Arguably the most popular at EPCOT is the EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival. This year’s festival runs from July 27th through November 18th, 2023. Getting into the spirit of the world showcase, the Food and Wine festival adds an impressive amount of food booths or global marketplaces, as Disney calls them.
Also typical of EPCOT festivals there is a decent lineup of musical talent that will be performing nightly at the festival which is called, “Eat To The Beat“. the EPCOT Food and Wine Festival offers a lot to do, and at the heart of it is the food, so let’s grab Remy, and a pickle milkshake and start on this culinary journey together.
Most of the global marketplaces are in the world showcase. However, some have made their way into the neighborhood section of EPCOT at the front of the park. As we go through this article, we will lay out the food we tried in the order they appear if you were walking up the left side of EPCOT and traversing the World showcase clockwise.
We are also working on an accompanying VLOG for our YouTube Channel, which you can subscribe to and watch our VLOG career take off, or at least laugh at me making a fool of myself! First up is a stop at Connections Café, which serves as the Starbucks inside EPCOT. This is one of our guilty pleasures for visiting the parks, stopping here, and wasting 15-40 minutes in line to buy coffee. Why they don’t offer mobile Starbucks purchases in the parks is beyond us. Still, I digress. For the Food & Wine Festival, they offer two treats: the famous Croissant Doughnut, or the cronut as it is referred to, and the overrated Liege Waffle with a Remy candy stuck to the top.
The Liege waffle is, in this blog’s opinion, one of the most overrated desserts in Disney World. I know many readers will disagree, but this dessert has never clung to us. It isn’t selling as well as Disney would hope, considering every time you mobile order from connections, they try to get you to add it as a side. On the other hand, the cronut is worthy of a purchase. Soft to the touch and full of moist flakey goodness, the cronut delivers on a promise the liege waffle just can’t.
We stop outside Creations at Coastal Eats and Flavors From Fire. Flavors From Fire is one of our go-to stops at the EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival; this year, they improved their offerings. We ordered the smoked corn beef and the chimichurri marinated skirt steak taco. The corned beef was very tender and juicy, with a good mix of cheese and veggies. We highly recommend this one. The skirt steak taco was tasty as well, but the steak was a bit dry, and if you go for one item here, it should be the corned beef.
Over at coastal eats, we grabbed the lump crab cake. While it isn’t a horrible carb cake, being so close to the water here in Central Florida, the Coastal Eats Marketplace could expand its offerings in the seafood department. We are moving onto the Muppets-inspired market place, Brew – Wing Lab At the Odyssey, where the pickle milkshake is offered.
When the festival was first announced and they mentioned that Dr. Honeydew and Beeker would host it we all got tricked into thinking the mobile Muppet lab would return. After the initial disappointment of that not happening we step into the brew – wing lab to try some wings and the pickle milkshake. We skipped the peanut butter and jelly wings and went for a more tradition offering of garlic – parmesan wings, and traditional buffalo, and of course the pickle milkshake!
The chicken wings are nothing special to talk about; they are saucy, tender, and like every other place that serves wings. This stop is an excellent place to grab some brews and wings, so it fits that bill just right. Now, onto the pickle milkshake we ordered on a different day, and you can watch me drink it in our VLOG on our YouTube channel (Coming soon). The pickle milkshake is the most hyped item this year at the food & wine festival. However, we are here to tell you it is nothing special. At first taste, you get a creamy vanilla milkshake and a hint of pickle at the end. The worst part of this milkshake is the garnish item they choose. It reminded me of wheatgrass, and I would remove that garnish if I got this shake again.
On a side note, we ran into Tom Bricker, one-half of the Disney Tourist Blog. It has always been a pleasure running into Tom and Sarah over the years. Their blog is part of the inspiration for ours, and they have a lot of great content over there! Good luck, Tom and Sarah, on your new parenthood soon!
Continuing our culinary journey around world showcase we stop at the Kenya Booth to try our the Peri-Peri Skewered Shrimp, and let me tell you this one was fantastic! Almost as if this should have been served at Coastal Eats. The spice level of Peri-Peri sauce is just enough for you to still taste the shrimp without blowing out your sinuses in the process. Also with this dish is cous cous and chickpeas.
Next up on our list is Flavors of America to get our yearly serving of carrot cake. Also, I was curious to try out the hot Italian beef sandwich. Let’s start with the sandwich, which itself was delicious. The beef is tender, and the bread is soft. However, the Au Jus sauce is spicy, but not in a hot sort of way. Suppose you want to see the real-time reaction; keep a look on our YouTube channel, where I filmed myself trying this one. It will make you laugh. The carrot cake, which is served warm, is always a hit with us and not to be missed!
Heading to Brazil where we have a date with the Brazilian cheese bread. Another staple for us to eat during the Food & Wine Festival. Think of the Brazilian cheese bread as a garlic knot, but only inside is a big glob of cheese! Yes, it is that good.
Ireland is our next marketplace to stop at. Each year, we have to get the warm chocolate pudding cake; however, this night, we were already full of desserts, so we opted to grab the fisherman’s seafood pie and Guinness Baily’s Coffee Shake. The seafood pie was a surprise hit for us. There is a little bit of spice to it and a lot of cheese, which isn’t bad. The shake was also delightful and delicious, but let’s be honest, Bailys is always good!
Conclusion and Final Thoughts on EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival
To finish this article, we stop at Shimmering Sips to try out a couple of mimosas and grab stemless flutes. Our first disappointment is that you have to pay for the drink on top of the stemless flutes, which was a downer. The mimosas themselves were just ok and nothing special. We tried out the tropical one and blood orange.
There are a couple of mentions in closing here. We will return several times to the EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival as there are still four booths for them to open up, and they sound delicious. Also, pick up one of the booklets and keep track of what you eat for anyone who comes to the festival. You can collect stamps for foods with a free dessert on the back page.
The EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival is very popular. It is a great time to visit EPCOT, but we suggest coming after all of the booths are open and when the weather is cooler, which would be October and on. What are your thoughts? Have you been to the festival this year or in years past? Let us know in the comments.