2. Seriously tasty food

Image: Jett Farrell-Vega

If you like zesty spice blends, Satu’li Canteen might become your new home away from home. In trying to capture the “flavors of Pandora”, Disney combined several different elements from South Asian, Brazilian, Korean, and other cuisines. If you are a fan of any of these, you will have no issue finding something enjoyable at Satu'li Canteen. The Vegetable Steamed Curry Pods were a particularly delicious surprise.

While the menu is small, the customizable nature of the bowls allows guests to play with a wide variety of combinations to match a range of flavor palettes. It is well worth visiting more than once to find the protein-base-sauce combination that transports your taste buds to Pandora and back, and on top of that, the desserts aren’t just a treat for your eyes. All in all, Satu’li Canteen gives one seriously good quick service experience. While we loved our meal, there is another element of this establishment that truly took the cake for us.

3. It's delightfully geeky

Image: Jett Farrell-Vega

Satu’li Canteen is the most magnificently geeky restaurant in all of Walt Disney World. You don’t have to be a fan of James Cameron’s Avatar to enjoy the restaurant’s atmosphere, which could be likened to a hodge-podge of Firefly meets Pacific Rim meets Ferngully.

If you’ve ever played an MMORPG video game, you might be familiar with the efforts online games go to to keep players in a constant state of immersion. Visiting Satu’li Canteen feels like leaving the real world to step into a mess hall that could exist in almost any popular science fiction canon. It feels like a living role-playing experience. The place is thick with references to the mythology of Avatar, and despite not being a fan of the original film, I found myself grinning and totally entranced the whole time. It’s insanely nerdy in all the best ways, and if you are the special type of fan who would appreciate that, you are in for a treat at Satu'li Canteen.