom of our first bowl so quickly, that we almost immediately ordered another round of the thick, gooey, creamy bowl of cheese-drenched noodles. When it arrived, I’m estimating that it took us about 4 minutes to reach the bottom of that second bowl! Even though all of the food is truly unlimited, they definitely give you large portions to begin with, as the mac and cheese was the only thing we had to order seconds of. With that huge entrée course in our bellies, the ‘ready for dessert?’ question was met with lots of sighs and belt-adjusting from my party…but we were ready. After all, I’d heard a thing or two about this particular dessert and was anxious to try it out for myself…
Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake
It’s definitely ooey, it’s extremely gooey, and it might be my favorite dessert I’ve ever eaten at Walt Disney World! If you don’t know, I’m an Annual Passholder, so I visit the parks on a very regular basis, which also means I’ve eaten at plenty of great restaurants and have had more than a few delectable desserts on Property, so to pick a ‘favorite’ or say something is ‘the best’ is something I steer clear of. That was before the Oooey Gooey Toffee Cake met my taste buds.
A freshly-baked warm, hugely thick, warm, chocolate chip-studded, warm, toffee flavored, warm cookie is what garners this dish all of the high praise and is definitely what has earned it its deserved Disney snack fame. The scoop of vanilla ice cream drizzled with chocolate and caramel sauces and topped with crushed bits of toffee and shaved dark chocolate definitely help. When our skillet arrived to the table, the portion of the ice cream in contact with the cookie base had melted just enough for it to have married itself into the still-warm dough below, driving home the point that each bite of this dessert is meant to have a little of everything! The melty cookie base combines with the ice cream and its toppings for a texture, flavor, and temperature experience that’s out of this world! In fact, just from writing about it has brought back its sweet memories for me to say: it really is my favorite dessert I’ve ever had at Walt Disney World! As you can see…we had no problem polishing off 2 helpings!
The Verdict?
All of the food at Liberty Tree Tavern was much better than I expected- and most of it was really good! Save for the bland salad, the fatty pork, and the average mashed potatoes, everything was delicious! If you’re on the dining plan, this is a great option for a table service credit since the food is appealing to kids and adults, and you can order as much of it as you like! Even if you’re not on the dining plan, though, the quality of the main courses is very good and the value for the price can’t be beat! I would recommend this restaurant based on just the entrée, so when you also consider the dessert…I say run, don’t walk to Liberty Tree Tavern!
Thanks for visiting MickeyBlog.com! For a FREE quote on your next Disney vacation, please fill out the form below!
Special thanks to Maria Salerno for writing this article: Hiya pal! I am a NYC-based writer/musician thrilled to be bringing you all things Disney! I’m a WDW Annual Passholder, so you can find me in the parks regularly throughout the year. In addition to being a Disney Parks loving girl, I’m also a Disney toy and merchandise collector, a runDisney enthusiast, and Disney music and movie aficionado. You can follow me on Instagram: NYCtoAP and find me on YouTube: NYCtoAP. Thanks for reading, hope to see ya real soon!
