The menu at the new Nintendo-themed quick service restaurant at Universal Studios Hollywood pretty much checks off all the boxes you’re looking for in grab-and-go food and drinks at a theme park: Fun, cute, themed, Instagramable and fast.
But does the food taste good?
The stars of the show shined brightly while the supporting cast was pretty much what you’d expect during a media preview of the eatery before its grand opening next week.
The new Power Up Cafe on Universal’s Upper Lot officially opens on Thursday, Feb. 15 following a few weeks in soft-opening mode.
I tried everything on the menu at Power Up Cafe during a media preview on Thursday, Feb. 8 and found the calzones to be delicious, the pretzel and popcorn to be standard fare and most of the specialty drinks to be plenty of fun but too sweet for my taste.
Don’t go looking for this new Nintendo-themed food stand in Universal’s new Super Nintendo World themed land on the Lower Lot. Power Up Cafe is about as far away from the immersive Nintendo land as you can get. It’s on the Upper Lot near the park entrance next to the DreamWorks Theatre.
Power Up Cafe offers a dining alternative to the often-booked Toadstool Cafe in the tightly confined new land and injects more Nintendo into the park that has seen a big boost in attendance and visitor spending since Super Nintendo World opened in early 2023.
Power Up Cafe is basically a gussied up pizza stand with a novel twist on the grab-and-go slice of pizza. The new Nintendo cafe serves a pair of $13 calzones shaped like the green and red extra-life mushrooms from the Super Mario Bros. video games.
The Italian oven-baked turnovers are almost too adorable to eat — but once you take your first bite you’ll find it hard to stop. It’s like a culinary work of art you can hold in your hand — until you just have to start eating and stop admiring the craftsmanship.
The meaty red Super Mushroom is stuffed with pepperoni, sausage, mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce filling that looks like a Ragu sauce. The veggie green 1-Up Mushroom is filled with spinach, green pepper, mushroom, mozzarella cheese and basil pesto that looks like a spinach dip.
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These are not your everyday pizza turnovers. The dough is shaped to look like the Super Mario mushrooms with red and green dye added to color the mushroom caps and mozzarella circles stuck on top to create the polka dots. The camera eats first at Power Up Cafe and you’ll be unable to resist snapping a photo for your social media feed before biting into your calzone.
I loved the meaty red Super Mushroom calzone that satisfied my meat-lovers’ appetite. But the green 1-Up Mushroom calzone is almost as good and a great veggie option. I’d recommend getting them both and sharing them with someone you don’t mind swapping bites with. Because this is a handheld food with no knives or forks necessary.
The $13 Fire Flower Pretzel is cute — but a little dry and lacking salt. This is basically the Nintendo version of the Mickey Pretzel at Disneyland — but without as much soft pretzel fluffiness.
That’s because the soft pretzel is flattened to create the Fire Flower shape. The Fire Flower Pretzel pulls apart a bit like a cardamom bun so you can dip the pretzel petals in your choice of three sauces: mustard, chipotle cheese and white queso.
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I liked the queso the best and found myself dipping my calzone in the cheese sauce. It would be great if Power Up Cafe offered the queso or a marinara dipping sauce for the calzones — but that’s not an option at the moment.
The $7 Super Star Popcorn was nothing special. Just butter popcorn topped with edible glitter in a Nintendo cardboard box. The glitter gets all over your hands and lips as you shovel the popcorn into your mouth. But otherwise it’s just movie theater popcorn.
The second half of the menu is dedicated to four sugary beverages. And when I say sugary, I mean there is an actual Nintendo-shaped Power Up sugar cube you drop in your drink to add some flavor, fizz and sparkle to the experience.
The sugar cubes are shaped like the Super Mushroom, 1-Up Mushroom, Fire Flower and Super Star characters from the video games and come in a yellow Question Mark Block cardboard box.
The best part of the $13 specialty drinks: The boba popping pearls that you slurp up through the super-sized straw with every sip.
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My favorite of the four Sprite-based drinks was the Super Star Fizz with lemon popping pearls and a mango pineapple Super Star Power Up sugar cube.
The close runner-up: The 1-Up Mushroom Fizz with green apple popping pearls and a lime 1-Up Mushroom Power Up.
That’s right. My two favorite drinks added lemon or lime flavoring to a lemon-lime soda. That tells you where my pedestrian tastes lie when it comes to specialty soft drinks.
That also explains why I didn’t like the way too sweet Super Mushroom Fizz (strawberry popping pearls and strawberry sugar cube) and the slightly spicy Fire Flower Fizz (orange popping pearls and a mango habanero sugar cube).
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While I appreciated the themed storytelling the Nintendo-shaped sugar cubes added to the drink experience, I didn’t care for the chunks of sugar that came up the straw with every sip of the Sprite and boba pearls.
The sugar cubes will eventually dissolve on their own, but you’re encouraged to mash the cute little stars and flowers with your big boba straw to activate the flavors, change the color and add a sparkling fizz to the drink.
The drinks also come in $20 Super Mushroom or 1-Up Mushroom collectible sipper cups while the popcorn is also available in a $40 Super Star souvenir bucket.
Universal’s new Power Up Cafe fits neatly into the hottest trend in the fast food industry right now: Snacks.
Snacks fall into two broad categories: That fourth meal of the day to carry you over between breakfast, lunch and dinner and those upsell items that get you to spend a few more bucks beyond your basic order.
Think of the entire menu at a Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts or McDonald’s new concept CosMc’s and you get the general idea behind the snack trend.
Power Up Cafe scratches this itch. If you’re like me and like to snack your way around the park in between rides and meals, then this new Nintendo grab-and-go shop will hit the spot. Just as long as you don’t mind chomping on a few of your favorite Super Mario Bros. characters.
