8 Best Restaurants in Universal Orlando, Florida

Inspired by camping trips and cooking over an open flame, this restaurant features a menu that brings back memories. Among the entrées are fire-grilled steaks, Colorado lamb shanks, beer-glazed scallops, barbecue shrimp, skillet-roasted half chicken, and the Heathstone Seafood Bake, which includes wood oven–baked northern whitefish, shrimp, cold-water mussels, andouille sausage, fresh corn, red potatoes, and lemon butter. Specialty salads and hamburgers are also featured, along with side dishes that include Southern-style potato salad, coleslaw, cornbread, fire-grilled vegetables, and smashed potatoes. Still hungry? Sample the s'mores. It's like dining in a lakeside summer house.

In your hurry to reach the attractions upon entering the park, you could (like many people) walk right past this full-service restaurant without noticing it, but it's a good place to enjoy a sit-down meal. The menu is American with international influences, and offerings include exotic wraps and sandwiches as well as entrées ranging from chilled tuna noodle bowls and pad Thai to sweet-and-sour ribs.

Although this restaurant is built to resemble Rome's Colosseum and contains 1,000 seats, there's often a wait at lunch or dinner. The music is always loud, the walls are covered with rock memorabilia, and the menu still features the burger that started it all—the steakburger with applewood bacon, cheddar cheese, a crispy onion ring, leaf lettuce, and vine-ripened tomato. Barbecued meats, from baby-back ribs to hand-pulled pork, are smoked on-site. Other entrées include New York strip steak, grilled Norwegian salmon, and Tupelo chicken tenders.

With an adventurer's theme honoring its namesake aviator (Captain Jake McNally), this gastropub is a great place to grab a cold one as well as anything from a Caesar salad or flatbread sandwich to shrimp mac 'n' cheese or roasted chicken. Jake's also hosts seasonal beer dinners that feature regional and specialty brews.

This casual restaurant has omelet stations at breakfast; flatbreads, sandwiches, and salads at lunch; and grilled salmon, filet mignon, and roast chicken at dinner. The kids' menu is entertaining, with plates such as I Don't Want That (grilled cheese) or I'm Not Hungry (chicken tenders) that are served with a choice of fries, a salad, or fresh fruit.

At the corner of Hollywood and Vine is a flashy 1950s-style eatery with a retro spaceship design and several vintage cars parked out in front. Thanks to its location and look, this is one of the most popular choices in the park, so you might have to brave crowds for an extra-thick shake (recommended) or an order of the decadent chili-cheese fries. Basically, it's the burgers that draw crowds in. In case you and others in your group decide to go your separate ways, Mel's is also a great place to meet up.

Though the giant beer tanks are just for show, this bar has plenty of brews to accompany everything from loaded nachos, fish tacos, giant pretzels, and sturdy sandwiches to ½-pound premium Black Angus beef burgers (the Grand Slam features a pound of beef), sirloin and strip steaks, cedar-plank salmon, and ribs. If you're looking to watch a game, this is the spot: it has more than 100 giant TV screens.

A steampunk decor of gizmos, gears, pulleys, belts, and smokestacks is the backdrop for this very popular restaurant, where chocolate and sweets rule. Desserts—ranging from artisanal milk shakes and sumptuous sundaes to chocolate brownie bark, bacon brittle, and salted caramel flan—are naturally big draws. But one cannot live on sweets alone, which explains the salads, soups, flatbreads, sandwiches, hamburgers, and pastas, as well as more extravagant entrées such as grilled teriyaki salmon, braised short ribs, filet mignon, and cocoa pork tenderloin.