We finally have a festival back in EPCOT! It feels like it has been forever since Flower and Garden Festival ended but Food and Wine Festival is here. We went to check it all out last weekend and I am so glad to announce that there are quite a few new things that are GREAT! New booths, new bands for Eat to the Beat Concerts and new foods to try! There is even a new seating area that is super cute. They have the festival passports available at the front of the park now too, where the park maps are and I love that! They also have a little guide for fun for families with kids so they enjoy World Showcase too which is new and nice! I’ll confess that Food and Wine has never been my favorite festival but it is creeping up there this year!
New Booths in Harvest Hollow
There is a whole new section at Food and Wine this year called Harvest Hollow and it has totally stolen my heart! It is located by Canada in the walkway that takes you towards the Imagination Pavilion. This is where you will find the three brand new booths for the festival and more! Not only are there great new booths but there is also a really nice new seating area. It looks like it will provide some shade at certain points in the day but it does have quite a few tables, hula hoops for the kids to play with, squishy turf and the cutest fall vibes.
The entrance to this area coming from the Imagination Pavilion has the cutest pumpkin patch area set up. The pumpkin spice/fall vibes are done in all the right ways in this area and even though it’s still so hot here in Florida, it definitely made it feel like fall anyway! But what about the food and drinks here??
Forest & Field
This booth is the first one you come to when you enter from Canada. Here is what is on the menu:
- Autumn Chili with bison, lamb and pork belly, root vegetables, jalapeño cornbread, smoked cheddar and creme fraiche
- Pumpkin Mascarpone Ravioli with sage-brown butter, pecorino cheese and hazelnut praline
- Burrata with seasonal fall fruit, spiced pecans, apple puree and fig vinaigrette
- Brewery Ommegang All Hallows Treat Chocolate Peanut Butter Imperial Stout
- Lievland Bushvine Pinotage
- Piper-Sonoma Brut
I had the Ravioli from this booth and it was delicious! I started out a little confused just because I wasn’t expecting it to have the sweetness that it did but then I really enjoyed it and will definitely get it again!
Milled & Mulled
This is the dessert booth for this area and it does not disappoint! All of the flavors we tried here were such perfectly fall flavors and really just cute! Here is what’s on the menu here:
- Freshly Baked Carrot Cake with walnuts and cream cheese icing
- Boursin Fig & Balsamic Cheesecake with fig jam and pomegranate
- Pear and Almond Frangipane Pate Brisee
- Blake’s Hard Cider Co Cider Mill Donut Hard Cider
- Coppertail Brewing Fallen Fruit Blueberry Pie Hard Cider
- Chocolate Shop Chocolate Red Wine
I can’t wait to try the drinks at this booth but for now we tried the carrot cake and the pear and almond….hand pie, it’s a hand pie. I don’t know how you say the rest of that but it’s a hand pie! Hahaha! The carrot cake really did taste very fresh and was super moist and flavorful. The hand pie was delicious!! I am not a huge sweets girl, I tend to enjoy the savory more, but this was the perfect amount of sweet. It had a nice balance where it didn’t kill you with the sweetness and sugar, had a little savory to it as well. This would be super easy to walk and eat since it wasn’t falling apart or messy. Think McDonalds hand pie but waaaaaay better!
Bramblewood Bites
This is the last one in the Harvest Hollow area, or the first one if you come from the Imagination Pavilion and the menu is a stunner! Also, I would like to go ahead and start a petition for the cocktail here to be available at all times in EPCOT!! Here’s what you can find at this booth:
- Grilled Cider-brined Pork Tenderloin with fennel apple slaw and apple cider gastrique
- Grilled Bison with butternut squash puree, roasted mushrooms and huckleberry gastrique
- Cast Iron-roasted Brussel Sprouts and Root Vegetables with dried cranberries, candied pecans and maple bourbon glaze
- Gogi Pinot Noir
- Spiced Apple Old Fashioned Inspired Cocktail
We had the roasted veggies and Brussel sprouts and they were fantastic! The flavors were great and they were not over cooked into mush. We also had the spiced apple old fashioned and it was DIVINE! I absolutely loved this cocktail and am praying it goes to the festival favorites window at Communicore once the festival is over because I will be dreaming about it until its return. It was actually refreshing, not too sweet (for me anyway) and you could actually taste the alcohol. I don’t like it when you get a cocktail and can’t even tell it’s a cocktail. I highly recommend trying this one, even if you are not usually an old fashioned person.
Other New Foods
Other than the Harvest Hollow section, you will find a new Mac & Cheese “booth” inside Communicore Hall and some new things at Festival Favorites also at Communicore Hall. Throughout World Showcase there are new items at a lot of the returning booths as well. You can find full menus for each booth with notation of the new items here. We stopped at the Flavors of America booth as well on Friday and grabbed the Carolina Hot Dog, it was very good. I am glad to see them move away fro the north eastern seafood style foods they have been doing the past couple years at this booth.
New At Eat To The Beat
There are even new bands performing for the Eat to the Beat Concert Series and I was so excited to get to go on Saturday to see The Fray! This is a new band for EPCOT and it was the first time they had performed live in nine years. They also announced their new album and tour coming soon and played a new song. It was definitely one of the best EPCOT concerts I think I have gone to, they did not disappoint! Other new additions this year are Yellowcard, The Wanted, Jessie & Joy, Aloe Blacc, David Archuleta, Hailey Reinhart, Magic! and Parmalee. You can see the full line up of concerts here. I can’t wait to go to some of these and the returning favorites like Boyz II Men! You just can’t convince me that EPCOT concerts are not the best.
Merchandise
I have to be honest, unless it’s Orange Bird merchandise for Flower and Garden Festival I am usually not impressed or really that interested. BUT, this years Food and Wine merch goes hard! I love all of it!! The designs and colors are fabulous and I need another job or for this blog to start making some money so I can buy more stuff! Hahaha! I did grab the Muppet Labs glass because, well it’s Muppets and I had to have it! But I’ll be back for more I’m sure. Y’all know I have to do the scavenger hunt and get the super cute bowl that comes with it…they are always my favorite!
Conclusion
EPCOT has been a little lonely feeling without a festival to keep it company so I am so so glad Food & Wine is here! Maybe that was the idea with leaving more of a gap in between festivals, wonder if they will keep doing that moving forward? It definitely created some anticipation. I can’t wait to go back and eat more, buy more and see more concerts and I hope you get to experience it this year as well. There are so many things to see and try and I am excited for the new stuff. That’s one thing about living here, I don’t know that I would have noticed that the menus and stuff were the same from one year to the next before but I absolutely notice it now that we go more often. We are keeping Disney on their toes to bring more new things I suppose! Haha! There is so much more to explore at Food and Wine Festival and I will let you know how it all goes, we have a scavenger hunt and much more to explore!
As always, thank you so much for reading along and if there is anything you want a review on from Food and Wine, let me know and I’d be happy to oblige! Have a magical day!