Brunch de Domingo Con Cones

By Reuben Gutierrez

Originally published 7 April 2013

The greatest moment when visiting a Disney theme park is when you suddenly find yourself in the same exact world of the Disney characters. Sometimes it's more an 'inspired by' world (see Pizza PlaNOT), other times a 'you never saw this but you know it's there' world (see Cinderella's Royal Table), but much of the times it's the world in which the Disney characters inhabited and the parks allow us to visit such lands. Carsland in Disney's California Adventure is pretty much a faithful replica of Radiator Springs from Pixar's Cars. With each character's 'home' recreated, guests find themselves visually in Radiator Springs, though their little highway town had been redone to better accommodate the human guests, making Carsland not so much the world of Cars, nor an inspired by world, but something in between.

Case in point, Sally's Cozy Cone Motel looks just like it did in the movie, complete with cone windmill water feature, but it's actually not a motel at all. As great as it would be to sleep overnight in a Disney park inside a giant, orange, rubber cone, the Imagineers and Sally have instead turned the Cozy Cone into a court of snack stands! Save for one, each cone has a different cone inspired snack and serves beverages in a traffic cone souvenir mug.

Naturally at the Disneyland Resort, the one non-cone snack is of course the Churro, served as churro bites with Cinnamon spiced Chocolate Sauce. Also available at Cone 1 is the first of several Cars themed beverages: Ramone's 'Pear of Dice' soda, a pear flavored soft drink.

Cone 2 serves the expected Ice Cream Cones, with soft serve vanilla, chocolate, or twist. Additionally, there is also an option to dip your soft serve ice cream cone in chocolate. The Cars themed beverage here is the 'Route' Beer Float.

We'll visit Cone 3 in a moment, but for now we drive down to Cone 4 where Sally serves Frozen Cone-coctions. The snack item here is Pretzel Bites with a cheesy sauce. The Cars themed beverage is Red's Apple Freeze, which will be strikingly familiar to guests who have had LeFou's Brew at Gaston's Tavern.

The Popcone at Cone 5 serves scoops of flavored popcorn in either a regular popcorn box or a Lightning McQueen souvenir bucket. The flavors seem to rotate daily and when we visited, we found regular butter popcorn and a sweet and salty flavor. The beverage here is Doc's Wild Grape tonic.

Finally, Cone 3 is the Chili Cone Queso, one of the more witty play on words and also recipes! This cone serves bread cones filled with either Chili 'cone' Queso or Chicken Verde. At breakfast time, this is the only cone open, serving a Bacon Scramble cone (scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese sauce, and bacon) and the Verde Scramble cone (Scramble eggs, Salsa Verde and Queso Fresco). At my first visit to Carsland, this was the cone we made sure to try!

My number one dining companion Alex had the Chile Cone Queso and I had the Chicken Verde. Alex found her cone to be delicious to the last bite, as it was covered with cheese. My tastebuds cried in terror when they encountered the salsa verde in my cone. In my research salsa verde is supposed to be mild, so I guess I'm a wimp. But overall, the cone food experience was really fantastic as it was an incredibly unique and novel new way of eating familiar foods. The bread cone was fresh and soft with a crisp crust, much like a pretzel. Portion size as seen above is enough to comfortably fit in your hand and serve as a quick meal. Of all the cone inspired snacks, this one was certainly the winner.

The Cozy Cone has some cone covered tables for seating and they seem to employ bussers whose hair color matches the d'cor.

As I write this blog (and every time I write for this blog), I crave for another bread cone concoction. While I am lucky to live near Walt Disney World, there is no Carsland or Cozy Cones serving my new favorite Disney snack. As fate would have it, the bread cones have managed to find their way over to my home Disney resort! While not in one of the parks, these crazy cones can be enjoyed at the Downtown Disney Marketplace, accessible to anyone willing and able to make their way to the popular shopping destination.

Marketplace Snacks across from the Team Mickey store and Guest Relations, sells refreshments including the popular Chili Cone Queso and the new Meatball Cone. The Meatball Cone is filled with marinara sauce, turkey meatballs (a 'healthy' choice), and provolone cheese. It was a rather blustery, rainy day when I made my way to the Marketplace, and this meatball cone was my ticket to warmth and to assuage my cone craving.

The Cozy Cone at Disneyland is such a fun, zany, and quirky food court, it definitely is a must-see when visiting the Disneyland Resort as it thrusts you into the world of Cars. The crazy cone inspired snacks make it a must-dine location as well. Thankfully the popularity of the cones have managed to motor across the country and allow the East Coast Disney park fans a chance to also enjoy the quirky, fun snacks I've discovered Disneyland is known and remembered for.