If the tiki-tastic Trader Sam's is the Space Mountain of Disney's many hotel bars, Hearthstone Lounge is the Disneyland Railroad: It's not very exciting, but it gets you there. Heck, you may not have even heard of it. I didn't and I've been inside lobby of the Disney Grand Californian Hotel at least a dozen times, never realizing there was a bar in my midst hidden inside an alcove just left of the grand fireplace.
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Disney enthusiasts like to refer to it as the only “adult” bar in the resort. And it just might be. Except for Mickey-shaped cutouts in the light fixtures, there's a lack of Disney-ness here. The bar is still majestic-looking, though, with lots of wood and large bay windows as big as the ones inside Napa Rose just a few steps away. The bar fare is decent-to-good with appetizers such as chicken quesadillas and a flat bread with tiny potatoes and chorizo.
What you want, of course, are the cocktails. But especially The Magical Star Cocktail, not because it contains one of those glowing ice cubes that pulses colors, but because it actually tastes good, with X-Fusion Organic Mango and Passion Fruit Liqueur, coconut rum and pineapple juice. Though it's actually weaker than a daiquiri, this punch still manages to make the room come alive as though there were singing Animatronic parrots around you. Okay, the souvenir ice cube helps.
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.