Flame Tree BBQ at Animal Kingdom Disney World Onion Rings

I just want to hug whomever is in charge of food at Animal Kingdom.  You are seriously the best.  You can't go wrong with any food there. Oh, man, the cinnamon rolls at the bakery are to die for.  Pandora has amazing alien food...etc.  It might be my imagination, but Animal Kingdom food seems always more generously portioned, higher quality, and better priced than at the other Disney World parks.

I highly suggest using mobile order to skip the line at Flame Tree Barbeque.  But don't worry, no matter how long that line gets, there is plenty of fabulous outdoor seating down the hill from the restaurant!

The onion rings at Flame Tree are only slightly different than elsewhere in Disney World in taste.  They are mild, kind of bland, don't come with any special sauce, etc.

Despite their plainness, they are plentiful and very tasty.  They were quite inexpensive at less than $5 and listed as a "side" and not an "appetizer." So, we thought we wouldn't have enough and ordered two orders.  It was SO MUCH that there was no way we could eat all that food!!  They even put onion rings on top some of their dishes like the fancy mac and cheese.

Onion Rings at Sci Fi Dine-In Theater (Disney World's Hollywood Studios)

The Sci-Fi Dine-In Restaurant at Disney Hollywood Studios in Orlando is probably one of the hardest to get reservations in all of Disney World, depending on the number of people in your party.  If you have 2 or 4 people, it is dang hard, but if you have 5 or more, it is nearly impossible.  Even when you get reservations and go to the restaurant they don't exactly have a car reserved for you.  You have to wait until something opens up.  Since we have some tiny people, we got in a little bit faster by squishing into two rows.  It wasn't really that squished to put a four year old in with mom and dad.

Well, after my family of 5 made it in,  it really is quite a different experience to not face each other when eating and kind of split up and and eat in a car-shaped formation! But hey, it's like a twist on eating at Sonic!

The good news is, Sci- Fi has been known to have onion rings! However, they occasionally take them off the menu.  You really can't plan on them being there since the menu changes so often!  However, they DO have them on some of the burgers, so with some sweet talking you might be able to still order them.

They come in a swirly cone-shaped metal container just like the fries. These were decent, but greasy bread crumb coated onion rings.  The dipping sauce was a sweet bbq, but the container to dip them in was so small and the room is so dark that... well, good luck with that!  

This restaurant is such a great place to chill and relax with your little jedi padwans.  Despite the fact that silly/ creepy movies are playing it is quite restful.  And the service is incredibly slow at times, so if you can only get in mid-afternoon, it is really a bonus even if it's not your regular meal time because it can sub for a naptime experience.

Black and Tan Onion Rings at Toothsome Chocolate Emporium

I was over the moon excited to try onion rings in such a neat place as Toothsome Chocolate Emporium near Universal Studios in Orlando, FL.  I was so pumped up that I didn't mind that it took 45 minutes to get a table on a Tuesday night and it took more than 15 minutes after I ordered to get these as appetizers.  They come with a "cocoa ranch dipping sauce," after all!

But, when they came I was disappointed in soooo many ways.   Firstly, for $11.00 I was expecting more than a gnarled up handful of what I recognized as pre-packaged standard issue bulk restaurant supply beer-battered onion rings.  I ::think:: there were probably five onion rings, but they were a hot mess of damaged broken circles so I couldn't quite tell.  The onion rings were un-artfully drizzled in what was probably Hershey's syrup.  The cocoa ranch by itself was literally the most disgusting thing I've ever tasted.  Just mix cocoa in with some cheap hidden valley bottled ranch.  Seriously Toothsome?  Have you ever tasted your own dip?

So, I moved on to just eating the crispy onion rings alone. Toothsome Chocolate Emporium wins the prize for the WORST ONION RINGS I have ever tasted.  I don't have anything against beer-battered onion rings, but they are a bit of a science because they require an exact hard crispiness level.  I couldn't even force myself to eat more than one.  The onions inside were incredibly tough, a total onion ring no-no.  I think the fact that the onion rings were smashed before they were fried allowed a LOT of grease to go inside the batter and overcook the onions.  Plus, the grease just stayed behind when they were served.

