Posted by I hope you’re all having a wonderful 2020 so far on this first day of the new decade! I thought I would update my Top 10 Favorite Vegan Disneyland Foods list that I did as a Youtube video a while back — I did that when I reached 10,000 followers on Instagram. But we have so many more options now, so it’s time for a new list!
By some strange coincidence, I actually reached 20,000 in the wee hours of January 1, 2020 this morning. So just a few minutes after the clock struck midnight and it became 2020, I saw it roll over to 20k followers. What a surreal experience!
I want to thank you all so much for being interested in vegan food at Disneyland and for helping me spread the word about how many delicious options there are. Every vegan meal that is eaten means an animal whose suffering was spared, not to mention the resources, carbon, land, water etc. that are saved as well when we choose to eat in a way that in gentlest on this planet. The more we demonstrate how vegan food is delicious and convenient, the closer we move to a compassionate world. I can’t thank you all enough for being part of this movement and for helping me increase the visibility of the vegan options at Disneyland. The more we show them off, the more people are aware of them and order them, the better they sell! And the better they sell, the more options we get, and the more that meat-eaters change their perceptions about how “difficult” it is to be vegan. Being vegan is not a sacrifice, it is a joy ❤
The majority of the items on this list have actually been added within the past year. The chefs have really been stepping up their game and offering creative and delicious vegan dishes at locations where we either had no vegan options before, or had to heavily modify something. I think that 2020 and the decade that awaits us will be the time in which our vegan future really takes shape.
Now, on to my current top 10 favorite vegan foods at the Disneyland Resort, starting with number 10 and working towards number 1!
10. Felucian Garden Spread (Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo, Galaxy’s Edge, Disneyland)
The great new vegan options at Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland are just one example of how Disneyland’s vegan food options have really exploded in the last year!
At Docking Bay 7, which is the main counter-service restaurant in Galaxy’s Edge, you can get the Felucian Garden Spread, which is Plant-Based “Kefta” (Impossible meatballs), herb hummus, tomato-cucumber relish, and pita bread. It is marked on the menu board with the new “plant-based” symbol, meaning that it is vegan with no modifications necessary.
I absolutely love this dish. The Impossible meatballs also have quinoa in them, and the hummus is really interesting. I’m not sure what kinds of herbs are in it, but it really does taste like something from another planet.
9. Nashville Hot Sandwich (Black Tap, Downtown Disney)
The newest addition to the Black Tap menu is the Vegan Nashville Hot Sandwich! It is a breaded portobello, Nashville hot sauce, coleslaw with a vegan dill dressing, pickles, tomato, and lettuce on a vegan potato bun. It requires no modifications:
I can tolerate a lot of spice, but this one actually took me close to my limit! My face was pretty much burning off, but in the best way possible!
I particularly love this sandwich because I lived in Nashville for 5 years for grad school, so I developed quite a relationship with Nashville Hot Chick’n! There are some great vegan restaurants in Nashville that do phenomenal vegan versions of the iconic Nashville dish. I can recommend the Nashville Hot Tempeh at Graze especially if you’re ever in the Nashville area!
8. Vegan Nachos (Lamplight Lounge, California Adventure)
Lamplight Lounge is a relatively new addition — it opened in Summer 2018 after being remodeled from the Cove Bar/Ariel’s Grotto — and with the retheming came an all-new and improved menu!
My favorite here is the vegan nachos, which are on the secret menu. They are basically a modified version of the lobster nachos, with grilled veggies in place of the lobster. So you say no lobster, no crema, and substitute with vegan cheese. The server and chef should know what you mean when you say “vegan nachos.”
The vegan cheese isn’t very visible in this photo, but I promise there is a huge layer of Daiya vegan cheese in the middle!
They are freshly made chips, they are made in-house and they are so crispy and delicious! It is so nice to sit next to the water and have these incredible nachos while watching Mickey’s Fun Wheel go around. In the evening, if you time it right, you can also watch World of Color from while enjoying your meal at Lamplight Lounge. The view is from the side, so it isn’t the best seat in the house, but it is still very nice to have a meal and relax while the show is happening on the water next to you!
7. Cauliflower Tacos (Rancho del Zocalo, Disneyland)
The Cauliflower Tacos with avocado pasilla crema are one of my favorite dishes at Disneyland right now. They are vegan by default, just make sure that they don’t sprinkle cheese on top of the beans.
The avocado pasilla crema is vegan: it is just avocados, pasilla peppers, and tofu — and the chef assured me that there were no dairy or eggs in it.
They come with either chips (which is what you get by default if you don’t specify), or with rice and beans as a side. I like them much better with the rice and beans! It feels like a more filling and balanced meal.
