The French Market

Intro

The French Market is the second of the outdoor restaurants in New Orleans Square. It has a much larger seating patio than the Cafe but no indoor seating (so avoid it when it rains) and is located in front of the train station. It also offers buffeteria-style service.

Food items that are gone

Blackened Catfish
Actually, there have been several kinds of fish offered here over the years. I can recall also serving salmon - for emergencies only, as it was more expensive - as well as trout, which was a menu item for a long time.

Spaghetti
Fettuccine took its place. Not a big deal maybe, but one to be noted nevertheless.

The Market opens at 11:00 and closes with the beginning of one of the Fantasmics, usually at 10:30. However, one half of the service lines - one "side" - will close earlier, often before even the first Fantasmic. If you wish to eat during the dinner menu, the best time to visit is unfortunely during the first Fantasmic. It's busy before and afterward. Failing that, I'd try to get there soon after four, but before six o'clock.

The daytime menu goes down at 3:30, and it's pretty slow from two o'clock until the menu changes.

Weekdays are pretty slow times. The Market is open from 11-3:30, sometimes later. This fall, the Cafe will be closed on lower attendance days, so the Market may be busier. The only caveat: don't wait too long. These days, they are likely to close the restaurant down if it's too slow in the afternoon, even if they planned originally to keep it open longer. There's usually no dinner menu during the school year.

Same operating hours as summertime and the menu changes at the same time. One thing is different, though: Sunday nights are markedly slower. A great time to sample the night menu is Sunday, especially after eight p.m.

Got me there! Don't know much about it at all. Anybody out there know, please drop me a line and I'll update it!

The sky is falling!

Possibly the strangest guest complaint I ever received. A summertime day, if I remember correctly, roughly four in the afternoon. A lady came up to me, incensed that "someone threw this bone at me from the upper floor!" She held up a large, mostly eaten leg bone. Now, we sell fried chicken - including legs - but this one was clearly much larger. I examined it and saw that it wasn't chicken (too big for that). My first thought was: maybe they're selling this in the Diner (employee cafeteria) today, and someone did throw it at her. But the 2nd floor above the Market is a storeroom (commonly known as "the cage" because each location's stuff is locked away in its own walk-in cage), and the windows in the cage are boarded up from the inside. Still, it's possible some crazy Cast Member might have chucked it out somehow. So I went out to the scene of the crime, still holding the leg, trying to look at possible holes in the windows. A nearby guest said "excuse me, but nobody threw that. A bird dropped it on her." "A bird!" exclaimed the offended guest. Then I remembered where I'd seen such a leg - it was a turkey leg, sold all the way over by Big Thunder Ranch/Festival of Fools. Some large crow had picked it up, struggled to bring it home, and lost the battle somewhere over this lady. She was a little mollified, but what could we do?

Le jardin de bleu

Sometime in 1995, the Market underwent some changes. Some of you may remember that, for a while, the Market had little blue "Christmas lights" surrounding its patio fence instead of the previous (and since re-established) white ones. The idea was the beginnings of a new theme for the place; a sort of "House of Blues." The proposed new name for the restaurant was "Le jardin de bleu" the Garden of Blues. Music was also going to be piped into the service area. That idea was nixed, but the music in the New Orleans area did get spruced up and made louder.

Bussing stories

People are disgusting. I don't mean the vomiting - Code V (for which we had "pixie dust") - but rather the diapers. Plenty of folks out there feel it's OK to change diapers in public (that's bad enough) and then leave the dirty ones there for the bussers (this is worse). Speaking of privacy, most mothers who breast-feed get a blanket, but not all. Some mothers (were they European?) wouldn't bother, and guests would be treated to a totally unexpected (though perhaps not unwelcome) show. Certainly unwelcome, though, are nature's guests. For some reason, in summer little black gnats are drawn magnetically to full mint julep glasses. Fortunately, they swarm on the outside, but not always. Worse are the sparrows. They zip by faces mere millimeters away, totally unafraid of mankind. And they mistake the spaghetti or fettuccine (whichever year you were talking about) for worms. Most annoying of all, they perch on the back of the chairs. This is bad because inevitably they would leave droppings - right on the chair pad below. Yuck!

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Some pictures of the French Market

The Market has two "Sides," though only one is open unless it's busy. The most noticeable feature inside is the large skylight (about which I could tell stories, but won't). One of the best features indoors is the pair of tile murals inset on each side wall and lighted.

Gleaming metal everywhere! This is where things are fried, buttered, or otherwise prepared before they go out to the serving line. Most of it isn't "made" up here, but rather downstairs.

Re-stocking the cakes and cheesecakes. This hourly process is amazing; people eat so much dessert at Disneyland!

Those famous Side Street Strutters in their new costumes!

No, the Market does not look evil here. Stop saying that! The white bulbs atop the railing were once replaced with blue ones as a form of advertising - until WDI cracked down on the break from show, that is.

Have you ever looked closely at the tile murals? These murals depict a colonial lifestyle that, well, predates the Civil War shall we say? (credit to Chris K., who first noticed this)

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JUMPSTATION

Introduction to NOS Restaurants

Blue Bayou
Fantasmic Dessert Balcony

Cafe Orleans
Royal Street Veranda
La Petite Patisserie

French Market
Mint Julep Bar

Club 33

Backstage locations and offices
Meet the Cast!
Some NOS Restaurants Recipes

All about me!

Comments? Questions? Feedback? Please Let me know! (I love getting mail!)