These potatoes are served with most breakfast options at Carnation Cafe – and the reason is because they are Chef Oscar’s specialty, and they are delicious! If you ate breakfast at Carnation Cafe prior to 2017 then you may have had the privilege of having these potatoes cooked by Oscar himself, and even the honor of receiving a warm greeting from him, like I did! Oscar was the longest tenured cast member until his retirement in September 2017, having worked there for 61 years, and his potatoes are a continuing Disneyland staple. Disney Parks Blog has a great article if you want to know more about Oscar. 

image of Oscar via Disney

Oscar's Potatoes

A recipe from Oscar Martinez, the longest-serving Disneyland employee - the breakfast potatoes from Carnation Cafe at Disneyland on Main Street U.S.A.

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Course Side Dish

Servings 6 people

Ingredients

  

• 2 pounds red potatoes sliced 1/4 inch or thicker
• 1 medium onion julienned, white
• 6 tbsp butter
• Salt & Pepper (to taste)

Instructions

 

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees
• Saute onions in 2 tbsp. butter until softened. Set aside.
  
• In a 12 inch skillet (don't crowd the potatoes), saute potatoes with the remainder of the butter. Keep cooking until the potatoes are browned and add the onions. Season with salt and pepper.
  
• Transfer potato mixture to a new pan; 8x10 works well. Then cover with parchment paper and foil. Poke hole in foil for ventilation.
  
• Bake for 40 minutes to 1 hour
• Taste and correct for salt and pepper as needed
• MORE FROM OSCAR: "You have to stay with the potatoes. You can't walk away. They need to be basted with butter every five minutes"

Notes

For my family, who are not big fans of onion, we only used half on one – and it came out very well (we actually found that maybe we do like onions this way!).

Since the recipe doesn’t specify, the butter I used was salted, so I was careful to not add too much extra salt down the line.

The instruction “don’t crowd the potatoes” had me a bit worried, because how can they not be crowded in a 12 in. skillet? So what I ended up doing probably added some extra cook time to this recipe, but the outcome was just right – as I cooked the potatoes I started pulling out slices that were browned to ensure that they didn’t get burned and to make room that all of the slices were cooked as evenly as possible.

The “More from Oscar” instruction was a bit unclear to me, I took it to mean that he was referring to the cooking in the skillet step, because YES, you will want to stay with them the whole time and keep stirring/flipping them so they all get cooked in the butter at the bottom of the pan (I did not baste or scoop and pour butter over them). I think the potatoes, once in the oven are fine to be left alone.

The serving size says 6-8, and we were a family of 4 and we had very few leftovers. If I made this again for company, I would definitely increase the recipe for a bigger group.

Keyword breakfast

Outcome & Opinion:

Oscar’s breakfast potatoes are great at dinner too!

This was the most simple Disneyland recipe I have ever made – it feels like most of them have 10+ ingredients and a heavy handful of steps – so because of that I was a bit dubious about these potatoes tasting special. BUT. THEY. DID. Oh my goodness, I already love potatoes but these were top notch! I think the extra time and attention (and butter 😏) is what makes them soooo delicious. I will be making these again!