Sometimes you gotta go where everybody knows your name! Whoops, that’s Cheers, isn’t it?

You know that feeling of walking into your neighborhood bar and everyone knows you? The Cheers reference holds true of this spot too. That’s basically the feeling you get when walking into Rose and Crown. We like the food just fine but we love the feeling we get when we enter the pub doors at this EPCOT restaurant.  Step inside for a pint and see what the restaurant is like since our last visit!

Atmosphere

We’ve stepped into the dark, wood-paneled bar many, many times in the past. Every time, we’re greeted with the cozy feeling that we’ve entered a warm pub on a rainy day in England.

The bar and restaurant mimic the style of a typical pub you might duck into because you forgot your ‘brolly (ahem…an umbrella) and need a place to stay dry.

The pub portion of Rose and crown resides at the front of the building. Walk past there and you’ll notice the room divides to become the Dining Room portion of the spot.

Pub patrons are not allowed to sit in the Dining Room proper without a reservation. Here, the “walk up and order a beer at the bar” stops and the “sit down, look at a menu, and order a meal” begins.

You’ll see a lot of artwork and fun details “cluttering” the walls. Old advertisements, cast iron cooking tools, newspaper clippings, and framed photographs make this place a bit of a scavenger hunt. The art gives us the feeling that all of the clutter is pieces from the little town where the pub resides.

Like other Disney World restaurants, some adjustments needed to be made in order to adhere to the new health and safety guides. Some tables were unavailable so guests can fit farther apart from other groups. Also, the outdoor patio was open for guests. It was a little chilly when we visited so we opted for indoor dining!

As for the service, we typically really enjoy our visits to Rose and Crown. The bartenders are friendly, knowledgeable, and can be super entertaining! They really add to the, “Welcome to your neighborhood pub!” feeling. You come for a beer and stay for the warm inviting atmosphere.

Ready to start our meal, we checked in via Mobile Dine Check-in that’s in use at Disney World restaurants. From our phone, we checked in, confirmed our party size, and more. We waited outside enjoying the rest of the U.K. Pavilion until we were texted our table was ready and to head to the check-in podium (a big green podium located outside and to the left of the Rose and Crown building).

Learn more about the atmosphere from our past visits here!

Eats

The menu is provided via a QR code that you can scan with your phone camera. Your phone will direct you to the online menu. You can ask your server for a physical menu if your phone can’t access it.

Most restaurants are offering limited menus at this time. The Rose and Crown didn’t see too many menu slashes since our last visit. The appetizers remain largely unchanged. One small difference on the appetizer menu is that they are not offering a Crock of Potato Leek Soup on the menu and instead offer a Soup of the Day.

The noticeable differences on the entree menu are that they are no longer offering the Vegetable Cottage Pie, Corned Beef and Cabbage, and Pan-Roasted Scottish Salmon. The vegetarian-friendly Savory Impossible Hot Pot has been added to the entree list. Other than that, the popular Scotch Eggs, Bangers and Mash, and Shepherd’s Pie have made the cut!

A couple of classic British sides are available. We’ve enjoyed the Bubble and Squeak in the past (it’s kind of a mashed potato patty with cabbage in it fried up in a pan. Sounds odd, but it’s pretty delish!) and what respectable British pub wouldn’t serve up Mushy Peas (which are…exactly what they sound like!)?

Two lonely desserts are offered at Rose and Crown. The Sticky Toffee Pudding is a classic and we’ve enjoyed it in the past. You might want to venture elsewhere if you’re looking for a big, delicious helping of dessert. (More on that later!)

The Kids’ Menu here has some fun options (including a Butter Chicken!).

The beer is the real star of the Rose and Crown. The pub setting is just begging you tuck into a nice cold pint. You’ll find pints, beer samplers, and even a selection of very nice Scotch on the menu!

