We Ate EVERYTHING at Universal Orlando’s Brand New Restaurant!

It’s finally time, everyone!

While Disney World may have tons of construction going on, so does Universal Orlando! We’ve known that a new area of the park, Minion Land, was on its way, and now it’s time to try out one of its newest offerings. Come with us to Minion Cafe to try, quite literally, everything!

About The Restaurant

The story behind Minion Cafe is that Kevin is the head chef since he’s the most serious and the cafe wouldn’t have worked without him leading the kitchen!

We have a closer look at Minion Cafe! Should we go inside and order EVERYTHING? It’s a rhetorical question— we’re already ON it! pic.twitter.com/FKM45tetZi

— AllEars.Net (@AllEarsNet) June 17, 2023

All the music inside the restaurant is from the films, but if you hear “bluto, bluto, bluto,” don’t panic, the kitchen may be on fire OR it could be a party!

When you enter the restaurant, you walk into the kitchen! However, to dine, you could end up in the dining room or the Minion break room.

Heading into Minion Cafe, there are a TON of Minion-themed details to spot! Everything is painted Minion yellow, and are those…bananas in the vents?? 🍌💛 pic.twitter.com/Q6EvAwYs86

— AllEars.Net (@AllEarsNet) June 17, 2023

The restaurant has a 400-person capacity limit and has tables that can hold up to 8 guests. The dining room is also split into three different sections, each inspired by Stuart, Bob, and Otto with their own unique themes.

Outside The Restaurant

There are actually two ways to order your food here at Minion Cafe — Dine-In Table Service (where you order your food via mobile order and they bring it to your table) and a Pickup Window. On the app, they’re shown as two different locations, right next to each other.

The Dine-In option shows up as just the Minion Cafe, while the Pickup option specifically says Pickup — both allow you to mobile order.

We decided to order our food and have it delivered to our table and grabbed one of everything on the menu. Let’s just say that we were quite the center of attention with our table looking like this!

Let’s get into it!

The Menu

This restaurant has lots of different options for guests — pork sandwiches, salads, pizza, and a few other delicious-sounding desserts.

Drinks

There are two specialty drinks you can grab at this new restaurant. First is the Antidote for $6.99, made of oodles of banana flavor with Minion-colored topping and graham cracker crumbles.

We weren’t a fan of this one, unfortunately — it tasted like cream soda mixed with fake Laffy Taffy banana flavoring and is topped with a fake cream that doesn’t go well with the drink. But it is adorable!

The other drink is the PX-41 Punch also for $6.99, which is lemonade with bright flavors of strawberry and kiwi, with Evil Minion-colored topping and Blue Raspberry Pop Rocks. This one we liked a lot better! It tastes like a strawberry Sweet Tart in liquid form, and while it’s not carbonated, it definitely is kid-geared. We also loved the Pop Rocks!

Despica-Bowls

Starting out, we grabbed Kevin’s Chopa Chopa Salad for $15.99, which is made of purple cabbage and arugula with tomatoes, cucumber, edamame, crispy pork belly, pulled rotisserie chicken, green banana chips and a mustard ale vinaigrette.

We really enjoyed this salad! While it’s a little basic, we feel it was proportioned very well. The pork belly set it apart from other salads, but we don’t think it’s the most exciting thing on the menu.

You can also grab Lucy’s Top Secret Salmon, which is wood-grilled Atlantic salmon, coconut blue rice, Thai cucumbers, edamame, and lipstick taser sauce. This was perfectly cooked salmon and while we wish it had a little more sauce, we loved the lipstick taser sauce to provide a little extra flavor. The coconut blue rice is also wonderful in our eyes, as it’s not an overpowering flavor of coconut.

Don’t forget about Otto’s Noodle Bowl! This is slow-roasted porchetta, udon noodles, tare egg, cilantro, roasted corn, and shrimp dumpling with tonkatsu broth. This one surprised us a lot because we were very impressed! There was so much flavor (although with a lot less kick than traditional Asian dishes outside of theme parks), but our two complaints are that the udon was a little starchy, and the shrimp dumpling was pretty hard.

El Macho’s Salsa y Salsa Ropa Vieja is made of ropa vieja braised beef with tomato cucumber salad, cilantro rice, and tostones and can be yours for $17.99. We loved the braised beef as it pulled right apart, and it went very well with the salsa. However, we felt the rice was a little undercooked, and we were not a fan of the tostones. It was also supposed to come with a side salad that we didn’t receive.

Agnes’ Honeymoon Soup is made of green tomato soup, crispy pork belly, tomato gummy bear, and basil oil, served with a pimento cheddar grilled cheese sandwich. We have mixed feelings about this one. The grilled cheese was incredible, and while we love having a soup on the menu, it was a little oversalted. Dipping the grilled cheese into the soup though is the way to go!

Carl’s Crispy Cauliflower is also available for $15.99, and its crispy cauliflower florets with sweet & spicy chili sauce, coconut blue rice, Thai cucumbers, and edamame. This was one of our favorite things! It was perfectly cooked and crunchy and we loved the chili sauce (that certainly has a kick to it)! The cucumbers and edamame was also delicious.

