On Saturday, I went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios at Hollywood with my mom in tow. The first thing we did was to head straight for the line to the wand shop.
However, after hopping in line to buy wands, we headed directly to the butterbeer cart. I’d heard from friends that the frozen butterbeer was to die for, so naturally that’s what I got. I had to have the full Harry Potter experience!
The $7 drink came with a froth that tasted like melted vanilla ice cream and covered a frozen slush of caramel-colored goodness. The drink itself was like a sugar punch to the face, but a good punch (if that’s possible).
It tasted like a mixture of a crazy amount of butterscotch and a dash of cream soda. It was really good but the amount of sugar in it made it only possible to consume half between myself and my mom.
For lunch, we went to the Three Broomsticks. We got an order of fish and chips, a beef, lamb, and Guinness stew in a bread bowl, non-alcoholic pear cider, pumpkin fizz, and potted butter beer cream. The fish and chips was a classic plate with what you would normally expect: fried fish, french fries, and tarter sauce. Simple and yummy. The stew came with a side salad that was nothing special but good. The stew itself was decently thick, made up of meat and veggies, and had a very strong rosemary component. I was a fan of it but my mom was not, so we ended up switching plates halfway through.
I also had the pumpkin fizz drink, which was a carbonated apple juice with cinnamon, nutmeg, and pumpkin puree. I really enjoyed it because it was basically a bubbly pumpkin spice drink. Harry Potter himself would most likely approve. My mom had the pear cider and it was good but didn’t have much flavor to it—mainly just a slight, sweet pear flavor.
But, oh man, the potted butterbeer cream though. If the drink was already a sugar overload, this was death by sugar. There was a dollop of whipped cream that was extra sweetened, a thick yellow layering of liquid butterscotch, and vanilla pudding underneath. Two bites of this and I was done with sweets for the rest of the month.
Even though I was queasy at the thought of sugar after lunch, we went to the candy store, Honeyduke’s, because of course we had to. I bought a classic Chocolate Frog, which is just solid milk chocolate in the shape of a frog.
The store also had Chocolate Cauldrons, which was solid milk chocolate just in the shape of a cauldron.
Honeyduke’s even had a case of desserts like fudge and caramel apples. In the case, they even had the desserts from the books, such as Pumpkin Pasties and Cauldron Cakes.
The pumpkin pasties were basically empanadas with pumpkin pie filling in the middle while the cauldron cakes where chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting and a chocolate handle. All the sweets were great and I recommend them all.
With that, we could not put anything else in our stomachs. All in all, the food was good but nothing was particularly amazing. Good luck with your future wizarding food endeavors!