That Scotch is available in Flights if you’d like to try them all! Rose and Crown does have a small but mighty cocktail menu as well. Some of them, like the Welsh Dragon (With flavors of peach, pineapple, melon, and mint!), sound a bit odd but have a cult following! Of course, you are in Disney World so not surprisingly, that Magical Star cocktail you’ll find at practically every bar is on the menu here too! 🙂

Our favorite is the huge Pub Blend menu is here for all your beer-drinking needs. The blends will “mix” ciders, beers, and stouts to create entirely new drinks. Think of them as beer cocktails, if you will.

Time for some Guinness! If you’re in the mood to try a blended beer, this is definitely a fun place to try one! We decided to try the Black Velvet Imperial Pint made with half cider and half Guinness. We also ordered the Bumblebee Imperial Pint made with Boddingtons and Guinness.

Out of the two, we preferred the Black Velvet. We thought the Guinness and cider worked well together. The blend offered a unique flavor that was slightly sweet from the Strongbow cider and then finished nicely with the chocolatey malty flavors from the Guinness.

We didn’t necessarily care for the Bumblebee. We didn’t experience much flavor from the Boddingtons so it didn’t do much for the Guinness. You might love it if you like the flavor of Boddingtons and are well-versed in Pub Blends. If not, you might want to stick with a plain Guinness!

For appetizers, we started with the famous Scotch Egg and the Coronation Salad, each for $12. The salad was a nice and light pre-cursor to the dense Scotch Egg. It’s a mixture of crisp lettuce with Madras dressing on top of a crunchy grain cracker.

Coronation Salad is typically made as a chicken salad with a curried dressing, and much of the flavor of that salad is still here sans chicken. We also really liked the Madras dressing to accompany the fresh lettuce. It had a mild curry flavor with just a bit of spice. The dressing wasn’t too heavy, and, even though it was fairly creamy, it kept the salad nice and light! 

The salad was topped with a few grape tomatoes, carrot shavings, red onion, currants, and raisins. Usually, our favorite part of a salad is all the goodies that it comes topped with, but not this time! We found ourselves actually loving the lettuce on this salad! The lettuce was so good we went back for a second serving. It was REALLY flavorful and fresh.

The server confirmed that the lettuce was actually harvested fresh from the Living with the Land attraction. The food from the attraction is used in many Disney World restaurants. It was pretty cool to know that our dish was made from ingredients grown right there in EPCOT!

We’ve had the Scotch Egg many times before and it’s become a bit of a tradition for us to have it each visit. The dish is made with a hard-boiled egg, wrapped in sausage, then breaded and fried. You’re given a side of mustard sauce for dipping and some greens.

The crispy-fried breading on the egg is our favorite part of this dish. Can you blame us? Some people may find the flavors a little bland or boring in a Scotch Egg because there’s not a lot of spices added to the eggs and sausage. You can see in the pictures that the main spice is a sprinkling of salt and pepper on top!

We found ourselves really enjoying the egg with the mustard sauce. The sauce was very creamy but still had a strong mustard taste, which we loved. We recommend guests give this dish a try since it’s such a traditional UK dish. Obviously, this is for the meat-eaters and you’ve gotta be a fan of hard-boiled eggs.

Ok, time for the entrees! We chose the Bangers and Mash for $21 and Shepherd’s Pie for $22 to keep with the UK Traditional Dishes theme!

Let’s start with the Bangers and Mash. We’ve tried the dish a few times before and we always find it filling and flavorful. The entree is made with traditional English sausage with Colcannon potatoes, mushrooms, onion, and a red wine demi sauce. 

This entree is very sharable! The dense sausages and potatoes make this dish a hefty and hearty meal. The sausage has very little spice, but the meaty flavors were still full and flavorful. The juicy sausages went well with the mash and light demi sauce too. Colcannon potatoes typically have a some cabbage mixed into the mash, but we didn’t get any strong cabbage flavors. Overall, no flavor was overpowering another, making it a pretty balanced dish.

We would have liked more veggies to compliment the sausage and mash. It could have used more onions and mushrooms for texture. We also could have used a tiny bit more flavoring from the sauce.

The best surprise was the roll that comes on the side! From the outside it had an almost Yorkshire Pudding look to it, but it was more bready than those typically are. The bread was really light and airy. It was especially good dipped in the sauce and mash!

