Review: Epcot Food and Wine Festival

[jducoeur]

A bit of vacation diary, a bit of review this time around. Kate and I got back from Disneyworld a week ago. This year's trip was during the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival, so let's talk a bit about that.

The Festival runs all around Epcot, in lots of little standalone booths. On the World Showcase side, there's one at most of the countries, plus a bunch more countries in-between; there are also several more in Future World.

Each booth serves (typically) three small plates of food, and a few different drinks. It's effectively fast food, but efficient as few places aside from Disney can manage: from ordering to walking away with your food takes something like a minute on average.

One downside: we were there during September. Right after Hurricane Dorian, which left Disneyworld feeling like it was in the middle of, well, a swamp. And there is precious little shade in Epcot. So if you are there in similar weather, be prepared to get your food and go scavenging for a shaded table. Or in the lee of a building. Or under a tree. Or anything to get out of the blistering sun. (Our primary challenge, throughout this vacation, was avoiding heatstroke.)

Everything is at least decent, but much of it is unremarkable. So let's focus on the highlights.

Starting with the punchline: the best dish out of the whole festival is, no shit, the Mac and Cheese. At Active Eats, they carry a Loaded Macaroni and Cheese made with Cheddar, leeks, bacon and, if my palate is accurate, a touch of cayenne. It's just Mac and Cheese -- but in my book, it's pretty much the Platonic ideal of the form. We went back for thirds.

Second pick for me was the Maple Bourbon Cheesecake at The Cheese Studio. Rich, sweet, complex and perfect for a stupidly hot September day.

Earth Eats is basically an ad for Impossible Foods (makers of really serious fake beef), but a pretty good one. The Impossible Slider is good but not quite great. The Impossible Cottage Pie, though, is pretty impressive: the fakemeat, mashed cauliflower and veggies that actually look like veggies make for a fine demonstration that you can get a nicely satisfying meat-based dish with any actual meat. I'm by no means a vegan, but understand the ecological situation well enough that I'm glad to see steady progress here.

Last but not least is the very first thing we tried when we get to Disney: Morocco's Spicy Hummus Fries. Mind, these aren't fries covered with hummus. These are hummus, deep-fried in a vaguely french-fry shape, covered with tzatziki, cucumbers, tomatoes, chipotle sauce -- I've never had anything quite like them. They're kind of like middle-eastern poutine, but so much better. Different and deeply yummy.

Upshot: if you are at Epcot during the Food and Wine Festival, and only have room for two dishes, make it the Mac and Cheese and the Spicy Hummus Fries. And since they booths are close to a mile apart, you can get some exercise in-between to work off all those calories...