With robot monkeys and a talking tree – many people have fond memories of the Rainforest Cafe
Diners at a Rainforest Cafe in 1998 (not Trafford Centre)(Image: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2975999)
Do you ever pine for the sounds of distant thunder and waterfalls while you tuck into a toastie? Perhaps you yearn to be wafted by elephant ears, or feel the hot breath of a gorilla on the back of your neck as you sip on a latte?
Sound like a bit of a fever dream? Well, many people have memories such as these thanks to a much-missed attraction from the earliest days of the Trafford Centre.
It’s been over 25 years since the Trafford Centre opened its doors. The colossal shopping and entertainment complex has become such an integral part of the city’s landscape that it’s almost inconceivable to recall a time before its existence.
One of the Trafford Centre’s earliest attractions, the Rainforest Café, opened with the shopping centre in 1998. Although it disappeared over twenty years ago, recently people have been sharing their memories on the social media site Reddit.
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The jungle-themed restaurant chain was Steven Schussler’s brainchild and made its debut in America, with the first location opening in 1994. By the late 1990s, the chain expanded internationally, with its first location in London, and a Manchester site soon followed.
Part theme park, part restaurant, the Amazon-inspired attraction was based in The Orient and housed tropical foliage, a talking tree and animatronic jungle beasts.
However, in addition to robot gorillas, elephants, and crocodiles, there were also real, live animals, including parrots and aquarium tanks containing over 350 fish.
The Rainforest Cafe had branches all over the globe(Image: Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images)
Customers would enjoy meals like the spaghetti-based Wallaby Wok or Jurassic Chicken against the sounds of thunderstorms and cascading waterfalls.
But you didn’t have to have a youngster in to enjoy the atmosphere or the food. Staff, known as “safari guides”, waited on tables located under the moist surroundings of the lush jungle canopy while the ‘Magic Mushroom’ bar served drinks and novelty cocktails.
Just weeks after the Trafford Centre opened, journalist David Harrison penned a review of the café for the Manchester Evening News.
He described being seated in the café by one of the ‘safari guides’ while he marvelled at the cascading waterfall and the “astronomically correct” recreation of the Milky Way above his head.
He wrote: “So there you are, minding your own sweet business and tucking into, say, a Rainforest Pitta Quesadilla or a Gorillas In The Mist banana cheesecake (as one does), or swigging a Speckled Forest Grasshopper cocktail, when, all of a sudden, a baby elephant bellows in your ear.
“There is much more man-made excitement to come. As a tropical storm rumbles around (complete with thunder and lightning), the herd of tuskers flap their ears and a baby monkey swings through the branches above your head.
Animatronic elephants were all part of the dining experience at Trafford Centre’s Rainforest Cafe(Image: Rainforest Cafe)
“Every 22 minutes, Maya the jaguar growls and whisks her tail and Bamba, the giant silverback gorilla, beats his chest and shakes the trees on Gorilla Mountain as the jungle mists rise atmospherically from the forest floor.”
He then describes the Rainforest Café’s equally unusual bar area.
“Patrons of the Magic Mushroom bar sit under a giant mushroom cap on stools carved and painted to look like animal legs as they sip their Raspberry Rainfall cocktails or their Money’s Python ‘smoothies’ made from non-fat frozen yoghurt.
“This ‘animatronic’ wonderworld, where the special effects and life-sized robot animals are magically controlled by computer, really lives up to its billing as ‘a wild place to eat’.”
Many in Greater Manchester still hold fond memories of the Rainforest Cafe(Image: Trafford Centre)
But the café wasn’t just a place to eat and drink. Donations thrown to the animatronic crocodile in its pool were distributed to environmental charities, while Tracy the Talking Tree gave a mini-lecture on the environment every 15 minutes. Diners could also pick up educational books and toys on environmental themes.
‘As a kid it was like going to Disney World, but in the Trafford Centre’
Sadly, after a couple of years, The Trafford Centre’s Rainforest Café closed around 2003. The site later became a Nando’s.
The London branch in Piccadilly Circus closed in 2022 and rebranded as Jungle Cave. However, the brand still exists in the US, and a few other Rainforest Cafés are also scattered around the globe.
Recently, the vivid memory of the Trafford Centre’s Rainforest Café has surfaced again on Reddit’s r/manchester subreddit.
Reddit user Ranoni18 posted a picture of the café and asked, “Does anyone else remember the Rainforest Café that was in the Trafford Centre in the late ’90s/ early 2000s? I used to absolutely love that place.”
Later in comments, Ranoni18 also said: “As a kid it was like going to Disney World, but in the Trafford Centre lol.”
Rainforest Cafe came complete with robot animals, thunderstorms, and jungle mists(Image: Leandro Neumann Ciuffo – Rainforest Cafe, CC BY 2.0)
And many other Redditors remembered the jungle attraction too.
AncestralSeeker posted: “It was so good, I remember being really upset when it closed down (I was 10).” Adding: “Ahh, ’90s Trafford was the best Trafford.”
Philswitchengage commented: “Loved it, it was when dining could be an actual experience especially as a kid. [I] Remember going to one in London a few years later, [it] was still good but think it had began its inevitable decline. Feel sorry for anyone who never got to experience it as it was truly one of a kind.”
Doobalicious69 said: “Used to love the crocodile they had there. Didn’t people treat it like a wishing well and used to throw coins in its mouth?”
Ant105 said: “Yes!! I think about this place often! It’s literally a core memory of mine. They used to have a little section full of gemstones and crystals that used to fascinate me as a child. Good times! Glad others remember this place too!”
User theRuck remembered: “I was always taken for a treat as a kid. I remember a big fish tank, too, and a robot tree that told stories.”