Where Adults Should Eat And Drink Outside The Park When Visiting Disneyland

Dining fatigue comes quickly after a few days of theme park food. Beignets with mouse ears and $9 pizza slices can be fun on day one, but they get old fast. Sure, your kids could probably eat this food all day, every day, but maybe you want something a little lighter. Whether you're enjoying an extended stay at Disneyland, planning a return trip and looking to eat better, or looking for food and drinks around the parks before your first visit, you're in luck: Orange County is home to some great restaurants beyond the Din Tai Fung in Downtown Disney.

My family is originally from Orange County, so I grew up going to Disneyland while visiting relatives. I now live in LA and will head down to the parks whenever my family is going. Over time, I've grown restless with the food options and have started exploring the area. Orange County is a sprawling suburban landscape with plenty of tasty food, albeit hidden in strip malls hugging seven lanes of traffic. It's not a walkable region. I've tried. These are all places you'll want to reach via bus or ride-share.

Still, I kept my picks close to Disney. Nearby locales like Westminster and Garden Grove have some of the best Vietnamese in the country. I left off famed food critic Jonathan Gold's championed spot Brodard Chateau due to distance, but if you have a car, it's worth the trip. Below are my top picks for eating and drinking after a day at Disney.

When I was a kid, there were still a few orange groves near my grandparents' Orange County home. These groves are now housing developments, and the plant where Sunkist used to pack and ship its oranges has been a food hall since 2014. Now known as the Anaheim Packing District, it's just under 3 miles from the parks. Given this proximity, the complex has arguably found more life as a destination for tourists and locals than it ever had as a shipping facility.

Monkish Brewing, one of Southern California's best makers of hazy IPAs, has an outpost here. The Indian food at ADYA, helmed by 2019 "Chopped" winner Shachi Mehra, is a go-to for me. Both the Indian street food and the Indi-Mex options are full of strong flavors. If you're still not over sweets after a day in the parks, consider ending your meal with a scoop from Hans' Homemade Ice Cream (or two since you probably walked 12,000 steps over the course of the day). As an LA local with a sweet tooth who's also a lover of peanut butter-flavored desserts, I can tell you the Peanut Butter Oreo satisfies. There are a lot of vendors to explore here, so I recommend going with a group, splitting up so you can each forage for a meal, then coming together to share bites at a central table.

Just around the corner from the Anaheim Packing District is Requiem: Coffee, Tea, and Fantasy. This is an immersive art cafe where the interior builds a full fantasy world around your coffee and snacks. It's otherworldly — a Meow Wolf where you can sit and run a D&D campaign.

Unlike the parks of Disneyland Resort, Requiem is explicitly adult. It's a dark, elaborately decorated space built around (non-Disney) fandoms. Kids are allowed, but only if parents are there to make sure they don't climb on the sculptures. Attached is the Item Shop where you can buy games, collectables, figurines — anything from the nerdy fandom world. The dark space is a sight to see with a large, elaborate stained glass wall made by art director Heather Hermann, a tree house with nooks to hide out in, moody lighting, lights and flowers dangling from the ceiling, and a giant game table. If nerdy spaces are your thing, consider taking a day trip up to LA for some other food and drink spots where you can play games and immerse yourself in imaginary worlds.

Requiem's menu has a Potions sections, an earl grey tea called "Make It So," onigiri, and waffles, among other selections. Each playful cocktail even comes with a crystal sugar wand, such as the Pirate Hunter (mango liquor, lychee, and lemonade).

On the west side of Anaheim sits the Little Arabia District, centered on Brookhurst Street. There are many great restaurants and bakeries in this neighborhood, but my favorite is the mana'eesh shop Forn Al Hara. Mana'eesh is the plural form of man'oushe, a flatbread dish from the Levant. It's often topped with ingredients like cheese, za'atar, or ground meat, and it was a favorite food of mine when I spent a winter in Beirut. When I returned to the U.S., I searched all over for good Lebanese flatbread, and Forn Al Hara had exactly what I was looking for.

Located in a strip mall, the shop looks simple, but the menu is sizable. Most of its items are variations on the flatbread, but the wraps, plates, and sweets are all just as good. My favorites are the kishk (dried yogurt and bulgur), labneh, and cheese and za'atar. If you order off the single menu, which consists of smaller flatbreads, you can try even more. Make sure you grab an ayran (or yogurt drink) from the case to wash it all down.

In the city of Orange, just over the Santa Ana River heading east from Disneyland Resort, you'll find Green Cheek Beer, a small taproom with some delicious brews. You may see its Lavender Lemonade Seltzer in the parks, but the rest of its offerings can be hard to find. The company sells beer directly to a handful of restaurants, but outside of those, you'll only find its brews at one of four taproom locations.

Most of its tap list is IPAs (the brewery makes some of the best in the country, according to Craft Beer & Brewing), but this isn't a hops-or-bust kind of place. Its stouts and saisons have picked up medals at the Great American Beer Festival, too. Some of LA's better taphouses do carry these beers, but this is the source.

The space may be modest, but it's part of the community. Throughout the week, various pop-ups supply food, and it releases three or four new beers each week in small batches. The brewery is named after the local green-cheek parakeets, which are among the many parrot species that escaped from the illegal pet trade in the 1970s and '80s.