‘The Conners’ To Celebrate Reopening Of Roseanne’s Lanford Lunch Box With Free Food For Fans

The Conners will be hosting a dining experience for fans — and best of all, it’s free. In celebration of the resurrection of the famous Lanford Lunch Box diner that was originally featured on the Roseanne show more than 20 years ago, a special pop-up experience will appear in California this weekend.

At two separate events in Anaheim on February 15 and in Santa Monica on February 16, fans will be feted with a Lunch Box-themed food truck that will serve up stew and pie from the new “comfort food” menu created by Conners characters Jackie Harris (Laurie Metcalf) and Becky Conner-Healy (Lecy Goranson), according to a press release posted by ABC.

The free food items will include beef and vegetarian stews, hand-held pies, and root beer. There will also be photo ops with a replica of the iconic afghan-draped Conners couch, and there will be themed giveaways.

The Conners pop-up events will take place at Downtown Disney, Anaheim on Saturday, February 15 (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.) and Third Street Promenade, Santa Monica on Sunday, February 16 (12 noon to 6 p.m).

In comments to a post about the pop-up on The Conners Instagram page, some fans took issue with the location of the food experience — and the menu.

“No loose meat sandwiches?” one fan asked, referencing the signature ground beef sandwich from Rosanne’s original Lunch Box menu.

“I need to go to Cali I’m missing everything,” another wrote.

“They live in Illinois. Just saying,” a third fan noted of the Conners hometown in relation to the pop-up location.

The pop-up news comes on the heels of a previously announced contest in which fans of the ABC sitcom were asked to help name menu items for the new incarnation of the Lunch Box where stews appear to be dominant on the menu.

The re-opening of the Lunch Box is a touchy subject for diehard fans of the original Roseanne series because the Conner matriarch (played by Roseanne Barr) was killed off ahead of the ABC spinoff.

On the original Rosanne series in the 1990s, the Lanford Lunch Box was co-owned by Roseanne, her sister Jackie, her mother Bev (Estelle Parsons), family friend Nancy Bartlett (Sandra Bernhard) and Roseanne’s former Rodbell’s boss, Leon Carp (Martin Mull).

There have been no announcements to bring back Bernhard or Mull for a cameo on The Conners when their characters’ former diner is reopened, although this show is known for its surprise unannounced guest stars. (Paul Reubens, aka Pee-Wee Herman, is a recent example.) Bernhard did appear on an episode of the Roseanne revival before Barr was fired from the series due to her inappropriate conduct on Twitter, but her character has not been seen since.