Epcot International Food and Wine Festival: Part 1, The Food

As I mentioned earlier, Noel and I spent the last week on a wonderful family vacation (thanks Dad!) to the land of the Mouse. That’s right folks, we’re DINKs who love the Walt Disney World Resort in sunny (and this past week smoking hot) Central Florida.

People–especially those who have never stayed on property at The World–always give me a funny look when I start to gush about how much I love it there. What they don’t understand though, is that for me, The World is really just a beautiful, lush, tropical paradise with the best hotels, beautiful pools, and fantastic restaurants. Yes there are 4 theme parks and 2 water parks, but really, they’re just gravy.

Since my sister and I have “grown up” our family vacations have been mostly in December, to take advantage of The World’s wonderful holiday traditions. But this year scheduling conflicts ruled out a December trip, so we decided to pick a different time of the year. Being a Type A foodie and master internet researcher, I soon discovered this wonderful event known as the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival that takes place every year from late September to Mid-November. After some hard lobbying on my part, our vacation was booked to conveniently coincide with the second week of the festival.

Although I had read fairly extensively about the festival online prior to our trip, I still felt a little unsure of what we were going to get. Would the food be tiny portions of bland items? Would all of the wine be bad? And most importantly, would the desserts be up to my standards?

I have to be honest, the festival FAR exceeded my expectations. Leave it to The World to not only do a food and wine festival, but to do it 110 percent over the top and right! There were so many things we loved about it, I’m going to have to do more than one post! And we’re already planning a return visit next year…

But enough about all that, let’s get down to the important stuff–like reviewing the food. This year the festival featured food items from 27 countries. Each country had it’s own little stand, which were set up around the World Showcase area of Epcot, featuring 3-5 food items paired with wine and beer. The food items are “tasting sized” meaning you get enough to enjoy and share, but not so much that you won’t have room for the food at the next country on your itinerary! Over two days we hit almost all of the 27 countries (some of them MULTIPLE times) and we thoroughly enjoyed everything we ate. But we definitely had some favorites:

Sweet meets spicy from our neighbors to the north. What’s not to love?

The best coconut soup I’ve ever had, full of tiny shreds of chicken. Satisfying and savory even on a 90+ degree day.

It’s a pot pie with seafood. Are you drooling yet? And yes, it was that good!

I looove pretzel rolls and Noel loves german-style sausage. It was a match made in our personal heaven.

I was in the land of chocolate mouse ears, and I was craving a fruit dessert. This strudel hit the spot.

And my personal best in show:

I loved these buttery and garlicy snails in perfect tiny brioche buns so much, I had them three times. And no, I’m not ashamed.

There was so much good food and so little time. Oh and did I mention there was wine? Details will follow in a subsequent post. Are you hungry enough to hop on a plane right now? A great festival resource is located here.

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