Festival Food: Part One

Today's post is a bit more visual. Here are some sights and foods from Epcot's Food & Wine Festival. Please note we did not get a picture of everything we ate. Totally forgot sometimes (like the greek cheese) or the food was water-logged from a downpour (like the coq au vin we ate on a trash can inside Impressions of France building). We're using the Disneyfoodblog to help jog our memory and give you a link-back on specific booths for more details and see other offerings. There will be more to come in future posts (linking them through the epcotfw tag on the right sidebar).

The "craft" beer pavilion was at the start of World Showcase coming from Future World. This was not so much a craft beer stand as it was a "kinda good" regional big brewery booth. Leinie's and Blue Moon are made by Miller. They could have done better here. Next year they should consider the beers of Colorado.

Australia had a few decent items. Shrimp on the barbie and lamb chop. We're not big fans of lamb, but it was pretty good.

Had to stop and say hi to Duffy. Thank goodness he changed his outfit (see this June post for that comment's backstory).

From Brazil: Seared Mahi Mahi with steamed Rice, Hearts of Palm, and Coconut-Lime Sauce. It was good, but looks prettier on Disneyfoodblog.  Our piece got kinda chopped up.

Argentina had the best empanada we've ever eaten. Moist, beefy, cheesy, crispy. They got this one right. The beef with chimichurri was good as usual. This trip Holly discovered she liked malbecs.

Mexico: rib-eye taco one of our favorites this year. We had a few of them, as well as the shrimp. Since Dave has adversities to mayo and mayo-like liquids we got the shrimp one dry first time, then as-suggested later trips.

So all that was before noon. Now to one of our favorite places in WDW: La Cava Del Tequila. Small little place to relax and have great margaritas. Dave had the hibiscus margarita (red) and Holly had the jalapeño margarita.

During the festival they had a special for twitter followers. You got a $7 shot for $5. Dave likes good-quality sipping tequila so we got this. It was El Mayor Blanco served with sangrita, fresh lime and salt. Fun!

Scandinavia was new this year and we tried two things. We tried the Swedish meatballs (they were good).

Also tried the Xante Sunshine cocktail. Xante is described as a pear liqueur and was mixed with juice. we describe it as ick. Not a repeat.

China was our next stop. We had some items here in prior years and found it hit-or-miss. This year we had the Black Pepper Shrimp with Sichuan Noodles. Good, but not great.

Off to South Korea. Here we tried the beef dish and "new" raspberry wine. The beef itself was good, but the cabbage side was nasty. Pickled cabbage. Really? The raspberry wine was the consistency of port with an off-flavor. Made us want the old raspberry wine.

We had the tenderloin with braai sauce and smashed sweet potatoes from South Africa. They've had the dish the past few years and it's one of our favorites. We got a pinotage to go with it.

Germany was our next stop. We were a bit upset the spaetzel was gone this year. We heard the strudel was good so we tried that and the sausage on a pretzel roll. Didn't like either. Sausage was salty and strudel just too much fruit. Too "strudely"

Ran into this guy. He's a party.

The final food of today's post is from Hops and Barley. They had two lobster offerings: a lobster roll and lobster claw. Couple these items with Sam Adam's beer, including a festival exclusive, you have a winner. Last year's lobster roll was full of minced meat, celery, etc bound with a pint of mayo. This year it was all meat and a touch of spread.

The claw was delicious. On one occasion Dave spilt the cup of butter all over his shorts. Oops!

All this was just one afternoon's worth of fun. Later that night we met with friends for dinner at Citricos then went to the Magic Kingdom for the Magic, Memories, and You show plus Wishes! Afterwards we had an encounter with a Disney VIP. Stay tuned....

Dave's Artsy Photo of the Day