Where are the most awesome zoo eateries and what makes them awesome?

DavidBrown

DavidBrown

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
I just wanted to start a fun thread.

Zoo restaurants are an important visitor amenity. Are there any really great ones out there that are special or worthy of visiting the zoo for on their own?

From photos it looks like the Fort Worth Zoo has a cool cafe in the new reptile house that has a viewing wall into the gharial habitat.

What other great zoo restaurants are out there and what makes them worth of visiting?
 
Zoo eateries....

Wroclaw Zoo, several years ago, had me going 'ooh, look at this' [at the animals] over & over, while my wife was getting more & more worn out. She doesn't really 'do' zoos, and was moaning about being hungry. Much was her delight when I found her a really good Halibut & chips in a fairly ordinary looking cafe in the middle of the zoo. Not just any old fish, but Halibut, hundreds of miles from the sea. So, Wroclaw gets my vote for best zoo eating experience.
 
FBBird said:
Wroclaw Zoo, several years ago, had me going 'ooh, look at this' [at the animals] over & over, while my wife was getting more & more worn out. She doesn't really 'do' zoos, and was moaning about being hungry. Much was her delight when I found her a really good Halibut & chips in a fairly ordinary looking cafe in the middle of the zoo. Not just any old fish, but Halibut, hundreds of miles from the sea. So, Wroclaw gets my vote for best zoo eating experience.
Click to expand...

Rather tasty I am sure, but 'Harry the Halibut' had been taken off show only 24 hours previous to this addition to the menu :D

The place that gets my vote of good food is Carraghs wildlife park on the Isle of Man. My main reason for the vote is that they don't sell much (if any) junk food, a meal is with fresh veg or salad and real meat, not processed crap like most zoos serve up at ridiculous prices these days.

I think many zoos could potentially increase their profits with a decent restaurant instead of serving up fast food junk stuff.
 
It probably was the Playtpus Barbie--it was near the place where they have receptions, etc. I was there for a ZAA meeting.
 
Thanks to everybody for the replies. One of my purposes in creating this thread is to explore if there are any zoo restaurants out there that integrated into the animal exhibits and provide as good of a "show" while you eat in terms of watching animals.

docend24 mentioned that you can watch the tigers from the cafe at the Brno Zoo.

I've read that the Denver Zoo has a restaurant overlooking some of their African predators if I remember correctly. Has anyone eaten there?

The Oregon Zoo has a restaurant built around an African bird aviary.
 
DavidBrown said:
Thanks to everybody for the replies. One of my purposes in creating this thread is to explore if there are any zoo restaurants out there that integrated into the animal exhibits and provide as good of a "show" while you eat in terms of watching animals.

docend24 mentioned that you can watch the tigers from the cafe at the Brno Zoo.

I've read that the Denver Zoo has a restaurant overlooking some of their African predators if I remember correctly. Has anyone eaten there?

The Oregon Zoo has a restaurant built around an African bird aviary.
Click to expand...

Dallas zoo's Giants of the Savanna includes a small restaurant with windows looking directly into a lion exhibit, and the combination of a heated rock (winter) and shade and air-conditioned windows (summer) pretty much assure great views of lions. But the restaurant "through-put" is not ideal, as people stay much longer to watch the lions!

Jacksonville has a similar setup in its jaguar exhibit.

Dallas World Aquarium has an excellent Mexican restaurant with big windows overlooking its "Maya Mundo" walkthrough rainforest aviary.

Leipzig zoo has a stunning elevated lodge-styled restaurant overlooking their African savanna (giraffe, zebra, oryx, ostrich, gazelle)-- it's the best of its kind I've ever seen.
 
Here is a little-known gem: Montgomery Zoo, Alabama - Overlook Cafe Restaurant. Huge paddocks surround this large, mainly open-air facility, and there are mixed-species exhibits featuring animals from Africa, Asia and North America. Many zoos have cafes that are separated from animal exhibits via glass, but none that I've ever visited have such a vast overlook as this restaurant in Alabama.

An excerpt from my 2010 review:

As a zoo fan who loves to see lots of space in animal enclosures, I adore the design, layout and implementation of the continental system at Montgomery Zoo. Eating lunch at the Overlook Café and walking around gazing at 3 enormous paddocks for hoofstock from Africa, Asia and North America is a terrific experience, and the Australian section also features a huge yard for its Aussie “hoofstock” (macropods). Montgomery Zoo used to be only 8 acres in size, and it is not a coincidence that the weakest area of the zoo (the South American zone) is also the old, original establishment. In the early 1990’s the zoo expanded from 8 to 40 acres, and thus the vast majority of the zoo is fairly new, naturalistic and quite impressive. I would definitely recommend for all zoo fans to tour this rather small gem, as there is a great animal collection and a wonderful set of habitats deliberately organized around a large, central restaurant.
 
Not too sure if this thread concerns the quality of the food or the zoological pertinence of the restaurant..i will go for the former as it is much easier due to the general lack of decent eating.Dallas World Aquarium has a bona-fide restaurant in addition to the Mexican[a cuisine i find HIGHLY over-rated]which is quite superb..Schuler Gastronomie who operate the restaurants at Zoo Berlin and Stuttgart[used to be at Cologne but i heard that they had left] are very good.As for Britain,well Durrell is just about the only place where the dining has any quality about it.The view from MontgomeryZoos restaurant may well be excellent but sadly the selection of sad fry-ups does it no favours,awful food.And a final little trivia point-in the old communist days the restaurant in East Berlin Zoo was one of the few places where non-party citizens could easily eat out, therefore adding to the allure of the zoo itself.
 
There is a burrito bar located at the Living Coast in the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago.For only six dollars you can load up soft shell burrito with your choice of meat and any toppings you like.Out of the many zoo's we frequent or have visited recently this is easily the best food we've had.

Team Tapir
 
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