Walt Disney World's Disney Springs district has welcomed a new restaurant. Summer House on the Lake has opened on the West Side of Disney Springs.
An installation from Chicago-based Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants, Summer House on the Lake offers lunch and dinner daily, with brunch on Saturdays and Sundays as well. The eclectic, "California inspired" menu offers starters including a signature guacamole for $17 and five salads including a Buena Vista Cobb for $20.95.
The everyday menu also includes chicken and turkey sandwiches, a cheeseburger, chicken, carne asada, and fish tacos...
Five pizza and three pasta entrees - including the pasta of the moment, rigatoni alla vodka - plus six other entrees, from a herbed chicken breast paillard at $21.95 to a center-cut filet mignon at $52.95.
In addition to the sit-down restaurant, Summer House on the Lake offers a takeaway counter - The Cookie Bar - with 15 varieties of the restaurant's oversized cookies and bars, plus other house-made cakes, seasonal pastry specials, and a drink menu with beer, Summer House Rosé, lattes, cold brew, and other craft beverages and cocktails on tap, such as an Espresso Martini.
You can find the full menu and a link to make reservations on the restaurant's website.
Speaking of places to eat at the Walt Disney World Resort, as I update our visitors guides for 2024, I would like to include some updated restaurant recommendations for Disney World visitors.
So I would like to ask you, the readers of Theme Park Insider, for help with that. Please tell us up to 10 favorite Disney World restaurants that you would recommend to others, via our new Disney World restaurant rankings form.
Your rankings will determine which Disney World restaurants we will recommend to other Theme Park Insider readers on our updated Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney's Hollywood Studios and Disney's Animal Kingdom pages. The updates will post starting January 1. Thank you!
* * *
To keep up to date with more theme park news, please sign up for Theme Park Insider's weekly newsletter.
And to help support Theme Park Insider while saving money on discounted theme park tickets, please follow the ticket icon links our Theme Park visitors guides.
Agree - who comes up with these names - Summer house on the lake at Disney springs in Orlando Florida United States North America, Planet Earth
I was thinking the exact same thing. As a Californian, perhaps Robert can say how many times he or other Californians have gone to a summer house on the lake in the Golden State.
There are far better ways to relay Californian cuisine. I guess CPK was already taken, so they threw their hands up and picked random words out of the dictionary that sounded upscale enough to charge $30+/entree.
Having dined at my nearest Summer House here in MD a few times, you really go for the vibe and not so much the food. It'll be interesting to see if this carries over to this location. I think this is a good addition to DS due to its menu options, but I'd rather have a Hampton Social, like the one on I-Drive. Still, I just wish I was as impressed with the food as I am with the interior design.
The only lake I can think of where anyone would have a summer house at around here would be Lake Arrowhead. (Allegedly, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner has a summer home up there.) But most people who want to go to the water in the summer here go to the beach.
I won't judge the menu until I can eat from it, but I suspect that sales data might help focus things within a few months. Such often seems to be the case.
By the way, I'm still waiting for two people to submit the name of the same WDW restaurant. Every ranking so far has had a completely different list. (LOL.) There are so many restaurants at Disney!
Espresso Martini is all I need...
As a Chicago native, I think some important context is that the Chicago Summer House is called Summer House Santa Monica, which explains the Californian fare (the new Springs location seems to have a nearly identical menu to the Chicago "Santa Monica" iteration). I think they went with "on the Lake" just because Disney Springs is on Village Lake/Lake Buena Vista.
And FWIW, the Chicago iteration is fantastic! It is very popular with Lincoln Park/Lakeview locals, and it has a reputation of being one of the trendiest restaurants in the entire city. The bakery is incredible, and the food is top class. A bit expensive, but most Chicago restaurants are. Here, the quality matches the price. I expect the same for Summer House on the Lake.
Sonny_Eclipse_Enthusiast FTW on the name explanation! That makes sense. Thank you for the context.
This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.
I see that they're going with a California vibe with that menu and interior design, but - as a native Southern Californian - that name screams "upper Midwest" to me. A "summer house on the lake" makes me think more of Minnesota, Wisconsin or Michigan than Southern California.