by Beth Keating
Review
DisneyBizJournal.com
October 24, 2023
Oh, boy! The Disney culinary team has been working overtime for sure!
In addition to the more than 50 new sips and snacks introduced for the inaugural season of the Hollywood Studios Jollywood Nights event, Disney also dropped nearly a dozen-and-a-half new goodies at Animal Kingdom last week alone. So, since we aren’t going to Jollywood Nights just yet, we decided to make a lunch stop at Disney’s Animal Kingdom to try out some of the new offerings.
We didn’t quite make it in time to indulge in the new GIANT blue and white cinnamon roll, which is a breakfast only treat at Pongu Pongu, or the Stuffed Pancake Sandwich at Drinkwallah, Pongu Pongu, and Trek Snacks, also available for breakfast only. (We were a little disappointed that we missed the Stuffed Pancake Sandwich, a creative rendition of sausage, guava paste, egg, and cheese stuffed inside a sealed pancake… There are never enough breakfast offerings for rope dropping at Animal Kingdom, and this one looks fun!)
Despite our late start, we were able to grab an empty table at Harambe Market, a place we hadn’t dined at in… years. Last time we were there, the food was a little more “theme park standard,” so we tend to skip this spot in favor of Flame Tree or Satu’li Canteen. We were hoping that the new dishes here would step it up a notch and give us another watering hole to visit on future trips.
And they did a pretty good job of elevating this African-inspired quick-serve meal. There are six (or more, depending on how you count them) new plates at Harambe Market, with a choice of a Chicken and Shrimp Rice Bowl ($14.99); a Chicken Rice Bowl ($12.99); a Shrimp Rice Bowl ($14.99); a kid’s version of the Shrimp and Rice Bowl ($8.99) or Chicken Rice Bowl ($8.49); a Beef and Lamb Kofta Pita ($13.49); an IMPOSSIBLE Kofta Pita ($13.49); and a Harambe Salad with Chicken ($12.79, or substitute shrimp instead for $14.79). Oops, and last minute, let’s not forget the new Mango Passion Fruit Cheesecake with Coconut Crust ($5.99), a beautifully decorated fluffy round individual serving cheesecake.
The Harambe Salad with Chicken ($12.79) looked really interesting, and we almost went in that direction. It’s a bountifully-sized platter of chermoula-marinated chicken, with a combination of quinoa, grilled corn, black-eyed peas, and crispy chickpeas topped with an herbed vinaigrette. I imagine that will be especially welcome on a hot Florida day.
But, alas, we’d come specifically to try the rice bowls, so we ordered up the Chicken and Shrimp Rice Bowl, and then gave a last minute add-on to the Beef and Lamb Kofta Pita. Both were good, but we probably wouldn’t venture over for the Kofta Pita again. While the flavors were tasty, the meat itself was a little on the dry side. It definitely benefitted from the herbed sauce that was drizzled on top, and in 20/20 hindsight, we should have asked for another side of the sauce to accompany the pita.
The Pita entrée itself ($13.49) was a combination of house-made beef and lamb kofta in a soft pita, with a tangy Tzatziki sauce, chermoula, and a side of some excellent house-made chips. The chips were crunchy and freshly made, with a subtle seasoning to them that made you keep going back for more. The meat patties were the tiniest bit spicy, with the heat hitting the back of your throat in a second wave of flavor. While we wouldn’t say the patties were overly “dry,” they certainly weren’t very moist, either. So, good flavor, but still not enough to draw us away from the noodle bowls at Satu’li Canteen.
The second dish we’d ordered was the Chicken and Shrimp Rice Bowl, a delicious combination of Chermoula-marinated Chicken and Peri Peri-marinated Shrimp, served on Jollof Rice with a Kachumbari Tomato Salad and Tzatziki Sauce. The rice bowl was the milder spiced of the two dishes of the day, and truthfully, for a quick-serve restaurant, the shrimp were pretty good quality! They were a decent-sized grilled shrimp, and the chicken was served with surprisingly big pieces. The chicken was also pleasantly seasoned, not overly spicy, and came across as a tender roast chicken. There was a generous amount of chicken, too, considering that this was the chicken and shrimp combo.
The tomato salad that was topping the bowl was a little on the tart side, but the veggies were crisp, with a yummy, herby dressing. The “Jollof” rice in the bowl wasn’t much to write home about. It was just a basic yellow rice, with maybe an itty bitty hint of spices in the background, but it did serve as a solid and filling base for the chicken and shrimp. There was also a handful of crunchy chickpeas on top of the dish, but you have to eat them fast, because they lost their texture pretty quickly in the Tzatziki sauce. Interestingly, the sauce on this dish was supposed to be the same as the Tzatziki sauce on the pita, but somehow it seemed a bit milder on the rice bowl. Not a bad thing – just a surprising observation. Overall, we enjoyed the sauce and would even appreciate a touch more of it on future bowls.
We decided that the rice bowls, in their various combinations, were certainly worth coming back for on future visits. The Kofta Pita, maybe not so much.
Harambe Market is themed as an open-air marketplace of various food stalls in a converted train depot, and if you nab the right table, you can watch the Wildlife Express Train going back and forth to Rafiki’s Planet Watch and Conservation Station while you dine.
We are thrilled that Harambe Market is offering up some unique meals that will fuel you up for an afternoon at the parks without weighing you down. As is the case at other Animal Kingdom quick-serve spots, we also appreciated having the choice of some more global flavors for sampling, rather than the ubiquitous burgers, fries and puffy pizzas found elsewhere in the various theme parks. We definitely won’t wait as long as we did the last time before visiting the Harambe Market again… that salad looks like it’ll be another winner!
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Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.
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