New Aquarium Australian Exhibit to Include An Outback Steakhouse

By: James Olsen
Crab Staff Writer

PRATT STREET – Officials from the National Aquarium in Baltimore announced that the new Australian exhibit will soon include the United States’ most treasured Australian gem, an Outback Steakhouse.

“We feel that in order for the aquarium’s new exhibit to fulfill all of its potential as genuine Australian, an Outback is the best thing to add,” said a spokesperson from the aquarium. “There really is nothing else that is truly vintage Australian than a walk through the various Australian habitats followed by a strip steak with a blooming onion.”

While aquarium officials see this as a great step forward in the opening of the new exhibit, which has already been delayed, other aquarium supporters and patrons are seeing this as a move that will steal attention away from the exhibit itself.

“We want people to come to this exhibit to learn and enjoy the new exhibit, not to just be excited that there is an Outback they can go to after they are through,” said one aquarium supporter who opposes the Outback in the aquarium. “If you bring kids to this, the only thing they will think about the whole time will be ‘When can we go to Outback’.”

Others who oppose the Outback being built in the aquarium argue that the mere presence of it will dumb down the aquarium as a whole.

“Come on, the Outback Steakhouse? This is ridiculous. This would be like putting an Olive Garden at a Picasso Exhibit in the Baltimore Museum of Art,” said one patron. “It’s a gaudy thing to have in such a nice place as the aquarium.”

Even though the debate continues and no construction has begun on the restaurant, the proposed location for the restaurant is immediately following the new exhibit tour where the restaurant’s waiting area would also serve as the exhibit's gift shop. Another element of the Outback proposal would be servers throughout the exhibit serving complimentary samples of the blooming onion and coconut shrimp.