ANAHEIM — Great Maple has done something unique at Orange County’s main tourism hub.
The popular American eatery, which has locations in Newport Beach’s Fashion Island shopping center, San Diego and Pasadena, is the first non-Disney restaurant to open its doors at a Disneyland Resort hotel.
The Great Maple restaurant group is the culinary operator for the newly renovated Pixar Place Hotel, formerly the Paradise Pier Hotel, which officially opened Jan. 30 after a nearly three-year renovation.
The 481-room hotel ranks No. 13 among Orange County’s largest hotels by room count. Rooms currently start at around $500 a night.
Great Maple joins the reimagined property as its three-meal restaurant, offering elevated comfort food and fresh takes on American classics for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Great Maple is also curating additional food and beverage experiences at the property, including the Sketch Pad Café, a grab-and-go lobby coffee shop, and a rooftop pool bar, Small Bytes, that opens this spring with a distinct menu of bites and beverages.
Expand & Create
“Working with Disney has given our team an opportunity to expand and create. In addition to bringing the Great Maple brand to Pixar Place Hotel, we’re looking forward to sharing our whimsical culinary perspective throughout the hotel,” said Amanda Ho, co-owner and chief executive of Great Maple restaurants.
Her husband, Wing Joe Ho, is co-owner and chef.
The Hos’ opportunity to bring the 6,500-square-foot Great Maple to the Disneyland Resort was somewhat serendipitous.
Disney executives had dined several times at the Great Maple location in Fashion Island, near the center’s Nordstrom, so when it came time to find a restaurant for the new Pixar Place Hotel, Disney invited the duo to put in a bid to operate the dining outlets at the new hotel.
The rest is history in the making.
“We had to decide what to do for the restaurant, coffee shop and pool—is it the same blueprint or do we expand the blueprint,” Amanda Ho said.
“We settled on providing guests with a unique culinary experience in each outlet. Great Maple is the operator behind it all, but each outlet is its own concept we created with the blessing of the hotel.”
Her goal was to appeal to family diners, or in her words, “kids and big kids alike.”
Varied Crowds
On any given day, Great Maple is filled with families having breakfast before heading to Disneyland or returning after a long day, ready for dinner. Families can now enter the hotel and Great Maple during the day, thanks to a new entrance to California Adventure accessible only to Pixar Place guests.
Amanda Ho also notes that Great Maple is down the street from the Anaheim Convention Center and is easily accessible for visitors. Even if Great Maple guests are not staying at the hotel, parking is complimentary while dining.
For guests staying at the hotel, they can place an order from their room and have their order packaged to go to enjoy in their rooms or on property.
According to Ho, the space now occupied by Great Maple was previously a buffet-style restaurant, so they had to make some modifications to the kitchen and the restaurant design.
“The dining room space is reimagined within the same bones. Aesthetically, people have said it’s unrecognizable. There are certain columns and structural elements that are unmovable, but we made a design that makes them fit,” Ho explained.
“The kitchen has a similar intent—how do we tie into the infrastructure yet configure for different purposes, serving three meals a day made to order and with the intent of recycling and reusing.”
Rustica Reimagining
Reimagining a restaurant space is not new to Ho.
The Great Maple location in Fashion Island was opened by her father 13 years ago as Rustica, an upscale Italian restaurant, but due to the downturn in the economy at the time the family decided that maybe Rustica was not the right fit at that time.
“My dad was sitting in a jacuzzi talking about his restaurant, and another gentleman suggested he should do a Hash House—a dining concept from San Diego restaurateur Johnny Rivera.
“Out of curiosity my dad called Rivera and said, ‘I have this restaurant in Newport Beach and I’d like your opinion on it as a consultant.’ They hit it off and a bromance was born,” she said.
After Rivera saw the restaurant, he made recommendations, and Rustica closed only to reopen three days later as Great Maple. Wing Ho was the opening chef for Great Maple.
“Those first few years we fumbled through, getting our identity,” she said.
A few years later they opened a dinette version of Great Maple in the Hillcrest section of San Diego, with Rivera as part owner. Then came the Pasadena Great Maple in 2017.
Now, the company has an identity: a modern American eatery.
Menu Favorites
The all-day menu at Pixar Place incorporates many items on other Great Maple menus, plus some unique to that location.
Ten brunch favorites, including French toast logs and Cajun shrimp biscuit benedicts are listed, as well as salads, sandwiches, burgers, mains such as maple pecan crusted salmon and sharable plates.
So, what is Ho’s favorite?
“The turkey Bolognese,” she said. “It’s Wing Joe’s recipe that was made for Rustica and found its way onto the Great Maple,” Ho said.
“We use ground turkey in our Bolognese, it’s made from scratch. It’s a labor of love. If I have had a really long day, I want to sit down with a bowl of pasta. It’s like who is your favorite child, but for me it’s become almost nostalgic in a way.”
“We are choosing to make food that stands without pretense,” she said.
“We are doing it with passion. It’s food we want to eat.”
The OCBJ Review: by Christopher Trela
I’ve dined at the Great Maple in Fashion Island, so I was familiar with the menu when I attended an event to sample Great Maple dishes at the new Pixar Place Hotel.
That menu included portobello mushroom fries, cobb wedge, rib-eye melt, Cajun shrimp biscuit benedict, French toast logs, and maple pecan crusted salmon, plus their seasonal doughnut and their signature maple bacon doughnut.
“The biscuits are made fresh in house, and we used biscuits instead of an English muffin to give it a modern twist,” said co-owner and Chief Executive Amanda Ho. “It’s our whimsical twist.”
Whimsical yes, and delicious.
The biscuits are made with white cheddar, the shrimp adds a nice seafood component, and their Cajun version of hollandaise makes this a standout any time of day.
The French toast logs are thick-cut brioche served with warm maple syrup and fresh blueberries. Another fun breakfast food that I ordered again when I had lunch there with a foodie friend.
For me, the standout dish was the portobello mushroom fries served with basil pesto aioli.
These are thick-sliced chunks of mushrooms breaded and fried. When dipped in the aioli they are impossible to resist. I can imagine sitting at the bar ordering a cocktail and the mushroom fries and being happy.
Doughnuts Delight
On subsequent visits I ordered mac and cheese with shrimp, charred cauliflower hummus, and Ho’s favorite, the turkey Bolognese. Now I know why she likes that dish so much. I polished it off in record time.
Oh—did I mention the doughnuts? These are not your standard cake doughnuts. These are doughnuts on steroids. They come out warm and are guaranteed to satisfy any sweet tooth.
I ordered them to go and warmed them in the morning for a treat with coffee.
Great Maple’s beverage program includes a diverse wine selection, seasonal craft cocktails, non-alcoholic offerings and beers on tap.
Great Maple at Pixar Place Hotel: 1717 S. Disneyland Drive, Ste. 101, Anaheim, (714) 239-5655, thegreatmaple.com