For $16.99, you can also get the Chicken Stuart’s Szechuan Surprise. This is Szechuan glazed rotisserie chicken and stir-fried vegetable lo mein. This was our least favorite of the bowls because the chicken was very dry. We did really enjoy the side, however, so we certainly wouldn’t call this terrible, we just feel there are better options on the menu.

Handhelds

There are two different handhelds to get right now. First is Uncle Dru’s Belly Fillin’ Pork Sandwich for $14.99, which is slow roasted porchetta, chimichurri sauce, mustard aioli, apple butter, bacon jam, arugula, Hawaiian pretzel bun, green banana chips.

There is a lot going on here with so many different condiments, so you’ll need to be a big sauce fan to like all of these together. It was very savory and unique, but we don’t think it is a crowd pleaser. The name doesn’t lie, because this sandwich is fillin! The meat was also fattier which may be off-putting for some.

Or you can grab the Steak & “Cheese Ray” Sandwich for $15.99, which is made of French onion-dipped roast beef, caramelized onions, secret sauce, and cheesy blast pimento cheese on a cheddar & onion roll.

This one would’ve been more impressive except that we had a similar sandwich over in Seuss Landing around the holidays that was WAY better. It’s simple and definitely a crowd pleaser, though! It kind of reminded us of Arby’s (but not in a bad way!).

Off the Flames

If you’re craving pizza, you can grab Mel’s Meatball Mountain for $14.99, which is a wood oven-baked stuffed pizza with meatballs, basil, fresh mozzarella, and marinara.

This was one of our favorite things on the menu! If you grew up eating meatball subs as a kid, this was made for you. The mozzarella is super fresh and we loved the touch of basil. We cannot stress how BIG this thing is, so this is great to split. Plus, the presentation was adorable — it looks like it was dropped from high up!

Desserts

The Minion Swiss Roll is vanilla cake with pineapple cardamom whipped ganache, passion fruit “banana” with a chocolate shell, and can be yours for $7.99.

This treat surprised us — it actually seemed geared toward adults! It was really nicely balanced with the fruity flavors. Even after eating everything else, this dessert wasn’t too overwhelming to eat or too sweet.

Or you can grab the Bob’s Teddy Bear Chocolate Cream Puff for $6.99, which is filled with a chocolate whipped ganache.

Don’t be worried if you typically find chocolate desserts too rich, because this one was light and airy! It had a cocoa powder-y taste to it, which we thought gave it a better balance than heavy chocolate.

You can also grab the Fluffy Unicorn Cupcake for $5.99. This is a confetti cupcake with vanilla and bubblegum icing, topped with a white chocolate unicorn horn.

While this is a super cute dessert, this was the least impressive in our opinion. The confetti cake was fun, but it was a little dry and plain. The pink icing tastes like bubble gum, which we aren’t a huge fan of. We were glad to see that the horn was chocolate instead of fondant like many other cupcake toppers!

The last dessert is Otto’s Pet Rock for $8.99, which is peanut butter mousse, strawberry jelly, crushed peanuts, and banana cake dipped in a chocolate shell. This may sound like a lot, but it was SO good! We expected it to be really overwhelming with all of those flavors, but the peanut butter mousse was one of our favorites we’ve had in a long time. This was our favorite thing we ate all day which is saying something considering we ate the whole menu!

Mini Minions

For the kids, there are four options on this menu that all come with Minion tots and a banana for $8.99. The first is the Mini Boss’ Mega Melt, which is a pimento grilled cheese. This was the most exciting kids meal to us, but you can definitely taste the pimento in here. The Minion tots were more like those smiley face french fries instead of tater tots — the inside was more like mashed potato instead of shredded potato.

Next is the Freedonia Festival of Mac & Cheese, which is mini shells tossed in a creamy white cheddar sauce. This tasted like a basic white cheddar mac and cheese which we really enjoy. It’s a lot of carbs, but is plenty of food to fuel your little one.

Mr. Gru’s PB & Jelly is next, which is a pressed peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

This is a very small portion, but it’s a super fun presentation. There is not much filling — all of it is in that main part of the Minion imprinted on the sandwich. With the sides, it can act as a full meal, but we think this would be good for extra small kiddos.

And you can grab the Shrunken Moonballs with Flying Sauce — mini meatballs in marinara sauce over spaghetti.

This is another basic meal, but a solid choice for pickier eaters! The meatballs are good quality and the same ones that are on Mel’s Meatball Mountain.

Overall, this is a welcome addition to Universal Orlando. There hasn’t been a lot of great food here outside of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Although we enjoy the food at Today Cafe, there hasn’t been anything that exciting that makes us want to come back over and over. This isn’t necessarily the best restaurant here, but it is consistent and has fun food with fun flavors. The theming is fantastic and for it being the first day open, the service was excellent.

And that’s all that you can grab at this new spot! We’re checking out everything that soft opened in Minion Land, so be sure to stay tuned to AllEars.

Take a Look Inside the NEW Minion Land at Universal Orlando!

What do you think you’ll grab at this new restaurant? Tell us in the comments!

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