if you’re starving, is it really the happiest place on earth?
I’ve always known theme parks to be culinary wastelands on a more grand scale, even, than a turnpike rest stop. But I never stopped to question WHY?
That is until I was recently invited to an event at Universal Studios to celebrate a Sante award given to the theme park’s independent dining establishment, the International Cafe. The restaurant, a rare animal in the world of theme park gastronomy, makes most everything in house and boasts a menu of what they call “healthier” alternatives to standard park fare.
Now, I put healthier in quotations because, although the International Cafe’s menu is far more colorful and varied than its competition, there are still ample servings of potato chips, white bread, massive cookies and meringue tarts to be had. However, the restaurant did have enough whole food offerings to make me ponder: Why is it in an era when our nation as a whole has a giant oral fixation, the white house is growing beets and even sports stadiums are offering tuna tartare and pulled chicken tacos with fresh pico de gallo and mixed baby greens can we not get something a little more fiberous than a chocolate covered banana on a stick at a theme park? (And by fiberous, I speak of the stick.)
I remember the fruitless search for breakfast on my first-ever visit to Disneyland a few years back, thinking the only fruit I was going to find was the blueberry Jelly Bellies. By lunch, I did manage to find a container of apple slices, so doused in chemicals to keep their white flesh gleaming that the 50 cents/slice segments were rendered inedible.
I can think back to a post-college trip to some theme park in Indiana where my friend and I bought an apple, covered in a tooth-chipping inch thick layer of red candy to give our digestive systems a break from the deep fryer.
Now, it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t mention the exception to the theme park rule, Epcot. Although it has been many years since I’ve paid the park a visit, I do remember my parents excitement at securing a reservation in Epcot’s French restaurant. I don’t know if the situation has changed but at the time, in order to experience the park’s fine food, it was necessary to call in advance and show up promptly at your reserved hour to secure your table–even if it meant dropping out of line on a ride your child would probably have given up eating for a day in order to experience.
Being more of an expert on where to find a great glass of wine (nowhere in the Magic Kingdom) than where to dine in a theme park, I will freely admit that I might be missing other exceptions. But even if there are other healthy options, they are too few and far between.
My experience at the International Cafe showed me just how easy it can be to slot a quick, casual, but still very theme parkish dining establishment with a focus on fresh fare into the park experience. Although the restaurant, with its fairly traditional tomato/mozz salad, smoked salmon on white and turkey with muenster would probably simply blend in on Main Street U.S.A. on Main Street theme park U.S.A.? This place is piece of safe but universally pleasing fine art (impressionism, perhaps) ripe to be copied over, and over, and over.