The Shepherd’s Pie is a heavier entree than the Bangers and Mash and also comes in a shareable size. The “pie” has a few more components than the previous entree. The dish is layered with ground beef, seasoned vegetables, English Peas, and mashed potatoes made with McCall’s Irish Cheddar cheese.

The mashed potatoes were sooooo fluffy! We preferred the potatoes this way, but if you’re a chunky mashed potato person, it might not be for you! The specialty cheese was really excellent too.It had a nice sharpness from the Cheddar. Our only big complaint about this dish is that there wasn’t enough of this delicious Irish-imported cheese! (Cheese always seems to be the main attraction for us though!)

The Shepherd’s Pie wasn’t all cheese, potatoes, and meat though. It also comes loaded with peas and carrots. There was no skimping on veggies in this dish and we enjoyed it! We needed some veggies to balance the hearty ingredients. Much like the Bangers and Mash, the flavors weren’t too overpowering and a simple mixture of good foods.

All the main dishes (minus the salad) are definitely comfort foods. They’re hearty, hefty, and dense. We loved eating the entrees in the cooler weather. However, if you were to stick us outside in the middle of a Florida summer, they could seem a bit heavier in all that humid heat.

Ok, time for dessert! We went with another classic item, the English Trifle for $8. The light dessert is made with layers of strawberries, vanilla custard, graham crackers, and whipped cream. This was definitely tasty and we had hardly any complaints. It tasted like a strawberry shortcake with tons of whipped cream and a good portion of graham crackers in the mix.

This was nothing totally groundbreaking in the world of EPCOT desserts. We don’t have anything against the dessert. We just think there are more innovative and tasty sweets at this theme park. It is a classic Engish dessert though, so if you want to finish your UK meal with a UK dessert, this will do!

We might recommend running to the Regal Eagle Smokehouse for their bomb Banana Pudding dessert instead!

Nosh or Not

You might want to dine at Rose and Crown if:

• You want an escape from the theme park! It’s a comfy, cozy pub that’s especially fitting on a cooler day. The atmosphere isn’t dripping with Disney elements so you might enjoy a break from the “magic.”
• You want a filling, hearty meal. (How many times can we write the word “hearty” in one review?) The heartiness of each item is what makes the dishes so good!
• You love some good UK pub food. From hearty meat dishes, crispy fried fish, and more, this is a place for a rib-sticking, comforting meal.

You might want to skip Rose and Crown if:

• You’re a picky eater or traveling with one! The dishes aren’t necessarily adventurous, but some people might not be used to the ingredients and the menu definitely skews more towards heavier meat and potatoes type dishes.
• Adventurous eaters! It seems that the food here is flavorful enough, but not overly exciting either. You might want to try Spice Road Table or San Angel Inn Restaurante if you’re in the mood for some spice!
• You don’t want to take your time! Again, the atmosphere beckons for you to stay awhile. The experience might be lost on you if you want to eat quickly and head back into World Showcase. In that case, grab some Fish and Chips from Yorkshire County Fish Shop and a pint from the pub!

Overall

Our experience here never seems to disappoint. The bartenders are fantastic, the meals are on point, and the beer flows generously. If you want a place to slow down and relax, Rose and Crown will offer you a “homey” vibe. It’s so welcoming and makes you feel like you’ve wandered into an authentic pub in the United Kingdom. This is definitely on our list of the best bars in EPCOT and sitting down for a meal at the Dining Room ranks pretty high as well.

Yes, there are some more exciting places to eat at Disney World. The dishes aren’t super innovative and the flavors don’t hit you hard. Foodies may prefer grabbing a beer here and finding dinner elsewhere. It should absolutely go on your checklist if you attempt to Drink Around the World. Although, once you pop in, you probably won’t want to leave for a while. The food here just makes us feel good (and, frankly — quite full!). It’s warm, comfort food done well. Take a bite, close your eyes and you might forget you’re in the middle of Florida for a few minutes. 🙂