Historically, the title of one of worst theme park food courts in all of Orlando area belonged to Comic Strip Café. Comic Strip Café can be found within Toon Lagoon area of Islands of Adventure. Previously, Comic Strip Café served basic burgers, sandwiches, boring theme park pizza, fries, and milkshakes. The style of food that distinguished this place was the Asian food. They offered a dragon platter. This platter was an odd merging of sweet and sour and beef and broccoli with rice/egg roll.

Now, most of those items have been replaced in a massive menu change late last week. You can still get a bacon cheeseburger, a chicken Caesar salad, and a chicken sandwich. Yet, nothing else of former menu remains. The majority of new menu consists of arepas and Asian food now.

In recent months, arepas have grown in popularity at Universal Orlando. They became common to find in the food trucks for seasonal food options. The arepas were popular among guests. Universal food service appears to want to capitalize on this.

Now, Comic Strip Café offers three different types of arepas on new menu.

These reflect the same style as seen in the seasonal food trucks. They offer picadillo beef filled ones as well as carnitas (pork shoulder) filled ones for $12.49. You may purchase a cheese filled one for $11.99. Universal Orlando’s version of arepas resemble soft tacos in composition. The major difference is larger portion size as well as using a South American style corn cake for the tortilla.

The other surprising menu adjustment at Comic Strip Café involves several new Asian style options.

You can now order various ramen bowls. The varieties presented are Char Siu pork belly, Tofu, beef bulgogi, edamame dumpling ramen. These cost either $12.99 or $13.99. You can add an egg roll for $3 more. In addition, you can get the bulgogi beef in a rice bowl for $14.99, The rest of Asian menu additions are rounded out with edamame dumplings ($11.99) and tiger shrimp salad ($13.49). For my friends that enjoyed the Dragon Platter, that disappeared from the new menu.

Overall, this menu looks like a huge improvement from below average theme park menu offered previously. Very initial reports indicate food is better but not great.

My friend Xavier, at Universal Food Blog, recently ordered a ramen bowl. He felt the bowl was good but not great. Based on his experience, guests should skip the egg roll. This dining location never excelled in previous years. So far, early reports indicate this menu works better than the previous one. Still, this location remains skippable. However, if you find yourself hungry in Toon Lagoon area, this menu change might be a good option for you. I would still select a burger at Wimpy’s myself but at least Comic Strip Café adds variety for guests of Islands of Adventure.