Annually the three-month EPCOT Food and Wine Festival is held at Walt Disney World Resort. This year we had a few nibbles and here’s our take on those tasty bites.
The 2025 festival runs from August 28 through November 22.
When EPCOT decks out their lands with kiosks loaded with food from all around the world, guests come in droves to have some of the tasty bites. The festival is a big draw and it gives guests a chance to try some foods they normally would not. To begin with, EPCOT is the park with all the food options, and the festival makes it plus!
We’ve had a chance to visit the festival a few times over the years but it’s been a couple since our visitations were in sync with their schedule. If you’re planning on hitting this event, don’t even worry about making a dining reservation at a restaurant, there are plenty of options to choose from when roaming around.
This year we visited the following kiosks — or global marketplaces as WDW calls them: Gyozas of the Galaxy, Hawaii, Canada, Greece, Flavors of America, India, and The Alps. We’re just going to be talking food, folks — so you boozy buddies relax, this is not the review you’re looking for if you’re all about the drinks.
Gyozas of the Galaxy
The Gyozas of the Galaxy has an assortment of different dumplings. We tried them all!
Buffalo-style dumplings
Chicken dumplings with buffalo sauce, celery root puree, blue cheese cream, crumbled blue cheese, shaved carrot, and micro celery: $6.00
This was a fantastic dish. We really enjoyed these dumplings. They had a great balance of tangy and spice from the buffalo sauce and that was complimented by the blue cheese crumbles and cream.
Street corn-style dumplings
Chicken dumplings with tomatillo salsa verde, street corn salad, cotija cheese, lime crema, and cilantro: $6.00
Our junior adventurer devoured these without sharing. He said that they were “great.” We were able to eat some of the remaining slaw that was left behind and that was flavorful. From all accounts this was a winning proposition.
French onion soup-style dumplings
Pork and beef soup dumplings with caramelized onions, sherry-beef broth, onion and gruyere soubise, parmesan crackers, and micro chives: $6.00
We had some very high hopes and great anticipation for this dish and it was underwhelming. It was not offensive, but just lacked the panaché of flavors we were expecting. This is on our do not return list.
Hawaii
Hawaii had an offering of a slow-roasted pork slider, Hawaiian rice bowl, and pineapple cheesecake.
Slow-roasted pork slider
Pork slider with sweet-and-sour chutney featuring DOLE® pineapple and spicy mayonnaise: $6.00
This dish sounded so awesome and quickly crashed and burned. My eldest roommate described the slider as “disgusting.” I found it to be semi-palatable, but in-so-much as I spent six bucks on this Polynesian gut rocket and was committed to choking it down. I’ll be hulaing away from the sliders in the future — they were not awful, but also not da kine.
Canada
The offerings from our friends in the great white north were the cheddar and bacon soup and a filet mignon.
Cheddar and bacon soup
Soup served with a pretzel roll: $6.25
We love this soup. Every time we’ve hit the EPCOT Food and Wine Festival, we get this soup. It is at the top of my savory list and really hits the spot. It’s cheesy with a slight bite from the Moosehead Pale Ale. If you like this soup and aren’t around for the festival, fret not! It’s also offered at Le Cellier, Canada’s steakhouse.
Filet mignon
Filet with mushrooms and mashed potatoes featuring Boursin® garlic and fine herbs cheese: $10.00
We’ve had steaks previously at Le Cellier as well as at the Canada festival kiosk. Whelp, this year it was a far cry from what we’d call quality. It was dry and overcooked. If I had to describe it, the inside looked the way ET did when he was laying in the ditch towards the end of the movie. The filet was akin to a near-dead alien lifeform. Total failure.
Greece
The items offered at Greece included spanakopita, moussaka, griddled cheese, and lamb gyro.
Griddled cheese
Cheese with pistachios and honey: $5.25
The griddled cheese was off the hook. This was a perfect balance of sweet and savory that made our tastebuds dance and tingle. We got two of these in anticipation of not wanting to share them with another. That was a solid decision.
Flavors of America
Flavors of America had a gulf coast-style seafood roll, New England slider, and freshly baked chocolate pudding cake.
Gulf Coast-style seafood roll
Seafood roll with warm-water lobster, rock shrimp, lobster bisque, and sherry-crem fraiche on a toasted brioche bun: $8.75
If America was trying to put its best foot forward, it did not do it with this seafood roll. I’m not a hater of Gulf seafood — by no stretch of the imagination. However, there are so many better options, pairings, and ways to provide a quality seafood dish, but this was just not it.
The roll was soupy from the bisque and the alleged lobster-shrimp combination created a wonder twin of low tide. If WDW wants to provide a quality “seafood roll” of sorts, I highly suggest they reach out to our friends at Southeast Light Delights, featured in our lobster rolls of The Big E article.
Biting into the seafood roll was biting into an explosion of warm fishy goo.
India
The India booth had a potato and pea samosa and chicken tikka masala.
Chicken tikka masala
Served with Fennel-spiced Yogurt and Naan Bread: $6.50
This was a great curry-spiced dish. The chicken was tender and the entire dish was flavorful. I’m partial to Indian food, though. So almost every time I have an Indian dish I’m satisfied.
The Alps
There were three offerings at the Alps: warm raclette Swiss cheese and alpine ham, warm raclette Swiss cheese, and kirschwasser torte.
Warm raclette Swiss cheese and alpine ham
Served with baby potatoes, cornichons, and baguette: $6.00
When reading about this in our little passport, I was excited to dive in. There was a total tell-tale flag on the play. We walked past this booth more than once and for lack of a better term the smell of butt wafted across our noses. It did not dawn on me it was this dish until I went to order one.
One of the workers made a comment that the dish is not very popular and explained it was because of the smell. As she was explaining that, my mouth started to water — not in that good kind of way. It was watering in that your body is trying to tell you to vomit, kind of way. The juices in my mouth built as I watched the worker scrape the cheese off the wheel onto the dish.
I choked this down. It did not taste nearly as bad as it smelled, but I must mention that I feel like vomiting just writing about this now. Needless-to-say, I will not be having this ever again. To repeat something my eldest roommate said to me, “Why on Earth would you eat that after even the worker told you it was nasty?”
This dish can Yodel-Ay-Hee-Hoo itself out the door. Burping up the remnants of this item while sitting in the Test Track car getting ready for launch really made me second guess my life decisions.
Our overall opinion
We are foodies and are open to trying all kinds of dishes. This year was a mixed bag of good and bad. Overall, were we satisfied? Yes. Unfortunately, there’s only so much room in the bread basket to house food and so there were many other bits and bites we wanted to try.
While we did have a few more negative experiences than we wanted, there were only two that were unequivocally unacceptable and that’d be the Canada steak and Alpine cheese. Conceivably, only the steak can be completely chastised — that’s not supposed to be cooked like shoe leather, at least the cheese is supposed to be rancid smelling and nasty from what I gather.
What are some of your favorite and most hated food and wine festival dishes? Sound off in the comments.
