Jungle Navigation Co. LTD Skipper Canteen
Jungle Navigation Co. LTD Skipper Canteen is a table-service restaurant in Adventureland (Magic Kingdom) at Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. Usually shortened to Skipper Canteen, it is themed as the headquarters and mess hall of the Jungle Navigation Company, the fictional shipping company behind the Jungle Cruise attraction, and its servers are the company's skippers. It serves what it calls "world famous jungle cuisine", drawing on the food of Asia, South America and Africa, for lunch and dinner.
History
The restaurant stands on one of the oldest dining sites in Adventureland. From the park's opening in 1971 until 1994 the building housed the Adventureland Veranda, a counter-service restaurant with a tropical theme. When the Veranda closed as a restaurant in 1994 the building was not demolished; for the following two decades it was used instead for character meet-and-greets and other purposes, leaving Adventureland without a table-service restaurant.
Disney announced the new restaurant on 15 August 2015 at the D23 Expo, and the Jungle Navigation Co. LTD Skipper Canteen opened on 16 December 2015, initially taking walk-up guests rather than reservations. It was the first table-service restaurant to open in Adventureland, and it returned the Veranda building to dining use after a gap of more than twenty years. Because it was created inside an existing building on a site that had not served food since 1994, it is sometimes described as a new restaurant in an old home rather than a replacement for a working predecessor.
Later changes were mostly to the menu, which was notably adventurous by Magic Kingdom standards when the restaurant opened and has since been adjusted towards more familiar dishes alongside its more unusual ones.
Setting
In the restaurant's backstory, the canteen is run by Alberta Falls of the Falls family, founders of the Jungle Navigation Company, whose boats have carried passengers on the Jungle Cruise since the company's founding in the story in 1911. The 222-seat restaurant is divided into three dining rooms, each with a different place in that story. The largest is the crew's Mess Hall, a high-ceilinged, colonial-era hall filled with banners, photographs, maps and the accumulated clutter of a working shipping company, where the skippers themselves are supposed to eat.
The second room is the Jungle Room, the former family parlor of Dr. Albert Falls, a more domestic space with the family's furnishings and souvenirs. The third and smallest is the S.E.A. Room, the once-secret meeting room of the Society of Explorers and Adventurers, reached through a hidden entrance disguised as a bookcase and lined with the society's maps, books and artefacts.
Throughout the restaurant, the servers remain in character as Jungle Cruise skippers, delivering the deadpan puns for which the attraction is known. The humour is part of the service rather than a separate show, and no characters appear.
Cuisine
The menu follows the rivers of the Jungle Cruise — the Amazon, the Nile and the Congo among them — and is divided between the cuisines those rivers suggest. Disney describes the food as the bold, flavourful cooking of Asia, South America and Africa, which makes Skipper Canteen the most globally varied table-service menu in the Magic Kingdom.
Starters have included Orinoco Ida's Cachapas, Venezuelan corn pancakes with braised pork, and Falls Family Falafel, served with edamame hummus. Among the main courses, Dr. Falls' Signature Grilled Steak is prepared lomo saltado-style, in the Peruvian manner, with peppers, onions and an aji amarillo aioli, while other dishes have included a curried vegetable crew stew with coconut rice, char siu pork, noodle bowls and a fried chicken dish listed under the name "Tastes like Chicken" Because it is! — a joke in the skipper manner. Desserts have included a lime and mango sorbet dish and a chocolate and coconut tart, again named for members of the canteen's fictional crew.
The menu is revised regularly, but its structure has not changed: recognisable techniques carrying flavours — curry, chimichurri, aji peppers, coconut — otherwise scarce in the park.