An Awful Magic Kingdom Restaurant is Awesome Again

Magic Kingdom’s counter service restaurant lineup has been a race to the bottom for the last 5 years. There’s been zero competition for first, whereas it’s like a 9-way tie for worst. Magic Kingdom is the weakest food park at Walt Disney World, which is an absolute shame given that it’s the most popular park and has no shortage of unique dining venues.

That’s precisely why we were so excited about the news that one of the Magic Kingdom’s most mediocre meal spot was getting a brand-new menu! As you might recall, Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe was previously dead to us. We wrote that piece, titled “The Death of Pecos Bill” a little over a year ago, and the chorus of 50+ reader comments largely agreed. When it came time to think up a “clever” title for this review of the new menu at Pecos Bill, the words “alive again” and “worst to first” kept coming to mind.

However, the former didn’t make sense without context, and the latter somehow wasn’t even true! Somehow, Pecos Bill was not previously the worst counter service restaurant in all of Magic Kingdom, which is really saying something (and not a good thing). Rather, it was the one with the most squandered potential. A high-capacity restaurant that could’ve been good and, at one time, was a highlight. So basically, this review addresses whether the new menu delivers and helps Pecos Bill reclaim the crown as the #1 counter service restaurant in Magic Kingdom…

Frankly, it has been surprising and disappointing that, at the same time Chipotle Mexican Grill has risen in popularity, Walt Disney World had gone in the exact opposite direction with Pecos Bill. The menu had been dumbed down, cuisine quality lowered, etc. This is doubly true once you try the exceptional Donald’s Cantina on the Disney Treasure and Wish. (Tangential, but the deck dining on the new ships is a real highlight.)

Thankfully, Walt Disney World is finally undoing that damage. We won’t bury the lede: this is the best menu at Pecos Bill in almost a decade. Not exactly a high bar, as the old food was awful. But it’s as if someone finally dared to dream: what if food at the world’s most popular theme park were actually edible?

Against that backdrop, let’s dig into the new menu review at Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe…

Since the four core menu items are Build Your Own Bowls, I’m going to start by reviewing the trio of proteins that you can choose for any of these. Let’s start with the Citrus-Chipotle Chicken.

The Citrus-Chipotle Chicken is my third-favorite protein option, which isn’t a knock. There are generous chunks of tender and juicy meat, which is flavorful and tastes like it’s actually of a reasonable quality. The ‘notes’ of citrus and chipotle are subtle, but they are there. If you’re in the mood for chicken, you’re not going wrong by ordering this–it just wasn’t my personal favorite.

Oh, and as for the dish pictured in the two photos above, that’s the Grilled Masa Flatbread.

This corn-based, plant-based flatbread is already defunct. I can understand why, as it didn’t quite hit the same high notes as the other entrees–and was an absolute mess to eat. I’m nevertheless slightly disappointed, as it was an inventive entree that added menu variety. They should’ve iterated on this (maybe ditch the fake cheese?) rather than abandoning it. Oh well.

At some point since we last dined at Pecos Bill (so within the last few weeks), they replaced the Grilled Masa Flatbread with the Plant-based Rice Bowl with Impossible Meatballs in Red Chile Tomato Sauce, Pinto Beans, Cilantro-Lime Rice, Cowboy Caviar, and Lime “Crema.” We haven’t had a chance to try that yet, but we find Impossible “Meat”balls to be the best of the Impossible products.

Our next protein is the Green Chili Pork.

I really like this pork. Almost the exact description applies as for the chicken–this is tender and juicy, and a generous portion of meat is piled onto the bowl. The green chili flavor is subtle even when you eat the pork on its own, and masked entirely when mixed into the bowl.

As someone who ate at the old iteration of Pecos Bills a few too many times (for lack of better options–not everyone with whom we’d visit likes seafood, taking Columbia Harbour House off the table), I also cannot understate how much higher quality both the chicken and pork are than their predecessors. I previously called the meats at Pecos Bill “dog food grade.” That was only slight hyperbole. These are on par with what you’d order at Chipotle or another fast casual Mexican spot.

Saving the best for last, the final protein option is the Coca-Cola Cherry Braised Beef.

This meat is shockingly fantastic. There’s a sweetness to the beef, and it has a slow-cooked quality that makes it tender, juicy, and delicious. There are two ‘extinct’ entrees this reminded me of, one from lunch at Be Our Guest Restaurant and another from Flo’s V8 Cafe back when it first opened. Those are favorable comparisons, and incredibly high praise for a restaurant that once had its meats compared to dog food.