6. Plant-based Philly Dog (Award Wieners, California Adventure)
During 2019 they also added a fully vegan option to Award Wieners! Previously we had to be content with a secret off-menu hack, but now the Plant-Based Philly Dog has arrived and is fully vegan and displayed on the menu board!
It is a Field Roast hot dog in a housemade (Boudin) vegan bun, topped with grilled onions, peppers, and mushrooms, and a vegan crema, which is a sort of creamy mustard sauce. The sauce is quite mustardy, so if you don’t like mustard, you can ask to leave off the sauce, and add ketchup afterwards if desired. It is served with Filmstrip Fries, which are my favorite fries ever. Something about the shape of them is just so satisfying.
Depending on availability, it is sometimes an Yves hot dog instead of Field Roast, but it is always a fully vegan hot dog.
I love everything about this dog — Field Roast are my favorite vegan hot dogs (they are seitan based I believe, and seitan is my soulmate), and all of the toppings are just so good. The toasted bun is crispy on the outside and nice and soft and warm on the inside.
5. Vegan Banh Mi (Lucky Fortune Cookery, California Adventure)
The menu here at Lucky Fortune changed recently and the new vegan option has become my favorite sandwich ever! It’s the Vegan Banh Mi:
It is made with Before the Butcher plant based meat, pickled vegetables (carrot and daikon), cilantro, and Jalapenos on a French Roll served with Cucumber Salad in Lemongrass Vinaigrette.
The Kid’s version, the Kid’s Vegan Banh Mi, is a smaller version served with vegetables, steamed rice, and a drink.
The bread is nice and crispy on the outside, and the b4thebutcher meat with the sauce is super satisfying and delicious! And with the crunchy veggies and housemade vegan mayo sauce.. perfection!!
4. Dandelion Chocolate Hazelnut Cookies and Cream (Salt and Straw, Downtown Disney)
It is hard to choose a favorite flavor of ice cream at Salt and Straw, but when it really comes down to it, the one I always come back to is the Dandelion Chocolate Hazelnut Cookies and Cream! It is a super rice chocolate ice cream with hints of hazelnut and lots of texture from the cookie pieces throughout. It is really my ideal ice cream:
The cone pictured here is called the sugar cone or the kid’s cone, and it is vegan! Just be careful of the waffle cone (the larger one); it contains eggs.
I also have to mention that for January, they have brought back their Vegandulgence Series, which means that all of the Limited Edition flavors for this month are vegan! They did it last year in January as well, and I believe they have been doing this every January for several years. Our Anaheim location has received the following three flavors:
- Lemon Cheesecake Crumble
- Sunflower Butter Cups
- Toasted Oat Milk and Cookies
Pictured here from left to right are Toasted Oat Milk and Cookies, then Lemon Cheesecake Crumble, then Sunflower Butter Cups:
Our favorite was the Toasted Oat Milk and Cookies! It has so many textures in it — crunchy, chewy, smooth, all in one ice cream. It has a good amount of chocolate in the cookie portion of it. Such a creative, interesting, but also classic tasting flavor.
A close second for me was the Sunflower Butter Cups! It is super rich and velvety.
The Lemon Cheesecake Crumble is also excellent, but not quite as attention-catching as the others in comparison. It is very smooth and rich, with swirls of lemon, and the crumble throughout is like the crust of the cheesecake.
3. Backlot Nachos and Plant-based Tacos (Studio Catering Co. Truck, California Adventure)
The Backlot Nachos are out-of-this-world delicious! They are a bit of a hidden gem because they are served from a food truck in the back of the Hollywood Backlot area near Monster’s Inc, and where they do Marvel character meet and greets. This truck has both vegan nachos and vegan tacos! I love both of them and often order them together — the tacos are quite small, but paired with the nachos, it’s a good amount of food for 2 people.
The Backlot Nachos are made to be customized, so here is how to order them vegan:
- Choose the Plant-Based Protein (it’s like a soyrizo)
- Substitute the vegan (cashew) cheese sauce for the red pepper cheese sauce.
- Specify the vegan crema (which normally comes on the plant-based tacos).
Apparently it has been so popular to order them vegan by now, that cast members have a button on the register that specifies to make the vegan version! So you should be safe just saying “Vegan Backlot Nachos,” but it doesn’t hurt to specify the above details just in case.
Pictured below are the veganized Backlot nachos in the back and the plant-based tacos in the front:
Here is another day I got the Backlot Nachos! They had some red and blue chips for Captain America coming out at the time, but the rest is all the same:
What I love about these is that they remind me of the food you would get at a vegan festival! It really is emblematic of how much progress there has been at Disneyland with its vegan options in the last year that we now have a dish that rivals what you would get from an all-vegan vendor at a big vegan festival.
