SEAWORLD ORLANDO | Lunch, Dinner
Posted on Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Counter Service (quick service)
American
$5-14 per entree**
The Spice Mill Restaurant in SeaWorld, Orlando is one of those rare fast-food locations that I enjoy visiting. The food is good, but what I really like most is the designer's decision to paint the ceiling a dark blue and make the floors a faux coppered marble. I've never seen another interior quite like this one. It shouldn't work, but it does.
From a service and speed standpoint, this visit to the Spice Mill was like most others… slow. It seems that both checkout registers and food pick-up lines are only opened at peak periods. At all other times, only one register is open, and anything more than a few guests in line seems to bring the whole fast-food concept to a grinding halt.
Anyhow, on my very first visit to the Spice Mill, I tried the cheeseburger. It wasn't the juicy big beefy patty that I like seeing in a burger, so I didn't have much hope for the location. On subsequent visits, I've tried other things, and have been pleasantly surprised. For a counter-service location the food here is pretty decent, (if you stay away from the cheeseburger).
This time around, I selected the Pulled Pork Sandwich Platter. Don't expect too much from the word "platter" though, it's Spice Mill's way of saying there's a side of fries, and it's served on a plate. At $10.79 (2016) the sandwich itself is a good bit larger than anything you'll find at a Disney park, and from a taste standpoint, there's really nothing to complain about.
The menu does state that this is a Pulled Pork Sandwich and not a BBQ Pork Sandwich, so it's not intended to be a "real", slow cooked, pulled pork, bbq type of meat. However, it's more of that… than some of the sauced-up variations that we've found at other parks. The Spice Mill sandwich was not slathered in sauce (although there was a bit on there), and I have to say... the pulled pork by itself was better than most of the counter-service level pulled pork that I've found on similar sandwiches.
The sauce was a not-too-sweet (which seems to be the trend these days), but was a slightly smoky, slightly tangy, typical fast-food bbq sauce. The whole sandwich isn't breaking new culinary ground, but this is a counter-service location after all. What the Pulled Pork Sandwich does manage to do, is elevate itself above the Burgers at Spice Mill, (by at least a solid point), and is on par with the large Homemade Vegetable Chili in a bread bowl (which got high marks from me).