I know I know … I should have listened to the previous reviews of Tiana’s Palace when the restaurant first opened. But I needed to try everything for myself because my tastebuds don’t always match everyone else’s! And my opinions on almost everything are almost always the complete opposite of what everyone else thinks. So I NEEDED to visit Disneyland myself and share my own review of Tiana’s Palace.
What kind of influencer/blogger/critic would I be if I didn’t try it out for myself?
Well … my friends (aka the other admins of our Black Disney Moms Facebook group) warned me right before we headed into Tiana’s Palace after I insisted on tasting the food during our last Disneyland trip!
And it didn’t take long for me to realize why everyone hates the new restaurant.
It’s an incredibly cute quick-service restaurant, but the food is mediocre at best, and completely disgusting at its worst.
I’m not sure why it’s taking them SO long to get this right, but these recipes need a complete revamp. And they probably need someone Black in the kitchen. After they hire someone Black to develop new, and more authentic recipes.
Because this isn’t it. And until they fix it — I won’t ever be able to recommend it. To anyone! But yeah …
Here’s a “quick” review of Tiana’s Palace at Disneyland …
And if you work at Disneyland, and see this, please don’t hate me.
I really like it there and I’d like to come back. To Disneyland that is. I just … I can’t eat this food, and that’s incredibly disappointing as a Black Disney Mom + park goer.
Now here’s what I looked like when I first got to Tiana’s Palace …
Yup, I’m bout to take you on a whole a** adventure, through all my pain and woes. You must feel every disappointment I felt! And I’ll even come back and update this post when I finally get all my tasting videos up on TikTok, so you can SEE my disappointment as well. *sings* You can thank me now.
But as you can see from the photo above, despite all the mixed reviews I saw, with most of them being negative, I was happy to be here! The photos were so cute, and the restaurant looks just as gorgeous in person! Like, whoever built this, painted it, designed it, did a really good freaking job!
We even got to meet Tiana!
Or at least the cast member who acts as Tiana — if you’re unfamiliar with how Disney works.
Look how cute we are!
And yes, these are the Black Disney Moms Facebook group admins that I mentioned above. I’m happy I get to call them my friends! From left to right we have – Camille Wall, Tanay Howard, Tiana, Amiyrah Martin (the founder of our little* group), and then there’s cute little me!
* = Also I say little, but the group actually has over 13,000 Black mom (grandma and auntie) members in it. So I don’t know if that’s little to you, but I totally meant little as in cute, not little as in group size.
Anywho …
Here’s all the food I tasted at Tiana’s Palace …
Keep in mind this was my first visit ever. Some of our admins had already visited before. But …
First, we had beignets.
I’ll tell you about those below.
But they’re not actually from Tiana’s Palace, they’re from Mint Julep Bar nearby.
After the beignets, we had a few dishes everyone in our group wanted us to taste …
The House Gumbo, the Muffuletta Sandwich, and the Cajun Spiced Half Chicken.
I’ll go into everything in a whole lot more detail below!
But after we tried all of that, the group also wanted us to try …
The Shrimp and Grits and Cornbread …
And if you’re already disgusted, please … stay with me. I understand. Don’t throw up just yet.
Keep reading …
Now here’s the “quick” review of Tiana’s Palace that I posted in our group.
Everything pictured above is what we ate.
And it’s all trash! Trash or mid. Aka everyone was right!
But I’m okay with learning this lesson the hard way! I needed to see for myself because if you’ve been in this group long enough you know my opinions don’t usually match mainstream opinions.
I’ll go into full details here but for now, here are a few quick things to note …
- My beignet needed more powdered sugar. Argue with yo mama not me.
- I don’t eat pickles but I tried these and I didn’t hate them. (I’m shocked!)
- The gumbo was salty but this was the only dish I actually liked!
- Nothing was spicy or hot. So hope they weren’t supposed to be.
- Some of the salt from the gumbo could have gone into the rice and beans and then they both would have been good. (Good not great.)
- All of this food tastes like it was made with yt people in mind and for their taste buds. So none of this is shocking to me.
- That Mac and cheese tastes like someone Caribbean made it not someone from down south. (IYKYK!)
- I’ve had grits once before this, and I’ll probably never have them again because of this.
- The shrimp from the grits tasted like Ariel swam and got them straight from the bottom of the sea for Tiana fresh that day. I just couldn’t taste which sea it was from. I know they have 7! But not sure which one! You can really taste the sea though. Props to her for helping.
- That sandwich was aight but I wouldn’t eat it again.
Overall — issa no for me dawg! It’s incredibly disappointing because this was supposed to be for us but clearly, it’s NOT! It is what it is. Hopefully, it gets better? If not, I hope the yt folks enjoy pretending they’ve had great Black food. Cause that’s all I got.
It’s really pretty though! So if you wanna go take photos and meet Tiana do it! I just wish they had some French fries I could recommend or something! But get ya photos and then eat elsewhere!
Yup, that’s literally what I told the group. Folks have been laughing for days.
But *sigh* … it’s actually quite disappointing when you really think about it. Even worse — we visited during Black History Month, and this restaurant is supposed to be inspired by one of the few Black movies and princesses Disney has. And they couldn’t even get it right!
Much like how I felt with Pixar’s Soul movie.
So of course this is how I left Tiana’s Palace …
Hilariously, I took this photo before entering the restaurant. We were just quickly grabbing photos before eating. And I hated it — but my friend Amiyrah laughed and said keep it because this is exactly what you’ll look like when you leave. And she was right!
I’m going to post a separate article in a few, with all my notes I took while eating, rating each dish, so you can get a better understanding of WHY this restaurant is SO disappointing.
But that’s enough heartbreak for now I guess.
P.s – If you’re looking to book a trip to Disneyland soon, I’m happy to share that I’m now a Get Away Today partner, and you can use my promo code SHAYE10 when booking through my link for $10 off your Southern California and Disneyland packages. Cause I know every dollar counts baby!
Please Note: Promo codes may only be valid for $10 off Southern California vacation packages that include at least a 2-night hotel stay and 2 theme park tickets unless specified otherwise.