Frankly, I wish they’d serve the Coca-Cola Cherry Braised Beef as a standalone, plated entree. As it stands, I can easily envision a scenario where we order a bowl with a double portion of this beef to split. It’s that good.

Since we’re already talking about it, let’s start by digging into the Rice Bowl with Pinto Beans, Cilantro-Lime Rice, Cowboy Caviar, and Queso Fresco.

Like everything in the ‘Build Your Own’ section of the menu, this is priced at $12.99. What’s pictured above is a single portion of the beef on top of the bowl.

I mention that because this bad boy is a big meal, almost more than enough for one person–and that’s worth mentioning at a time when many other Walt Disney World entrees are shrinking in size but growing in price.

The ingredients here work really well together, and there are generous amounts of queso fresco as well as the pinto beans and cilantro-lime rice below. I could’ve personally used a bit more cowboy caviar, but that seems like a minor quibble.

Once again, the point to emphasize is that the quality is much improved over what was offered at Pecos Bill before. This still doesn’t reach the same high bar as the glory days of the toppings bar, but it’s very good–a night and day difference over what was here before.

The bottom line is that this is a high-quality rice bowl, and more or less exactly what you’d expect. It could’ve used a greater variety of toppings, but still excellent. It’s in the running for my #1 entree at Pecos Bill.

The other contender for that crown is the Steamed Tamale.

This is basically the same dish as the rice bowl, but with the addition of a Steamed Green Chili-Cheese Tamale and Pico de Gallo in place of the Cowboy Caviar.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the tamale by itself, but it’s basically a freebie and does add something to the dish as a whole. Unsurprisingly, corn is the dominant flavor here, and as part of the bowl is provides another texture, along with a semi-sweet and earthy quality. Most importantly, it didn’t seem like the portions of rice or pinto beans got any smaller as a result of the tamale being added.

It’s on that basis that the Steamed Tamale is our new #1 entree at Pecos Bill…and perhaps Magic Kingdom as a whole.

There are other dishes that we each individually really like around the park. At Columbia Harbour House, I’m a big fan of the Lobster Roll and Sarah loves the Maple-Mustard Glazed Salmon. The problem with both is playing the portion size lottery. If you’re a loser, you’ll walk away hungry.

By contrast, for the same price as the Salmon entree–or for $4 less than the Lobster Roll–you could order the Steamed Tamale with double beef from Pecos Bill and it would easily feed one person, perhaps both of us (appetite-dependent). In other words, when taking value for money into consideration, this dish has literally no competition in Magic Kingdom.

Our final ‘build your own’ entree is the Nacho Bowl: House-fried Corn Tortilla Chips smothered with Stewed Pinto Beans, Chipotle Queso, and Pico de Gallo.

Smothered is Disney’s word in the description above, and it’s an apt one. This definitely had more queso than the other bowls, and I really appreciated that–it worked well with the nachos. Also paired fantastically with the beef.

With that said, the chips are ordinary. As a base, this just doesn’t hold a candle to the above options. Not as tasty or as filling. If you’re in the mood for nachos and want chips piled high with cheese and beef, you absolutely cannot go wrong here, though!

We’re not done with the entrees–there’s also the Double Chili con Queso Burger: Two Flame-broiled All-Beef Patties topped with Chili con Carne, Chipotle Queso, and Corn Chips with Barbecue-Cheddar Seasoned Fries.

This burger currently costs $16.19, which is actually a price decrease since the menu launched. And frankly, that makes sense, as my biggest criticism of this burger would be the value proposition versus the ‘build your own’ options.

For ~$3 more, it’s just hard to justify this given that it’s around the same portion size–if not smaller–than the bowls.

In fairness to the burger, it’s pretty tasty!

It’s slathered in Chipotle Queso, with just the right amount of Chili con Carne for flavor and Corn Chips for texture. This is good, because below that are two standard issue Walt Disney World burger patties, and these feature a signature blend of cardboard, capybara, and hyena.

Suffice to say, Disney counter service burgers need an overabundance of toppings to mask their mediocre meats, which are dry and flavorless. This fills that role fine, and becomes the #1 counter service burger at Magic Kingdom by default as a result. There’s no point in ordering this when the ‘build your own’ bowls are right there, but I guess it’s a good fallback option for picky eaters who find everything else too adventurous.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Barbecue-Cheddar Seasoned Fries served with the burger (or as a side) are the best fries at Magic Kingdom.