Dear Toothsome Chocolate Emporium, you are a pretty cool (albeit overpriced) restaurant, but you have disgraceful onion rings.  Here are my suggestions to change your onion ring ways and stay within your theme:
First, use a sweet batter on your onion rings.  Use the type of batter they fry everything in at the fair.  It's like funnel cake batter.  Or something as sweet as Sonic's onion ring breading.  Next, simplify the ingredients in your dipping sauce.  Of course, it has to have chocolate in it.  But, mix it with a sweetened sour cream or watered down cream cheese.  Beer battered onion rings are just TOO bitter and not the right contrast to use with cocoa!

As for the rest of the menu, stick closely to the desserts... and if you get a main dish, share it.  I would suggest splitting the southern fried chicken BLT, something very hard for them to mess up the flavors on that one!  Some of the other savory things are pretty nasty-especially anything served with sauce or Lyonnaise potatoes.

Arby's Onion Rings

 I'm not sure why, but onion rings aren't the first thing on my mind when I think of Arbys. . . but they should be high on the list, because they are REALLY good.  They are a sturdy, middle of the road sort of onion ring.  They have a sort of combination of batter/ crumb coating that is definitely meant for freezing and quickly frying.  They aren't as sweet as say, Sonic's onion rings, but they lack some of the funky bitterness that other rings have, too.  I would say, make it a priority alongside your roast beef sandwich next time!

Surprise! Onion Rings at Paula Deen's Family Kitchen

Onion rings have been sighted at Paula Deen's Family Kitchen on the meatloaf.  On the menu they are referred to as "tobacco onions."  Tobacco onions are a very rare name for these thin crispy onion rings these days.  They got their name by looking like tobacco.  I don't think Paula Deen's were genuine tobacco onions- they were too thick.  But they were very good for onion rings! This is how to make me love meat loaf! 

 When they asked if we wanted anything else we said we wanted to order more onion rings.... but apparently they thought we were joking and never brought us any. 

Paul Deen's restaurant has amazing, rich southern food.  A single biscuit alone will stuff you.  I loved the chicken and dumplings. Yum!

Onion Rings at the Big Texan, Amarillo, TX

Is the Big Texan Steak Ranch a tourist trap?  Can a person without the stomach of a superhero eat 72 oz of steak, a baked potato, salad, and some shrimp in one setting?  I'm really not sure about either of those things.  

I am 100% certain, however, that even if you have to drive somewhat out of your way and barely get to the Big Texan right before closing time, the onion rings alone are completely worth it.

They are at the very summit of my onion rings favorites list.  They might actually BE my favorite onion rings of their kind in the whole United States. 

They even serve a bonus one with the smoked baby back ribs appetizer!  I love bonus onion rings!

  

They taste like they are fried in Colonel Sanders fried chicken secret recipe.  They KFC type coating is super addictive.  This means they have tons of flavor and are very flaky.  The flakes fall all over the place when you bite into them.  Then, because the coating is so good you have to scoop it up into a pile and eat it anyway!  These rings come with plenty of ranch and BBQ sauce if you ask.  If you still want to try more fried food, they are also one of the few places in the world where you can order Rocky Mountain Oysters (Calf Fries- if you don't know what this is then go ahead and google it since I don't really want to explain this part of the cow on my onion ring blog).

Onion Rings at Bryce Canyon

The onion rings I found at Bryce Canyon, UT are only slightly farther from the actual canyon than the Grand Canyon's onion rings are from the Grand Canyon.  They can be found at Ruby's Canyon Diner, a little restaurant near Ruby's Inn.

 These o-rings are of the more rare breadcrumb-coated variety!  This type of onion ring has a super thick coating. So thick, in fact, that by the time the breading is cooked on the outside, the onions inside are so incredibly tough that you can't chew through them.  Not a single person in our family could chomp through them.  So, behold the innards!

They were fully flavored yellow onions, too, so no sweetness there.  The breading was amazing on it's own, though.  Unfortunately, we didn't have any dipping sauces for it, so we weren't exactly fighting over the last onion rings.

One cool thing about Ruby's diner was seeing the real cowboys eating there as they came over for lunch from across the street where they worked at Ruby's Horseback Adventures.  

As we walked around the rim of the canyon, we would see some very nice horse trails that took riders to the gorgeous canyon.