2. Ronto-less Garden Wrap (Ronto Roasters, Galaxy’s Edge, Disneyland)
The Ronto-less Garden Wrap debuted just a couple of months ago in October and it has quickly risen to stardom!
It has a housemade sausage made with Impossible meat, onions, and an Asian-inspired sauce, kimchee slaw, pickled cucumber, and a Gochujang sauce, wrapped in pita bread.
It has the “Plant-Based” symbol next to it on the menu, so that means it is fully vegan with no modifications.
I can’t tell you how many rave reviews I have heard about it! It is hard to describe exactly why it is so delicious, it just does something to my taste buds that makes me think, “These flavors are exactly what I need to be eating right now.”
It is either a large snack or a small meal, depending on your appetite. If you are quite hungry and looking for a full meal, you might try what my mom and I did during our last visit — we ordered 3 of them for the 2 of us, so we had one and a half each, which was the perfect amount.
1. Dole Whip (Tiki Juice Bar or Tropical Hideaway, Disneyland; Adorable Snowman Frosted Treats, California Adventure; Tangaroa Terrace/Trader Sam’s, Disneyland Hotel)
I’m sure many of you could anticipate that I would reserve the #1 spot for Dole Whip! Although the Ronto-less Garden Wrap is actually my favorite as far as meals go, it is hard to imagine anything ever dethroning the Dole Whip as my favorite thing to eat in Disneyland!
All flavors of Dole Whip are vegan, as indicated on Dole’s website.
Let’s go over the various places you can get Dole Whip all around the Disneyland Resort:
My favorite place to get it is the Tropical Hideaway in Adventureland in Disneyland. It is between the Tiki Room and the Jungle Cruise. The Tropical Hideaway opened at the beginning of 2019, and it’s another example of all of the fantastic food upgrades that have happened to the park during the last year.
At the Tropical Hideaway, they have Dole Whip in the most flavors available in one location: pineapple, rasbperry, orange, and mango.
You can get any of those flavors on its own, or a swirl of two flavors, and you can get any of them as a float (in pineapple juice), or as a Loaded Whip, which is on a bed of exotic fruits and topped with crystallized hibiscus and toasted coconut. If you get the Loaded Whip, just make sure to say “no pocky sticks” to make it vegan:
You can also get the classic pineapple Dole Whip or Float at the Tiki Juice bar, just a few steps away from the Tropical Hideaway, in front of the Tiki Room.
In California Adventure, you can also get Lemon Dole Whip at Adorable Snowman Frosted Treats:
You can get it in a cone (which is vegan), as pictured above, or you can get the Pixar Pier Parfait, which is the lemon Dole Whip layered with blue raspberry slushie and topped with a cherry:
Finally, you can also get your Dole Whip fix without ever entering the parks proper! This would be great if you don’t currently have a park ticket or if your annual pass is blocked out. You can go to Tangaroa Terrace / Trader Sam’s in the Disneyland Hotel and order pineapple Dole Whips here, either the classic Whip, the Float (with pineapple juice), or with a splash of rum (choose from either Myer’s dark spiced rum, or Parrot Bay coconut rum).
They also do espresso drinks! They have both soy milk and almond milk that they can use to make a latte, cappuccino, etc. They also usually have a canister of soy milk sitting out on the counter that you can use to put into your regular coffee.
Since we’re over here at Tangaroa Terrace, I have to add an honorable mention that didn’t make it into my Top 10 list, but I still love it so much! It is available for breakfast only at Tangaroa Terrace: the Açai Chia Breakfast Bowl:
It is described on the menu as: “Açai Purée blended with Bananas, Strawberry, and Coconut Milk, layered with Chia Seed Pudding. Topped with Granola, Berries, and Cacao Nibs.” The only modification needed for this dish is to omit the granola, because it contains honey.
I absolutely love this bowl, it has so many different textures and flavors. The açai smoothie on bottom, then the chia pudding on top, and then the berries, such a great combo. And the cocoa nibs give it a nice crunch!! And of course the edible flowers make it extra fancy!
That’s all for today! I wish you a very Happy New Year and all the best for 2020 and the coming decade! I am currently working on getting the January 2020 Comprehensive Guides up, but almost everything in the October 2019 guides has been updated in the meantime. So if you’re looking for all of the options in one place, please use the links below until the new posts are up!
Complete Guide to Vegan Options at Disneyland! (October 2019 Update)
Complete Guide to Vegan Options in California Adventure! (October 2019 Update)
Complete Guide to Vegan Options in Downtown Disney! (October 2019 Update)
Your Guide to Vegan Options at the Disneyland Resort Hotels! (October 2019 Update)
Your Guide to Vegan Options at Disneyland! 