Picture it: You’ve just finished riding Avatar: Flight of Passage, and your next Lightning Lane isn’t until 1:30PM, when suddenly, your stomach starts grumbling.

Tree of Life in Disney World

There are a lot of places you could eat in Animal Kingdom, but it can be difficult to know where to start! Well, we’ve got you covered! We’ve already ranked ALL of the restaurants in this park, but today we’re taking a close look at one particular item to see if it’s worth your cash!

Over at Flame Tree Barbecue in Animal Kingdom, you’ll find a number of tasty barbecue eats. There’s mac and cheese with pulled pork and an onion ring(!!), ribs, chicken, and more. But what if you want something light, perhaps something plant-based that won’t weigh you down. Then you might want to pick up the Hot Link Smokehouse Sandwich!

This item has been on the menu here for a long time, but we decided to stop by and give it a try to see whether it’s something you should try.

Hot Link Sandwich

This item is made of Plant-based Sausage topped with a Tangy Mustard Barbecue Sauce, Slaw, and Crispy Onions on a House-made New England-style Roll. We’ve had a Hot Link Bowl elsewhere in Animal Kingdom and that one did NOT work for us, so we were very interested to see how this would taste.

To get a true expert’s opinion, we sent in one of our reporters who typically eats a plant-based diet. What did they think? Well, they found that the plant-based “sausage” was actually really nicely seasoned and had a bit of kick to it! Now, there’s no need to be worried — it wasn’t too spicy, and the slaw on top cuts through the spice that is there with a cooling crunch.

The Hot Link Sandwich

The bun it’s served on looks like a conventional hot dog bun, but it had a tinge of sweetness to it that we really enjoyed. It gave this meal a balance of sweet-and-spicy flavors which was great. Also, we have to give a quick shout-out to the crispy fried onions sprinkled on top because those were delicious — more of those on…everything(!!) please! 😂 

When you combine the crunchiness and coolness of the slaw, with what our reporter described as the “salty, savory magic” of the crispy fried onions (they REALLY like fried onions!), plus the subtle heat and seasoning from the “sausage”, and the sweetness and lovely simplicity of the bun, you’ve got a pretty great dish in our opinion. But we do have one complaint.

Have You Tried This Before?

Our biggest complaint is that this sandwich comes from a barbecue restaurant but it didn’t really have much barbecue sauce on it or really capture that signature smoky barbecue flavor. We would have loved for it to have been served with a ton of a more traditional (though still plant-based) barbecue sauce. You could ask for some of their more traditional sauce when you place your order, but you’ll need to inquire to see if it is plant-based if you stick to that type of diet. Aside from the lack of sauce, our plant-based eater really loved this dish and kept raving about those fried onions!

If you’re a plant-based eater, vegetarian, or just someone who wants a sandwich that is light, tastes good, and comes with a side of delicious Disney fries (of course), this could be a great pick for you.

Would You Try It?

If, however, you’re looking for that more “traditional” barbecue flavor you might want to look elsewhere. You could ask for barbecue sauce and that could change things a bit, but it might not quite satisfy that itch.

It’s also a bit more expensive than it was before, as it went from $11.49 to $11.79 recently. But if you want to give it a try, head over to Animal Kingdom. And be sure to share your review with us in the comments!

Another Look at the Inside

For more reviews of the items at Flame Tree Barbecue, click here to see our review of the Ribs and Chicken combo, or click here to see the special food HACK we created at this spot.

WE KNOW – there are SO many great snacks at Disney World! How do you choose (we don’t want to choose but will blow our budget on Day 1 otherwise)? We’ve got you covered! We have reviewed nearly EVERY snack available at Disney World, and we’ve written a series of DFB Guides about them! Check out our DFB Guide to Walt Disney World Dining + Snacks Bundle for all the details you need to plan your snackin’ and spending.

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You can even download them to your smartphone – it’ll be like we’re right there with you in the parks!

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Would you try this plant-based dish? Tell us in the comments!