Disney is building Harryhausen's at Disney's Hollywood Studios. The actual one. From Monsters, Inc.
Including the sushi chef, as an animatronic, with eight tentacles, prepping food in the middle of the dining room.
Some context.
Monstropolis opens at Disney's Hollywood Studios in 2027 with two restaurants.
Harryhausen's is table service, built to match the film, and Disney says it goes well beyond sushi.
Archie's Scare Pig Pizza is a quick-service spot from Monsters University, built to feel like the pizza joint where monster college kids landed after class. Named for Archie the Scare Pig, the Fear Tech mascot whose theft sets off half that movie.
Let Us Stay on the Animatronic for a Second
Because this is the part that is genuinely wild.
Most restaurant animatronics are furniture. Something twitches in a corner, a scene loops, nobody really looks.
An eight-tentacled figure doing visible food prep in the center of a dining room is a completely different engineering ask. It has to look like actual work. It has to hold up viewed from every table. It has to run all day, every day, for years.
That means the dining room is the attraction. Not a themed room you eat in. If this lands, people are booking Harryhausen's to watch the chef.
Quick Note on the Name
Since it is about to exist, somebody should say it.
Harryhausen's is named for Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion legend behind the creatures in Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans, and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. His monsters basically defined what movie monsters looked like for decades. Pixar included.
Pixar named the fancy sushi place after him. Now it is a restaurant you can book.
The Problem They Had to Solve
Here is the actual challenge. The monster food in these movies is revolting on purpose. That is the gag. But a real restaurant has to serve something that looks monstrous, tastes genuinely good, and gets eaten by a seven-year-old without a fight.
“There were so many moments where we asked, ‘Is this too much?'” Rosenthal said. “And sometimes we'd hear back, ‘No. Can we take it further? Can we make it brighter, bolder, and more interesting?'”
They say they sat around asking whether monsters slurp, whether they chew, and whether something had too many eyeballs.
“We're taking familiar dishes and adding unexpected twists that feel authentic to this world,” Piasecki said.
Their term for it: “grossly fun” food.
And Here Is Why It Will Work
Look at what they described for Harryhausen's. Ramen with rich tonkotsu broth and alkaline ramen noodles. Then fishcake cut to look like eyeballs, and green eggs.
The base is real ramen. The gross part is decoration.
And honestly, the word choice tells you everything. Alkaline noodles refer to kansui noodles, which are the technical standard for ramen. That is the ingredient that gives ramen its texture and its color. Nobody writes that in a theme park press release by accident.
Stack tonkotsu on top of it, a broth that takes hours to do right, and it is pretty clear somebody on that team actually cares about the noodles.
The eyeballs are a garnish.
Blort Is Finally Happening at Disney
This one is a free pass, creatively.
Blort shows up in Monsters University as one of Monstropolis' biggest soft drinks. No human has ever seen it or tasted it. No canon flavor, no canon color, nothing to get wrong.
So Disney just gets to decide what Blort is.
What they floated: a purple frozen version topped with Scream Apple Foam.
Now Read the Fine Print
Important, because people are going to treat this as a menu.
Disney called the Harryhausen's ramen among items “being explored.” The Blort description came with a “maybe” on it.
This is not a menu. These are concepts for a land opening in 2027, and concepts are subject to change. That eyeball fishcake might not make it.
What is actually locked: two restaurants, their service styles, the films behind them, and the animatronic chef. The food is all still moving.
One More Thing Worth Noticing
Two restaurants, two service tiers, two different movies. A night out and a casual hangout.
Galaxy's Edge opened with no traditional table service at all. Monstropolis is not repeating that.
No opening date yet beyond 2027.
Source: Disney Parks Blog interview with Chef Brian Piasecki and Evan Rosenthal.
