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.