Help keep me from starving during my business meeting in Anaheim

April 4, 2005 4:12 PM

I will be at the Anaheim Convention Center for a week. I do not hear good things about the culinary possibilities within walking distance. Unlike this thread I will not have the opportunity to get away from the convention center. Please help me find food. That's not mass-produced.

See, I'm not attending a meeting, I work for an organization that is holding a meeting. A meeting of meetings. Meetings with which I will be tied up from early to late with a side order of exhaustion. And yet, I need to eat sometime. Oh, except that I hate fast food and can barely tolerate most chains.

Do any of the nearby hotels have particularly disgusting food? Any of the hotels have a halfway decent restaurant? Are there any gems within walking distance of the center? (I like every ethnicity of food. I love everything from highbrow to hole-in-the-wall. I just don't like chain-restaurant-food.)

posted by desuetude to food & drink (9 comments total)

Your link is bad.
posted by fixedgear at 4:25 PM on April 4, 2005

Drat. Here is the link to the previous food question for Anaheim.
posted by desuetude at 4:27 PM on April 4, 2005

I'm hardly ever in Anaheim except to go to, um, Disneyland. But there is this whole new section to Disneyland (that doesn't charge admission) called the Downtown Disney District. (Hear me out! Really!) The dining options aren't the finest, but I'd say at least a couple are certainly better than fast food or chain options like The Olive Garden.

For example, they have a La Brea Bakery (and I can attest that the original in L.A. is pretty tasty), and I've heard genuinely good things about Catal/Uva Bar. Most of the other restaurants are chains like Rainforest Cafe, House of Blues, etc., and of course you'd be surrounded by the whole hyper-Disney atmosphere -- which I actually enjoy in very small, occasional doses, though of course YMMV.
posted by scody at 4:34 PM on April 4, 2005

I don't know of anything within walking distance. But Gustav's Jagerhaus is a good German place that's probably no more than a $5 cabride away.

On preview: there's a good Tapas place, whose name I forget, in Downtown Disney as well.
posted by bac at 4:39 PM on April 4, 2005

I spent a week in that area and the culinary choices are atrocious. Of course, I'm a very strict vegetarian and tourist locales (as the convention centre is less than a block away from Disneyland) scarcely offer anything but salads and appetizers that are meat-free.

But I digress.

I stayed in the Hilton Anaheim which is nice but ridiculously overpriced (thankfully, work paid for it). The restaurant choices were not horrible, but possibly the best in the immediate vicinity of the convention centre.

Probably the best restaurant I experienced in that area during my stay was the House of Blues - Anaheim. It is a relatively well-known tourist attraction in Disneyland, but it was not that busy the night I attended and the food was not that bad.

Hope that helps.
posted by purephase at 4:42 PM on April 4, 2005

Napa Rose, which is one of the restaurants in the Disney Grand Californian Hotel, is expensive but excellent. It's actually worth going to even if you're not interested in going to Disneyland.
posted by electro at 6:56 PM on April 4, 2005

I ate at Tortilla Jo's in Downtown Disney. It does not appear to be a chain. They have an interesting menu. I had the "Vegetable-stuffed Anaheim chile relleno with blackened tomato and mushroom salsa and black bean sauce " and a side of "Mashed sweet potatoes with piloncillo and vanilla-toasted pecans". Oh, and a mojito.

Now I'm hungry again...
posted by RikiTikiTavi at 10:23 PM on April 4, 2005

A second for Napa Rose. Catal is good too.
posted by shoos at 11:07 PM on April 4, 2005

We won't starve! You all are fantastic. Four Philadelphians will be less cranky and better fed than they anticipated, thanks to you.

(Now, if I can only ignore the stench of the nearby MacDonald's. Bleh.)
posted by desuetude at 7:12 AM on April 5, 2005