Disneyland Paris was built with stunning attention to detail, and this is carried through to the themes of its restaurants. In this post, we explore the restaurants of Parc Disneyland and Walt Disney Studios Park to appreciate fully their depth and character.
After our first trip to DIsneyland Paris, we thought it would be fun to put together a list of 10 that we think have some of the best themes. However, since we were not able to visit every restaurant (frustrating operating hours schedules prevented it), we were not able to do a top 10 list in the traditional sense.
Fortunately, we’ve since revisited Disneyland Paris several times, and have now managed to dine at almost every restaurant in Parc Disneyland. In so doing, we’ve managed to find more than 10 restaurants with beautiful details and theming that make them worth visiting, and as of our most recent update, we’ve expanded the list to include 14 restaurants.
An important note is that this list focuses solely on theme. Food-quality does not enter the equation at all with our rankings of the restaurants. While Parc Disneyland is a beautiful, highly immersive theme park that excels at many things, food preparation is not one of those things. This is both shocking and disappointing given its proximity to one of the culinary hotspots of the world, but c’est la vie.
With that said, so much of the Disney experience is about theme and sense of place. As a result, if you’re visiting Disneyland Paris, we recommend trying a few of these restaurants despite our comments about food quality, as you’d be missing a big part of the overall experience if you skipped them and ate every meal at Earl of Sandwich.
Weeks after you visit a Disneyland Paris restaurant, you or your kids probably won’t be raving about one burger versus another, demanding that you phone Zagat immediately. However, you will probably fondly recall dining in a room based on concept art for Discoveryland/Tomorrowland for a long time. Such is the nature of a meal at Disneyland Paris–the food at a restaurant should be important, but it’s really not.
Let’s dig into the best-themed Disneyland Paris and Walt Disney Studios Park restaurants…
14. Inventions
Of the restaurants we’ve seen in the hotels, Inventions is the most thematically-ambitious. Many others have a more lowkey, generically “sophisticated” vibe, particularly the ones in the pricier resorts. Located in Disneyland Hotel, we started almost every morning at this breakfast buffet that showcases the golden age of invention.
On the walls and ceiling of Inventions, you’ll find numerous Victorian inventions, technical designs, and other conceptual art hanging. Honorable mentions for other hotel restaurants go to Chuck Wagon Cafe, Parkside Diner, Captain’s Quarters, and Redwood Bar and Lounge. (You can read more about some of these in our .)
13. Cable Car Bake Shop
This one is a personal favorite because it really felt like an intimate bake shop, like the kind you’d actually find stuffed in between two other businesses on some European side street. We’ve stopped here often for hot drinks on our cold Christmas-time trips to Disneyland Paris.
Despite its small size, the restaurant is beautifully done and ornate, with gorgeous stained glass light fixtures, cable car artwork, and other great details. If I were a local to Disneyland Paris, I could see myself often stopping here and unwinding for an hour in a booth, slowly drinking a coffee on a frigid day.
12. Cafe Hyperion
Basically, Cafe Hyperion makes the list because of the giant zeppelin airship that was adapted from the abandoned Tony Baxter-designed Discovery Bay project originally slated for Disneyland.
There are some detailed murals depicting world travel based loosely on The Island at the Top of the World above the ordering bays and some steampunk touches, but thematically, the inside is mostly cavernous. As the park’s largest restaurant, it’s loud and really busy, but still worth taking a peek at early or late in the day. Just don’t eat here–the food is atrocious. See and read more in our full Cafe Hyperion Review.
11. Silver Spur Steakhouse
While I’m not a huge fan of Silver Spur Steakhouse’s large open seating area, it’s definitely a steakhouse befitting of Thunder Mesa’s prosperity. It’s gorgeous, and really reminds me of what an elegant, old-fashioned steakhouse should resemble.
There’s a lot of deep woodwork and a muted, predominantly brown color schemed, which is punctuated by beautiful Western paintings, Winchester sculptures, and other art. It wouldn’t be my first or second choice if I were only doing a few table service meals at Disneyland Paris, but the theme is appropriate for the locale.
10. Bistrot Chez Remy
This is unquestionably going to be a controversial ranking, and I suspect many guests would put Bistrot Chezy Remy, a “life-size” restaurant operated by Remy from Ratatouille, in the top 3 of this list. While I think that could certainly be true if you have kids who will enjoy all of the oversized props, Bistrot Chezy Remy is not on par with the best of Parc Disneyland.
The details here are more superficial, with many props looking cheap and lacking the same texture and sense of depth that can be found at the other restaurants on this list. It’s a fun larger than life environment where champagne corks, silverware, jam jar lids, and other “kitchen stuff” are all integrated into the restaurant, but it feels like it was done on the cheap. Nevertheless, the food here is absolutely exceptional, making it by far the best restaurant at Walt Disney Studios Park. You should absolutely make a reservation here and find out for yourself whether you think the design is brilliant or a bit hollow. See and read more in our full Bistrot Chez Remy Review.
Before we continue on, we do want to reiterate that Bistrot Chezy Remy is a fun and enjoyable restaurant, and at another resort, it’d likely be higher in our rankings. Disneyland Paris is just so good when it comes to rich thematic detail-work that it’s tough for us to put it any higher. Check out the other restaurants that beat it in the Top 10 of our Disneyland Paris list on Page 2!
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