by Beth Keating
Review
DisneyBizJournal.com
October 3, 2023
Last week, we were at EPCOT for the opening of the four new booths (Global Marketplaces) at the 2023 EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival. Among the booths we tried was the new Swirled Showcase, housed in the former Starbucks kiosk at the entrance to World Showcase. If you read our review, you know we weren’t particularly impressed with our “Cream Soda Float with Vanilla Soft Serve” there. The soft serve was fine, but the drink was on the small size for the $6.25 price tag, and it was just your average ice cream soda – nothing particularly special. We suggested people head back to the more impressive gelato varieties in the Italy and France pavilions instead.
If you’re looking for the fall vibe that the salted caramel and apple-cinnamon flavors were offering at Swirled Showcase, though, allow us to offer up another suggestion: Head to Salt & Straw at Disney Springs West Side.
Salt & Straw has long been a favorite of ours, for the very high quality (and sometimes offbeat) ice creams served up at this small storefront. Don’t expect just plain old vanilla and chocolate here, though. The shop has what they call a “classics menu” that pretty consistently dishes up such selections as Double Fold Vanilla; Chocolate Gooey Brownie; Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons; Strawberry Honey Balsamic with Black Pepper; Arbequina Olive Oil; Panther Coffee Chocolate Tres Leches; Salted, Malted, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough; Cinnamon Snickerdoodle; Roasted Pineapple Coconut Sherbet; Honey Lavender; Peanut Butter Brittle Caramel Fudge; and Freckled Mint Chocolate Chip. Do those sound like run-of-the-mill flavors to you?
But Salt & Straw also has an ever-changing limited edition section, too. In September, they brought “The Harvest Festival Series.” This is where you want to go to get your seasonal flavors fix! The Harvest Festival Series included:
• Pumpkin Spiced Tiramisu, a spiced pumpkin cold brew ice cream sweetened with maple and ginger and cinnamon, and swirled with tiramisu cake and flecks of chocolate stracciatella, using a single origin chocolate from Ecuador (Wowza, that’s a good fall flavor!)
• Beecher's Cheese with Apple Pie Cinnamon Rolls, a white cheddar cheese ice cream with pieces of apple-filled cinnamon rolls and cinnamon swirls.
• Caramel Apple Sherbet, an apple juice sherbet with ribbons of vanilla bean.
• Pinot Poached Pear Sherbet, made from half pinot noir and spiced pear sherbet and half double fold vanilla.
• Chocolate Plum & Hazelnut Shortbread, a spiced plum coconut cream with pools of homemade plum marmalade and pieces of gluten free hazelnut and chocolate chip shortbread.
But the ice cream masters at Salt & Straw weren’t content with just one set of fall flavors. This week, they’ll also be introducing the new “Scoops & Skulls Series” for Halloween and Día de los Muertos. And brace yourself for these scoops, because there will be real bugs involved!
The new Scoops & Skull flavors include:
• The Great Candycopia, a sugar-lovers dream come true, and Salt & Straw’s top-selling flavor of all time, with homemade Kit Kats, Snickers, Reeses, and Heath bars in a salted butterscotch ice cream.
• Jack o’ Lantern Pumpkin Bread, a returning fan favorite, made with pumpkin spice ice cream with bites of pumpkin bread and cream cheese frosting.
• Don Bugito’s Creepy Crawly Critters with (gasp!) Don Bugito’s crunchy chocolate crickets and toffee-brittle mealworms in green Matcha ice cream. Yes, indeedy, real bugs.
• Chocolate Champurrado with Sesame Toffee, a new flavor collaboration with recipe writer Paola Briseño-González for Día de los Muertos, honoring Mexico's rich cacao tradition. It’s a spiced champurrado (Cloudforest chocolate drink thickened with masa) with shards of sesame seed palanqueta (traditional Mexican-style sesame toffee).
• Blackberry Tamales, a new vegan option, made from one-half masa coconut cream sherbet, and half juicy marionberry sherbet, served in tribute to Michoacán's tamal from the Purépecha region (also made in collaboration with recipe writer Paola Briseño-González).
So now that we’ve caught your attention with these delectable fall flavors, you can understand why we tell you to head there, instead of just settling for the fine-but-not-remarkable soft serve at Swirled Showcase. At Swirled Showcase, we paid $6.25 for a maybe 4 ½ inch high sampler cup. At Salt & Straw, you’ll get these vibrant fall flavors for just a few coins more…. as little as $7.25 for a single scoop. Of course, you can upgrade to their full-size milk shake for $11.50. Mix and match your scoops for a double scoop for $9.95. (Plus, Salt & Straw encourages you to ask for a spoon-sized tester sample if you haven’t decided which flavor to commit to yet!)
Salt & Straw is a relative newcomer to Disney Springs, arriving in the spring of 2022. While it has become a “chain” of sorts, it is actually a successful family-run small business, started by cousins Kim and Tyler, who now have more than three dozen locations around the country. The scoop shop offers hand-made small batch ice creams “created in collaboration with chefs, farmers, food movements, social causes and more.” Among the rotating offerings have been such fun creations as their “student inventors’ series,” with flavors named “The Adventurous Llamanaut,” (based on an astronaut llama); and “Rosie the Pink Flamingo,” each with its own backstory. The changing selection of frozen sweets will surprise you with their inventiveness, but you can be sure each choice is full of bright, fresh ingredients.
Go on, head over there, and taste some of the most intriguing flavors of fall! If you are brave enough, try the bugs. As for me, I’ll be sticking to the Jack o’Lantern Pumpkin Bread.
__________
Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.
No comments:
Post a Comment