Wolfgang Puck Bar and Grill, the 250-seat Town Center restaurant known for its farmhouse-chic dining room and California-inspired menu, will permanently close on September 13. The closure will end nearly 29 years of Wolfgang Puck having a physical restaurant presence at Walt Disney World, a run that began back in 1997.
According to WDWMagic, the restaurant will serve its last guests that day, and Disney has not announced a replacement concept for the space. The restaurant opened in November 2018 after Disney first announced the concept in May 2017, built around Mediterranean flavors and updated comfort food classics meant to echo the laid-back California dining feel Puck is known for at Spago in Los Angeles.
A Menu Built Around Comfort Food and California Flair
The restaurant's dinner menu leaned into elevated comfort food, with dishes like the Puck Burger at $25, rigatoni Bolognese at $32, and four cheese ravioli at $31. Pizzas ranged from a $19 Margherita to a $34 smoked salmon pie, while shareable starters included $17 truffled potato chips with Point Reyes blue cheese sauce and $18 crispy chicken wings with a sweet and spicy chili soy glaze. Brunch offerings featured a $49 steak and eggs plate and a $27 Old School Breakfast, alongside cocktails like the Isla Rosa Mule made with Corazon tequila and the Coconut Berry Refresher, mixed with P1 vodka and Red Bull.
Designed by hospitality designer Tony Chi, the space was styled as a modernized farmhouse meant to evoke a relaxed California aesthetic, per Theme Park Tribune. When it opened in 2018, its priciest item was an $84 32-ounce Porterhouse steak for two. Sitting across from Planet Hollywood, the restaurant has served as an anchor dining spot in Town Center, a high-traffic corridor of Disney Springs.
The End of a Nearly Three-Decade Disney Run
Puck's history at Walt Disney World stretches back to September 1997, when the 18,000-square-foot Wolfgang Puck Grand Café opened at Downtown Disney West Side alongside Bongos Cuban Cafe, House of Blues, and Cirque du Soleil, according to the Orlando Weekly. That original café became a genuine moneymaker, ranking as the 28th most profitable independent restaurant in the country in 2015 with $15.8 million in annual sales, as reported by the same outlet. It was operated under a licensing deal by Chicago-based Levy Restaurants, distinct from the Bar and Grill and the since-closed Wolfgang Puck Express, both run directly by Wolfgang Puck Worldwide, Inc., per Scott Joseph's Orlando Restaurant Guide.
The Grand Café's run ended abruptly on August 1, 2017, when it permanently closed and laid off 193 employees before the building was demolished to make room for Chef José Andrés' Spanish restaurant Jaleo, according to WDW Info. Bongos Cuban Cafe, one of the Grand Café's original 1997 neighbors, also closed permanently in 2019 as Disney continued reshuffling its West Side tenant lineup. Three years after the Grand Café's demolition, Wolfgang Puck Express in the Disney Springs Marketplace shut its doors for good on October 1, 2020, removing a fast-casual option that had been especially popular with guests on the Disney Dining Plan, as WDW News Today reported at the time.
A Crowded Field of Celebrity Chefs at Disney Springs
The Bar and Grill's exit leaves Wolfgang Puck's name out of a Disney Springs culinary scene that has only gotten more competitive. AllEars.Net notes that the shopping and dining district now features concepts from James Beard Award winners including José Andrés, Rick Bayless, Art Smith, Masaharu Morimoto, and George Miliotes. Disney's decade-long push to swap out 1990s-era tenants for newer, more specialized dining brands has steadily reshaped the district, and Puck's departure marks the final chapter of that particular transition.
What comes next for the 250-seat space remains an open question. Disney has not said what will replace Wolfgang Puck Bar and Grill in Town Center, leaving diners to wonder whether another celebrity chef concept will take over the farmhouse-styled dining room once its doors close for the last time.
