Laura's Disney Lines

The Cocina Cucamonga restaurant in DCA's Pacific Wharf area moved to a new location in June, with a new menu. It occupies the space in the Pacific Wharf that used to be the Lucky Fortune Cookery, which has been closed for a number of years. (But a new version of the Lucky Fortune Cookery will be re-opening in the old Cocina Cucamonga location, probably this fall.)

The new Cocina Cucamonga menu looks a lot like the menu at Rancho del Zocalo at Disneyland, except that Zocalo has enchiladas and Cocina has tamales.

Here is the new menu.

I tried the new restaurant on my visit last week. It's still a walk-up counter-service location, but now they serve up the food on real plates with real stainless flatware instead of plastic. I was very happy to see that the chicken tamale special that I had enjoyed during the Food and Wine Festival had made it onto the regular menu, and that's what I ordered. For $9.99 it's two chicken tamales, each wrapped in a corn husk, served with rice and beans, green pasilla chile sauce, sour cream, guacamole, and pico de gallo.

It was really good. The pasilla sauce had a little bit of a kick to it - more than I would normally expect at a Disney restaurant - but it wasn't more than "medium" spicy. I noticed that they have cut down the serving size of the rice and beans compared to what they used to serve at Rancho del Zocalo - but that's not a bad thing. Though if you want to share it's not as much food as there used to be.

You can request sauteed vegetables instead of the rice and beans.

For dessert they offer two kinds of empanadas - pineapple and chocolate. As you might be able to guess, I ordered the chocolate empanada. It was just ok - the pastry was a bit tough and there wasn't that much chocolate inside - but for $4.99 I was expecting something a lot better. Crispitos - those deep-fried sugar and cinnamon tortilla chips - are also available.