The seasoning here takes ordinary Disney fries to the next level. They’re nothing revolutionary, but as a simple snack, they’re quite good. I never knew this is what was missing from Disney fries, but it absolutely is.

My personal wishlist for Pecos Bill would be to have loaded fries added to the menu. I’m not sure Sarah would approve, but I’d love a heaping order of these fries (instead of rice) topped with a generous slathering of queso to serve as the base for my double portion of that delicious beef. Now that would be the perfect entree indulgence!

Finally, we have the Sweet Corn Mousse: White Chocolate and Raspberry Powder.

Walt Disney World debuted this ‘looks like corn, but is actually cake’ dessert a couple years ago during either Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party or Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party (if memory serves me), and it was a huge hit. Disney fans enjoy a good gimmick.

Once you get past that gimmick, there’s not much to love about this. It’s quite expensive at over $6, the portion is small, and both the flavor and texture are fairly one-note. We also found it to be overly sweet (sugar, as opposed to sweet corn, is the dominant flavor), but that could be said about most Disney desserts. If you’re going to order this for the fun photos, have at it–just maybe look elsewhere for a delicious dessert. Magic Kingdom has no shortage of those.

Ultimately, it’s no surprise that the new menu at Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe is a marked improvement. For one thing, there was nowhere to go but up. I don’t think Walt Disney World fans who hadn’t been in a few years realize just how bad and uninspired the old Pecos Bill menu had gotten.

Pecos Bill was basically Exhibit A in the former Disney CFO’s quote about changing suppliers and substituting ingredients to reduce costs. Even the cheapest Mexican foods from the Trader Joe’s freezer case were higher quality than what Pecos Bill was serving. And yet, it still wasn’t the worst counter service restaurant at Magic Kingdom. (Which frankly should’ve been embarrassing for Disney.)

It seemed like the old menu was allowed to limp along until Pecos Bill got reimagined, but with that project nixed, Walt Disney World leadership realized the current incarnation of the restaurant would be around for a few more years. (Until the inevitable reimagining into a Cars-inspired restaurant.)

Beyond this, top to bottom menu overhauls like this are almost always an improvement. Disney’s culinary teams get the green light to make significant changes and, the chefs have fun creating new menus that are ambitious and intriguing. The culinary teams don’t actually want to serve slop to guests with dog food grade meat and entrees that are worse than frozen foods–that’s the byproduct of managers meddling and changes to make menus more efficient or cheaper.

With that said, the normal trajectory is for tweaks to be made over the course of the first year of the new menu that do dilute it. We’re already seeing this with the new menu at Pecos Bill, and it’ll probably continue throughout 2025. The culinary team aims high, but some of their choices aren’t always practical for high-capacity locations or in line with guest preferences.

This is the primary reason that menus are dumbed down over time, everywhere gets a basic burger added, etc. It’s also often necessary to reduce preparation steps, as dishes become too labor intensive or time-consuming to prepare. In other cases, items that aren’t getting ordered–or are receiving negative guest feedback–are pulled or replaced. That almost certainly explains the loss of the Grilled Masa Flatbread.

Whether Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe dethrones Columbia Harbour House to become the new #1 counter service restaurant in Magic Kingdom is probably a matter of perspective. Namely, does your party prefer seafood or Mexican cuisine?

For us, both are winners–it all depends on what we’re in the mood for and how hungry we are. Columbia Harbour House is excellent, but it can be pricey and inconsistent, whereas Pecos Bill reliably delivers. As you’ve probably gathered from the variety of photos, we’ve already done several meals at Pecos Bill since the overhaul and only one at Columbia Harbour House during that time. That’s probably our ‘new normal’ going forward, especially since there’s more on the menu here that Megatron can eat.

That reliability is the tiebreaker from our perspective, and what gives Pecos Bill the narrow victory. Either way, there are now double the number of good counter service restaurants at Magic Kingdom, and all guests win as a result. Here’s hoping that Cosmic Ray’s is next–it could also really use a menu overhaul. Now that demand has died down for it, we’d also love to see Be Our Guest revert to a counter service lunch. Can you imagine Magic Kingdom having four worthwhile counter service restaurants? It’s almost unthinkable! Dare to dream, I suppose.

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YOUR THOUGHTS

What do you think about the new menu at Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe? Excited for these additions? If you’ve already tried the new menu, what are your favorites? Anything you didn’t like? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!