It’s happened again! Somewhere I never thought I would eat lunch now has something I can eat! Flame Tree Barbecue is a quick service restaurant in Disney’s Animal Kingdom and is somewhere that never appealed to me since it was/is meat heavy. However, when Disney updated the menus to have plant-based options, Flame Tree Barbecue joined the list of places with an option.
Flame Tree Barbecue is located in Discovery Island in Animal Kingdom. It is basically on the way from the Tree of Life to Asia and Dinoland USA. I had walked by here many times and it just smelled like your basic barbecue place. They added a vegan option under the name Hot Link Smokehouse Sandwich.
When I ordered I asked if I could get a regular one and a plain one for our son (because Uncrustables and peanut allergies don’t work in our family). I was hoping this would be similar to Casey’s Corner where they have a plain dog option which is cheaper, however they do not here and I had to pay the same price for the toppings but not get them, which is fine. The cast member was a bit confused in my order but finally got it sorted.
We went to wait for our food and when it came out I asked to confirm with a cast member that the whole sandwich was vegan. They were unsure and went to get a coordinator who then told me it wasn’t. Obviously I was very confused because it had the leaf logo and I was just checking to make sure the bread didn’t have any weird ingredients. It turns out, however, that he said it was not vegan due to the fried onions being cooked in a shared fryer, which to me doesn’t make something not vegan, but I know that’s not the case for all vegans. So this being said, if you don’t do shared fryers, order yours without the fried onions. He didn’t mention if the fries were in a shared fryer so I would ask since he was only talking about the sandwich. After we got that figured out we moved on and went to eat our lunch.
I had never eaten here, obviously, so I had no idea how massive their seating area was. The whole restaurant is outside, so you won’t find an air conditioned escape here. This place is huge and absolutely beautiful, just for that alone I would come back here to eat again. We found a nice quiet shady spot and ate our lunch.
The “sandwich” was alright. It was a bit more bread than filling and the topping was just okay. It was a mustard slaw and was just dry and tasted like plain cabbage with a hint of mustard. The fried onions were good, but there wasn’t many of them.
I believe the sausage was a Beyond Meat Hot Italian (as opposed to the Brat) but it wasn’t spicy at all. I ended up going to a condiment station and putting some more mustard on it as well as bbq sauce and that helped it a lot. I was expecting it to be saucier than it was. But adding the bbq sauce on it helped it a lot. I don’t quite know what they’re trying to go for here with this sandwich, but knowing where I can get bbq sauce in the future helps. I would get it again, I just wish they would make it creamier or something as it really needs it.
Price $
Review from October 2019.
I ate here on Friday, like you never considering it in the past because it was all meat options. I loved this sandwich! I doused it with bbq sauce because I love the stuff, and I really enjoyed it. Would go back!