One of the best restaurants on Disney World property is the Satu’li Canteen – and it’s a quick service restaurant. We talk a lot about how amazing the food options are at WDW but focus most often on the more deluxe dining establishments that need a reservation or the food kiosks during the Epcot festivals. This little quick service restaurant in Pandora (you’ve seen Avatar, right?) takes theme park eating to another world (lol, I’m funny.) Want a burger or a hot dog? Satu’li has them but they won’t look anything like what you’re expecting and they’ll taste better than any cheeseburger or hot dog you’ve had.
Can you tell I love the Satu’li Canteen?
One of the things that makes this restaurant different from any other quick service restaurant on property is their bowls. You choose a base, a protein, and a sauce – they add slaw and some bobas – and the results are amazing.
Because it’s just the three of us here and I’m not insane, I decided to choose the base and protein(s) and the sauce and folks would have to just take what I made. It’s funny, TW has been anti-meat lately but when I told her I was making the bowls, she immediately assumed I was making the steak version. I wasn’t. I made the tofu version for us and since I had some pre-cooked chicken from the Portillo’s salad earlier in the week, I made chicken for Momal (she does not like tofu.)
I also chose the potato hash as the base and TW seemed to expect I would choose the noodles. Or make both (lol, she’s funnyyyy.) I did choose the creamy herb sauce, which was her preference, too.
I started with this set of recipes. Again, note that I made the potato hash, the slaw, and the tofu. I did not make any changes to these recipes at all. (Note: I tossed the pre-cooked chicken I had in the fridge with this same tofu seasoning and it worked just fine.) If I make this again, I will definitely make these light changes:
- I’ll buy bagged slaw.
- I’ll do the potato hash in the air fryer instead of the oven.
- I’ll fry the tofu on the stove instead of using the air fryer.
This was all super easy to make, it was just time consuming to dice all of the potatoes and slice all of the cabbage and I’m not a huge fan of spending an hour prepping food. Ultimately worth it but I didn’t really enjoy it lol.
The Creamy Herb Sauce was a different story. I planned this poorly, probably because I originally planned to use the Charred Onion Vinaigrette and changed my mind because Creamy Herb is better.
I had planned to use this recipe but ran into problems. First, our basil is pretty much dried up and gone and I didn’t expect that and didn’t order any basil from the last grocery pick up. I had parsley from the last grocery order but apparently forgot to ask for cilantro or they just gave me parsley twice. I’m not sure what happened but since I didn’t have either the basil or the cilantro – this seemed like it wasn’t going to work. Not to mention they suggested making it the day ahead and dinner was only five hours away…. It also seemed a lot more green than I remembered. So off I went for a new recipe.
I landed here and thought this looked promising – except we apparently didn’t have cardamom. And, it was clearly not green at all. Which was not right. So, I tweaked. I made this recipe but used garam masala instead of the cardamom and I left out the extra salt, just in case. I also chopped up about 1/4 cup of the parsley and added that. I let it all hang out in the fridge for a few hours and …. it was good. Very good. TW told me to save the leftover for other salads we might eat over the next few days.
The only other issue is the popping bobas. I couldn’t bring myself to pay a whole lot of dollars for them via Amazon and you’ll be shocked to know that a) Walmart doesn’t have them. b) Hitchcocks doesn’t have them. c) Sam’s and BJ’s don’t have them. So… I used my Cocktail Caviar bobas and that was a mistake. lol. TOO much boozy flavor. I’m going to have to buy some popping bobas because I like the bobas on the bowls. It’s part of what makes the Satu’li Canteen theming so amazing.
I had planned to make the pineapple lumpia from Pongu Pongu for dessert but forgot all about it and … for reasons I’ll explain later, it didn’t happen. Stay tuned. (And plan to make your own Satu’li bowls. You won’t regret it Just go track down some popping boba. You probably don’t live in a tiny town and maybe have a better grocery store or a frozen yogurt shop or a tea shop that has them.)