Best (and Worst) Food and Drinks at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge
While a visit to Disney parks is often about the rides, shows and characters, food at Disney has increasingly taken a center stage. Every time Disney unveils a new attraction or festival, the Disney chefs get to work. The result is always some tasty, innovative and highly Instagrammable new menu items guests scramble to try for themselves.
The Essential Guide to Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge in Disneyland
The most epic expansion at Disney parks in many years just happened with the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge in Disneyland. Naturally, this new land introduces Disney guests to a myriad new food offerings -- this time, from a whole other planet.
In fact, while you won't find character meals or fine dining, food is an integral part of making visitors believe they are actually visiting Batuu, a remote planet on the edge of the Star Wars galaxy. Disney developed the food to reflect that distant location. Most dishes are made of what would be local farm-to-table ingredients (if Batuu actually existed, of course). The result is an absence of chicken fingers and fries, and instead a menu that is pretty ambitious, much like many of the food offerings in Pandora - the World of Avatar at Walt Disney World.
Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge offers a cumulative total of five restaurants and snack stands. TPG had three writers in the land on opening day. We tasted nearly every single dish, sipped most drinks, compared notes and picked our favorites. Here are the best menu items that will tickle your taste buds, along with a few that may have missed the mark. (And yes, the dining outposts on Batuu seem to be coding as dining, so warm up your best credit cards for dining.)
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Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo
The largest restaurant with the most food and beverage choices in Black Spire Outpost is Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo. It's most similar to Satuli Canteen in Pandora, although not quite as enormous. Mobile ordering is available to skip the lines and save time (though at times you need to use mobile ordering an hour or two before you want to eat). The best dishes include:
Fried Endorian Tip-yip. Tip-yip is a lightly breaded white meat chicken dish with a side of vegetable mashed potatoes and gravy. It's probably the safest choice on the menu for less adventurous eaters. The restaurant also serves a kids' meal version of this dish with mac and cheese instead of potatoes.
The mac and cheese on the kid plate was actually pretty tasty, so you might want to steal a bite from your kid's plate.
Roasted Endorian Tip-Yip Salad. It's often really hard to get your greens on a theme park vacation, so kudos to Disney for putting a salad front and center. With roasted chicken (aka tip-yip) on top, it's a pretty healthy combination and a break from the many other heavy dishes most guests eat at Disney. Don't let the look of this menu item make you shy away. It would be perfect on a hotter day. The dressing itself was refreshing and not too heavy, but if we had any complaint, it would be that it was a bit overdressed.
Batuu-bon. Between the two desserts on the Docking Bay 7 menu, the Batuu-bon was the better choice. It is a chocolate cake with white chocolate mousse. Disney's description says it also contains coffee custard, but ours was very light on the coffee filling. That's probably a good thing because it made the dessert more kid-friendly.
As for menu misses, we thought the Smoked Kaadu Ribs were ultimately too spicy for sensitive palates and just too messy for theme park fare. A side dish that accompanied this entree, a blueberry corn muffin, was well done but not enough to salvage the overall effect.
The kids' meal Yobshrimp Noodle Salad was a major miss. There are just not that many 3- to 9-year-olds who would enjoy chilled shrimp served with noodles and dressing. Even the adult version isn't likely to be a grand slam, but will find the occasional fan far more frequently than the kid version.
If you are at Docking Bay 7 for breakfast, your menu is a bit more limited, but Rising Moons Overnight Oats were surprisingly good. We didn't expect to go to a theme park and enjoy chilled overnight oats, but as long as you are OK with the consistency, the fruity flavor with real fruit on top was quite good. The pork sausage in the Bright Suns Morning was also a standout in the morning line-up.
Ronto Roasters
Not far from Docking Bay 7 in the market is a smaller food counter, Ronto Roasters, serving just a couple of items. Outside, a droid turns "space meat" on a spit heated by a podracing engine. Mobile ordering is also available at this restaurant to save valuable time in the land.
Ronto Wrap. The main menu item, the Ronto Wrap, is definitely a highlight. It's a folded pita filled with pork sausage and a different variety of sliced pork, topped with slaw. It doesn't necessarily look like it will be as good as it tastes, so don't let the appearance throw you.
The breakfast version, dubbed the Ronto Morning Wrap, also gets strong marks on flavor from the combo of sausage, egg, cheese and sauce.
Kat Saka's Kettle
Outpost Popcorn Mix. Kat Saka's Kettle is a shop in the Black Spire Market serving only one food choice: Outpost Popcorn Mix. The colors are bold purples and reds and the flavor is sweet and spicy. The first few bites were a bit weird, but the dish became rapidly addictive. If you like kettle corn and don't mind a tiny bit of spice, this will be a hit. I even think many kids will enjoy it as well.
Oga's Cantina
Oga's Cantina is the local watering hole on Black Spire Outpost. It's also the first place in Disneyland Park (outside of the private Club 33) to sell alcohol. If you've ever had the chance to stop by Trader Sam's on either Disney coast, you probably already know how well Disney can do exotic cocktails. Oga's drink menu matches that very high standard, but unlike at Trader Sam's, drinks are premixed rather than hand crafted.
There are no food items at Oga's other than snack mix most of the day. The bar does serve a few breakfast items, presumably so guests aren't imbibing on empty stomachs in early morning hours.
With a two alcoholic drink maximum and a very long line to enter, it was not possible to sample all the drinks at Oga's. But with three TPG writers in the land on opening day, we collectively imbibed quite a few of them. We can confidently recommend the following:
Yub Nub. The drink is similar to a mai tai, but with the addition of passion fruit and also a bit heavier on the pineapple. At $42, it's the most expensive drink on the Oga's menu (but it comes with a very high-quality souvenir Endor tiki mug).
Bespin Fizz. This rum-based drink combines yuzu purée, pomegranate juice and white cranberry juice. It's topped with a cloud swirl that spills over the edge of the glass like a dry ice fog. We couldn't taste much alcohol in it (especially after the Yub Nub, which definitely packs a punch), but the fruity flavor was refreshing. It's a much smaller drink that goes down quickly.
If you are in the market for an (expensive) fun nonalcoholic drink, the Cliff Dweller, also comes with a keepsake Porg mug and is quite tasty, comprised of ginger ale, a blend of juices, hibiscus-grenadine and coconut. Expect to spend $32 for the cool drink with the adorable mug.
Milk Stand
Blue or Green Milk. The menu is simple at Milk Stand. This quick service counter near the First Order's headquarters serves blue milk and green milk. (Neither is actually milk.) These drinks are moderately sweet smoothie-like concoctions made with nondairy ingredients like coconut and rice.
The blue milk is largely considered the tastier of the two but unfortunately neither was truly excellent. This is a novelty drink that most people will order for either fun memories of Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen (or just for Instagram) but not everyone will truly finish the "milk." After three or four sips of each, I threw mine away. At $7.99 each, that's an expensive Instagram shot.
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Bottom Line
The food in Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge pushes a few boundaries and is quite innovative. There are some excellent selections, but also a few misses, mostly due to the innovative nature of the ingredients.
Disney always tweaks the menus after new land openings like these so expect changes in the coming weeks and months. In particular, I'd expect (and hope) for a new kids' meal offering or additional snack to pop up somewhere.
For more inspiration:
- First Look Inside Disney's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge
- Was the Force With Disney for Opening Day of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge?
- Disney's Star Wars Land Is 'Sold Out' — Here's How to Still Get In
- Miles Away: Using an LAX Layover for a Day at Disneyland
- The Best Restaurants at Disneyland in 2019
- The Best Restaurants at Disney World in 2019