The 2019 Food and Wine Festival has ended so we wanted to recap it in 3 parts, the good, the bad, and the amazing. Let’s start with the good. These are ones that were good but not great. We tried our best to try everything but it was way too much to eat in a few days. Let’s get right into it.

The Good

Earth Eats

The impossible cottage pie was extremely interesting. It was good and tasted like a cottage pie. I feel like if you put that in front of me and said it was mashed potatoes and beef I would eat it and not know it wasn’t. It was actually mashed cauliflower and not real meat. This was my first experience with plant based “meat” and it was a good one.

China

Bubble Tea was a recent discovery of mine. I always loved tea but never had bubble tea. This would fall under the amazing category if “mango” was not in the name. It tastes great and is super smooth but there was no trace of mango. It tasted like tea with milk that was very sweet. An excellent refreshing drink just lacking the mango.

Coastal Eats

The Pacifico striped bass tostada was something I was a little worried about. I like fish but it has to be done right otherwise it could be terrible. The tostada was a crunchy platform for a delicious slaw that served as the bed for a well cooked piece of fish. The fish was cooked well and did not have a fishy taste but was lacking in seasoning making it on the blander side.

Mexico

The taco de Puerco was a shredded pork belly taco that was very tasty. The tortilla tasted fresh and homemade and the pork belly was great. The only thing that didn’t match up was the price. It was 7 dollars for one very, very small taco with not a lot of filling. The other item we had here was the chocolate bread pudding which was better than the taco. It was dense but not in a bad way. It was very sweet and skated the line of almost being too sweet. It was a great item to share and had a very silky taste to it.

The Alps

We had the frozen Rose at the Alps and it was basically just that. Frozen Rose. It had a slushie look and texture but just tasted like ice-cold Rose, which is never a bad thing.

The Donut Box

The sweet corn fritters were good but a little falsely advertised. They really weren’t a corn fritter, they were almost just doughnut holes with a sweet jelly on top instead of inside. Definitely, an interesting bite and we did enjoy it.

The Chocolate Studio

I had low expectations for this. I’m not the biggest pumpkin guy but I love chai tea. This really tasted like neither of those. This was a thick milkshake that tasted like everyone’s guilty pleasure, uncooked brownie batter. You’re never supposed to eat the batter but we all have. This taste exactly like that and it was a great treat.

The Cheese Studio

This soufflé was super light and airy. The perfect texture for a soufflé. When you mix that with a great sweet fig marmalade on top it made for a really satisfying bite.

Hawaii

The Bad

Active Earth

It’s hard to mess up Mac and Cheese but Active Earth found a way to. It was very dry and didn’t taste anything like cheese. Its called loaded mac and cheese but it’s loaded with zero flavor.

Canada

Canada will show up later in the amazing list but for now, it’s on the bad. The Canadian cheddar bacon soup. The soup was basically just a bowl of salt. The soup was served with a pretzel roll that was lacking salt. Kind of ironic. If you dipped the bread into the soup that didn’t help either. The soup was just way too salty and even dipping bread in the lacked salt didn’t tame the salt in the soup. All this did was left us thirsty.

Germany

This was a huge disappointment for me. Starting with the sad excuse for a pretzel bun. It was very dry and lacked any kind of flavor. Then when you add the brat to it, the proportions were way off. The bun was so thick holding this very skinny brat. The brat was also dry and lacking flavor as well. Just a misfire for something I should have loved.

Japan

The Amazing

Flavors From Fire

Here we had the smoked corned beef, the corned beef laid on top of a bed of crispy potato chips. The corned beef was seasoned well and very tender. It was topped off with a delicious slaw and a creamy beer cheese. This was a terrific bite and one of my favorites from the festival.

Canada

Canada is on the list again but this time for a good reason. Le Cellier is one of our favorite restaurants in Epcot, so naturally, we were excited about this one. The meat was so tender and not at all tough. There was a truffle butter sauce on top and it was the perfect complement to a great piece of meat.

Test Track Cool Wash

If I was the type of person who gets embarrassed, I would be embarrassed by the number of times I went here. When you go, you are given a sheet of paper with all the flavors and add ons and you make your own drink. Mixing flavors and candy was a way to really bring the kid out in me and what better place than Disney to bring out your inner child.

Italy