Flame Tree Barbecue
Flame Tree Barbecue is a quick-service barbecue restaurant on Discovery Island at Disney's Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. An opening-day restaurant from 1998, it is widely regarded as one of the park's signature counter-service locations, known less for any single dish than for where guests eat it: a chain of terraced, open-air seating pavilions that step down through gardens to the shore of Discovery River, facing Expedition Everest across the water.
History
Flame Tree Barbecue opened with the rest of Disney's Animal Kingdom on April 22, 1998.[1][2] The land it stood in was not yet called Discovery Island: on opening day the park's central hub was named Safari Village, a name it kept until December 2000, when it was renamed Discovery Island following the closure of the original Discovery Island nature park on Bay Lake. Flame Tree, along with Pizzafari, gave the hub its two main places to eat.
The restaurant has remained a quick-service location throughout its life, in contrast to several of its opening-day contemporaries that changed format. Its most significant interruption came in 2015, when it closed for an extended refurbishment that refreshed the ordering and seating areas before reopening later that year.[2] It has since settled into the modern quick-service pattern at Walt Disney World, with mobile ordering alongside the traditional counter.
Setting
The ordering area sits beside the main Discovery Island walkway, near the paths toward Asia and DinoLand U.S.A., marked by a colourful carved sign. Guests collect their food at the counter and then find their own seats — and the seating is the experience. Instead of a single dining room, Flame Tree Barbecue spreads its tables through a series of covered pavilions connected by terraced paths and gardens, descending away from the counter toward Discovery River. Many guests stop at the first tables near the counter; the pavilions further down are quieter, shadier and better placed.
The decoration works a theme unusual for a barbecue counter: the circle of life, expressed through predator and prey. Carvings, murals and painted details throughout the pavilions depict animals eating other animals — an owl with its catch, and similar pairings — a frank acknowledgment, in keeping with the park's honest treatment of nature, that a meal for one creature is the end of another.[3] The lowest pavilions open onto the water, with views across Discovery River to the Asia section and the peak of Expedition Everest, and character flotillas passing on the river during the day. Because all seating is outdoors, the local bird life — egrets, ibis and ducks — patrols the pavilions, and guests are reminded not to feed them.
Cuisine
The menu is American barbecue, smoked on site and served in generous portions. Its core offerings have long been St. Louis-style ribs, smoked chicken and pulled pork, sold individually and in combinations — most notably a sampler platter combining ribs, chicken and pulled pork, and a ribs-and-chicken combo — generally accompanied by baked beans and coleslaw.[3] Around that core sit a pulled pork sandwich, baked macaroni and cheese topped with pulled pork, pulled pork cheese fries, salads, a plant-based barbecue sandwich and, at times, jumbo turkey legs. Desserts and frozen drinks round out the counter. The combination of smoked meats, comparatively modest quick-service pricing and the riverside setting has kept Flame Tree Barbecue near the top of guest rankings of Animal Kingdom dining for most of its history.