Here's what you don't see when you eat at Universal Epic Universe

USA Today

18 hours ago

Here's what you don't see when you eat at Universal Epic Universe
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Epic Universe restaurants show off these 'epic' foods
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ORLANDO, Fla. – When you bite into a Mario Burger in Super Nintendo World or fish and chips in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, you're getting more than the ingredients listed on their Universal Orlando Resort menus.
You're getting a taste of the resort's state-of-the-art Production Kitchen, one of the most impressive things guests never see backstage on the campus of the new Epic Universe theme park.
'The PK or Production Kitchen and bakery touches pretty much every single restaurant outlet of Universal in some shape or others,' said Chef Jens Dahlmann, vice president, Culinary Operations at Universal Orlando. 'For Red Oven Pizza (Bakery) in CityWalk, it might be only making their Neapolitan-style pizza dough. For Big Fire, it might only make the chili, but other locations are truly relying on the Production Kitchen to help them just open and run efficiently.'
USA TODAY was invited behind the scenes to see how.
Cooking from scratch, for scale
One of first pieces of equipment highlighted on the PK tour was a huge lift that can hoist and sift a 2,200-pound bag of flour.
"In our old PK, which we had on the (Universal Studios Florida) side, we would have 50-pound bags of flour. We had to shoulder pack them and carry them,' Dahlmann said. The new lift not only reduces risk of injury, but increases efficiency.
The flour goes into all kinds of house-made breads and pastries, including brioche buns for Mario Burgers at Toadstool Cafe. Dahlmann said they produce more than 5 million brioche buns each year for the wider resort, and that's just one of hundreds of unique items prepared in the PK. Others include scratch-made marinara and Alfredo sauces, freshly chopped fruit for fruit salads, and hand-cut fish for fish and chips.
'It's all freshly cut cod from the Pacific, and we are butchering it, cutting it by hand,' Dahlmann said. 'As well, we buy whole salmon every day, cases and cases of it, and our team is breaking them down, filleting it and then portion-cutting it.'
Butchered fish and meats are sent out to resort restaurants, where they're cooked on site, as close to guests as possible. For other items, like the ribs smoking and stew simmering during USA TODAY's visit, Dahlmann said, 'It makes more sense for us to do it in one larger batch, versus asking the location that doesn't have the right equipment to do it every day on a stovetop.'
Eateries order only what they need a day in advance, which helps reduce food waste. Most items are prepared to order, but a few extra staples like house-made pickles are kept on hand in a food bank.
'I just love the idea that we do things from scratch,' Dahlmann said.
Ensuring food safety
Items that are cooked get quickly cooled down in glass chillers or icy whirlpools.
'It's really important for us that we cook food quick, so we bring it through the danger zone,' Dahlmann said. 'So, at 165 (degrees), I kill most bacteria. If I hold it at the temperature, I mean there's nothing there. But then I have to make sure, once I hit this window, that I cool the food down in a very timely manner as well. The government gives us six hours to go from 165 to under 40. We do this in like an hour.'
Food safety starts much earlier.
"It starts up with our sourcing department and procurement department, so we identify vendors we can trust,' he said. 'We send them out to the vendor just to qualify, is the location acceptable? Will they be able to produce consistent, safe food for us and our guests?'
The PK and adjacent Food and Beverage Warehouse were designed so that food comes in one side and goes out another, to avoid cross contamination. There are also different rooms for different needs like a raw meat room for butchering and ready-to-eat room where deli cheeses are sliced.
'Everything gets washed when sanitized between the users,' Dahlmann said. 'Everything gets tagged, labeled, so we have batch numbers. We have recipe numbers. We can always revert back to the production code as well, so there's a lot of food safety built into the process.'
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Storytelling through food
Storytelling is also built in. That starts in Universal's Research and Development Kitchen, in the same building as the PK.
For marquee events like Mardi Gras and Halloween Horror Nights, Chef Robert Martinez, Jr., director of Culinary, executive chef at Universal Orlando, said they plan about six months ahead, but they spent years working on Epic Universe, partnering with Universal Creative and stakeholders on intellectual property.
'Many menus that never made the cut, never will see the light of day and some of them that will have to venture back to see how it could be in addition to some of these amazing menus that we've already created,' he said.
More than 100 new menu items are available at Epic Universe, including popular Mac & Cheese cones in How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk and the Bièraubeurre (Butterbeer) Crepe in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic.
'We've definitely made some adjustments in our production, fine-tuning some of these recipes, making sure that they're 100% able to be enjoyed by our guests, that we're able to replicate what we've created on a daily basis,' Martinez said. 'Obviously the Mac & Cheese cones have gone viral, so we really have to ramp production on that, but really everything is still going exactly how we designed it.'
The chefs have been 'tickled' by guests' response, but that isn't the best part.
'Every day we come into work and we're trying to create food that exceeds guests' expectation and takes them somewhere,' he said. 'To see the pride of our culinary team members, our cooks, our stewards, our managers – and they're living it now, they're bringing it to life and they're so excited about it – that's so rewarding for us.'
The reporter on this story received access from Universal Orlando Resort. USA TODAY maintains editorial control of content.