The 4Roots Cafe is located on the ground floor of the Orlando Science Center. In September of this year the Orlando Science Center renovated their restaurant space that was formerly occupied by a Subway. The Science Center partnered with 4Roots, a non profit alliance founded by restauranteur John Waters. 4R is the charitable arm of the 4R Restaurant Group that includes 4Rivers Smokehouse. 4R revamped the museums restaurant into a place that serves food while at the same time operating as an exhibit that examines food and health issues. The restaurant reopened in October. According to their website the cafe has "A vision to inspire, educate, and empower others about critical food issues." The cafe's mission is not only to provide good, healthy, locally grown food that nourishes your body but they also want to provide education about health, farming practices, food waste, and food insecurity. The education portion of the cafe is achieved with a living wall, cooking demonstrations, videos, food activities, and children's activities. The science center hopes to make eating in their cafe interactive and fun.
The restaurant is set up cafeteria style. It is grab and go counter service coupled with build a bowl. You tell them what you want, they give it to you, you pay, and you seat yourself in the large dining room. When designing the menu, 4Roots had to take in account that they were primarily feeding the children coming to the museum and their parents. The average cost of a menu item is $10. The menu includes build your own bowls, salads, wraps, focaccia, sandwiches, vegetarian options, a kids menu, and desserts. I ordered the balsamic chicken and mozzarella sandwich on baguette ($7.49). The bread was fresh and chewy and they heated it up so that the cheese was melted. It was delicious and reasonably priced.
It looks the space is still being set up. On the way in they had an amazing diorama of the ocean and a Florida lighthouse scene made entirely out of sugar. Future exhibits will include hydroponics and a Florida food heroes section. Right now because of Covid you can only enter the restaurant through the museum entrance. Eventually you will be able to visit the 4Roots Cafe without paying the museum entrance fee. The 4Roots Cafe is a new experiment for the Science Center. It will be interesting to see how it develops. read more