Aunt Cass Café is a counter-service restaurant in California Adventure’s San Fransokyo Square. Serving a mix of Asian and American food, the eatery uses a good amount of Boudin Sourdough Bread after taking over the space that Pacific Wharf Café used. Aunt Cass Café does accept a Magic Key and DVC discount. In this post, we’ll review the restaurant’s atmosphere, cuisine and value.

For years, Pacific Wharf Café was a bit of an enigma. I love sourdough bread bowls as much as the next person and the Disneyland clam chowder, which is still served at Aunt Cass, is surprisingly good but the restaurant always felt like it was missing out on doing something a little more interesting. The menu didn’t have much variety and the restaurant lacked personality.

Thankfully, San Fransokyo supplemented both of those deficiencies! Lucky Fortune Cookery and Cocina Cucamonga were already solid restaurants, but have upped their game since the change. That’s especially true for Lucky Fortune, we’ll have a review for their new menu soon! Meanwhile, Aunt Cass Café overhauled their own menu, only having 2 holdovers from the previous restaurant.

The inside of Aunt Cass Café didn’t undergo many changes from the previous Pacific Wharf Café. Outside of the better food offered (a big deal!), San Fransokyo’s changes were mainly cosmetic and happening outside, near the seating areas and on the buildings themselves. The Bakery Tour, residing right next to Aunt Cass Café, largely stayed the same too. I’m good with that decision as the inside of the restaurant mainly serves as an ordering bay. As usual, we recommend mobile ordering here as it will save you some time.

Once outside, there’s plenty of seats around even with the area being incredibly popular. I do like the San Fransokyo Square changes but the biggest negative is that the seating is still cramped and not super pleasant. Once you have your food, I recommend checking for seats in the Bakery Tour section as they’re inside and a little more secluded. The seats close to Ghirardelli are also a little quieter.

The biggest atmospheric and aesthetic changes Aunt Cass received were in the signage and colors around the restaurant. Between the adorable little cat logo the restaurant has gone with and the colorful flags, there’s a very cute anime feeling to eating here. Some of the décor does feel a little bit slapped on to existing buildings but, by and large, it works for me and makes San Fransokyo Square way more appealing than its predecessor.

Moving on to the food, here’s a look at the menu. As you can see, everything outside of the shrimp noodle salad fell in the $12-$15 range. There’s also a good amount of sourdough offered and I can confirm that the Baymax loaf is extremely cute. As I mentioned already, the Clam Chowder is delicious here and the same as what’s offered resort wide. A very strong option during a cooler night at the parks.

We’ll start with our top pick at Aunt Cass Café, the Turkey Pesto Club. This consists of Roasted Turkey Breast, Pesto Aїoli, Havarti, Bacon, Arugula and Tomato on Herb Foccacia served with Potato Chips. This is the type of delicious sandwich I always wished that Pacific Wharf Café took a stab at. The Pesto Aioli and Foccacia are really what make the sandwich, as it’s bursting with flavor. The Arugula and Tomato are both fresh while the Havarti, Bacon and Turkey all add gave the sandwich a familiar club taste. This is now one of our standby meals at Disneyland Resort, delicious and filling while not being overly heavy. The $13.29 price is fair.

If you are looking for something a little more hearty, this is the Curry Beef consisting of Beef, Carrots, Potatoes and Onions cooked in Classic Curry topped with Rice, Pickled Ginger and Green Onions. This is more of a Japanese Curry than an Indian or Thai Curry, meaning it’s closer to a stew. Yes, there are some spices involved but this isn’t overly spicy. Serving rice inside of a bread bowl does feel like a bit much but sopping up the excess curry with the sourdough bread was delicious. The beef in the Curry was good but not all that memorable. Still, this is another perfect dish for a cool night. While I don’t like this quite as much as the sandwich, this is more adventurous and a better value at $12.49.

Here’s the Shrimp Katsu Sandwich consisting of Panko-breaded Shrimp Patty on a Potato Bun with Cabbage Slaw, Spicy Mayo and Katsu Sauce, served with Garlic Chips. This dish had more spice than the Curry I thought, as the Spicy Mayo really came through. I thought this was decent but nothing more as the Shrimp Patty wasn’t my favorite, lacking flavor and getting a little dry. I wish there was more Katsu Sauce on this. I still love those Garlic Chips though and if Shrimp is your thing then this might be worth a try! It is slightly more expensive than the other options we’ve mentioned, at $14.99.

Finally, here’s the Japanese-style Fluffy Cheesecake served with a cherry sauce. Calling a cheesecake subtle feels a bit strange but that’s what I thought of this dessert. The flavor wasn’t overpowering and the fluffiness kept this from being overly dense. I absolutely loved the dish and it’s one of my favorite desserts in the park. We’ve found that this isn’t always on the mobile ordering but then is available when ordering in the restaurant.

Finding a place among California Adventure’s strong dining scene isn’t easy but Aunt Cass Café has a few dishes that have definitely earned that spot. While I do prefer Lucky Fortune Cookery and Cocina Cucamonga, Aunt Cass Café has made a big improvement over Pacific Wharf Cafe and I’m hopeful that they’ll keep the moderately ambitious menu around for a while!

Have you tried Aunt Cass Cafe? Let us know your thoughts, along with any questions you might have, in the comments below! Planning a trip to Disneyland? Check out our Planning Guide here. Need tickets to Disneyland? We’ve got discounted options here! If you enjoy what you are reading here on Wandering in Disney please share this post with your friends, as well as like our social media pages. You can also subscribe to the blog via WordPress or email. All of those links are on the right side of this page. Thank you for reading, we really appreciate it!