It looks like the long time restaurant in downtown Celebration formerly known as Market Street Cafe has been rebranded to Market Street Diner. It's a subtle name change, but still a name change. It looks like the interior was renovated since the diner was known as cafe.
On my first time eating at the restaurant under the Market Street Diner name, I tried the Atlantic Fish Po' Boy. This was a huge filet of fried cod topped with lettuce, tomato, and tartar sauce, all served on a roll. The sandwich fillings overflowed off the bread, but still held together well. The fish was hot and crispy with a nice, flavorful batter. I had tater tots as my side.
The restaurant seems pretty consistent of how it was pre-name change. It's what you would expect from a diner type restaurant with food that seems slightly above average for this type of place.
I had dinner at Thai Thani in Celebration. Located in a space which was once one of the last few holdouts of Gooding's Supermarkets, Thai Thani has no resemblance to once being a food store. The restaurant was about half full when I ate there, yet all the servers were acting flustered and apologizing about how overwhelmed they were. It was strange to see all the servers act like this, when in all actuality, the service was fine besides all the apologizing.
I had the Chicken Red Curry. This was a coconut milk based curry with string beans, eggplant, basil, bell peppers, peas, and bamboo shoots. Steamed rice was served on the side. It was pretty standard for a Thai restaurant curry dish, which is good. Only complaint was that I ordered the dish with medium spice and it had no heat at all. Still tasty though. I'd eat here again.
Upper Crust Pizza Cafe is a take-out Italian restaurant in Downtown Celebration. They have a few outdoor tables in front of the restaurant that always seem to fill up fast. I've gotten food here multiple times now, and I've noticed the pizzas are highly inconsistent. On some visits, according to my pizza standards, I find the pizza to be really good. On other visits, the pizza is so bad that I have trouble finishing a single slice. Regardless, I end up trying Upper Crust again and their pizza is good again. Perhaps it's different cooks that have drastically different pizza making styles, but inconsistency probably isn't good for a restaurant. On my latest visit to Upper Crust, I tried a pizza called The Diego. The pie was topped with ricotta, fresh tomatoes, and spinach.
This visit to Upper Crust resulted in a better pizza. They were very generous with the amount of toppings, especially the ricotta. Wasn't the best pizza I've ever had from Upper Crust, but it was far from the worst. I suppose I caught them on a good day on this visit.
It seems like I always end up at Celebration around the holidays. Perhaps the fake snow is a draw. Maybe it is the over the top Christmas lights synchronized to music. Whatever causes the magnetism to Disney's planned community at this time of year, food is generally involved in Celebration's downtown. This year's visit to Celebration happened on Christmas Eve and dinner was had at Cafe D'Antonio.
Celebration was packed and Cafe D'Antonio was booked solid all night. That is, except for at the bar. I've neglected to try any of the Antonio restaurants in the area until now, so we took those bar seats for our Christmas Eve Italian food. The meal started with a crusty bread dipped in olive oil, and the main course was served fairly quickly. I tried the Pappardelle al Salmone con Piselli e Mascarpone. This consisted of a bowl of wide noodles with salmon and peas in a brandy and mascarpone cheese. Wide noodles, salmon, and mascarpone was a different combination but it was very tasty.
I also split a Prosciutto Pizza with someone. The 14" pizza was topped with a thin slices of prosciutto with red onions. The pizza had a nice, thin crust with a good sauce/cheese ratio. This was a very respectable pizza in the land of theme parks.
Overall, I enjoyed my food at Cafe D'Antonio. The food was good and the menu was a bit more creative than the typical spaghetti & meatballs Italian restaurant. After the meal, the entire Celebration Christmas experience was had with getting covered in soap, watching people attempt to skate on teflon, and finding the obsessive home light shows. Relive with me in this video:
I ate a lemon sorbet waffle cone from the Kilwin's in Celebration, FL. I have no complaints. Simple ice cream like this is so much better than what you get from all the Cold Stones and Marble Slabs where you get a half melted mass of ice cream by the time they mix in your toppings.
I was on the touristy section of 192 and decided to head to Celebration for dinner. On this visit to the planned, disnified community, I ate at the Celebration Town Tavern. They seemed to specialize in seafood, so I ordered the Blackened Pacific Mahi Sandwich. The fish had a nice spicy flavor to it, but I found it to be sort of boring for a sandwich. The sandwich needed something else going on, something more than the meat and bread. At the very least, the standard sandwich vegetables would have been nice. The sandwich came served with fries and baked beans. I liked the beans, but the fries were kind of soggy, as if they were sitting out for a bit too long. Overall, the food from Celebration Town Tavern was pretty average. Nothing horrible, but it's definitely not going to have me rushing back any time soon. A little on the expensive side too...
I ate Fish Tacos from the Market Street Cafe in Celebration, FL. Celebration was the planned community created by Disney and the Market Street Cafe is one of the original restaurants in the city. The restaurant has the whole classic diner look going on (as seen by the picture below), and they seem to try to have the appropriate food. I really don't know how appropriate tacos are for diner food, but they were still good.
My fish tacos were good. They consisted of fried cod, lettuce, and salsa wrapped in tortillas, and were served with an avocado tarter sauce and fries. My only complaint was that the French fries were kind of soggy, and didn't exactly seem freshly cooked. Otherwise, my Market Street Cafe Fish Tacos were tasty.
It also snowed in Celebration while I was there. They had soap machines that blew out bubbles that simulated snow on the lampposts downtown. Every hour, everyone would get completely covered with oily soap. It was fun...
Here's a video of the fake snow in Downtown Celebration followed by a house with Christmas lights synchronized to music from Epcot's Illuminations.
As for something else food related in Celebration, I took a picture of this large ginger bread house in a store window.
Of course, that little ginger bread house is nothing compared to some of Disney's larger ginger bread creations:
