by Beth Keating
Review
DisneyBizJournal.com
February 12, 2024
The EPCOT International Festival of the Arts always seems way too short anyway, but now you have less than a week left to sample the culinary delights and take in the wide array of performing arts that abound in the park during this festival. Festival of the Arts only runs through February 19, 2024.
With the clock ticking, we hit the park up on several different evenings to make sure we were able to sample some of our favorite “food studio” booths before they get packed away for another year – and to grab a few signatures of some fabulous artists.
First stop was a booth we bypass at most festivals because, well, it’s always there in some form or another. The Refreshment Port, near the Canada Pavilion, just to the right as you cross over the bridge to World Showcase, nearly always has some form of poutine. This year, though, the Refreshment Port was offering a “Gnocchi Poutine with Red Wine-Braised Beef, Cheese Curds, Basil and Burrata” ($10.00). With several of our favorite food groups in that mix, we knew it was a must have this year.
The Gnocchi Poutine was an interesting change-up from the normal “fancy fries” that you typically get with poutine. Instead of fries, crisp little pillows of potato gnocchi formed the base of this dish, giving a bit of texture while still keeping the inside of the gnocchi soft and chewy. The beef piled on top of the gnocchi was tender and just a touch salty from the braising liquid, and the cheese curds also offered a salty component, as did a sprinkling of sea salt across the top of the dish. While that sounds like a lot of salt, it really wasn’t, given the bland nature of the gnocchi itself. It helped to punch up the flavor a bit. Unfortunately, the salting was a bit uneven, needed with the beef layer, but overdone by the time you reached the center of the dish. There were only four cheese curds in the bowl, so we would have been happy to have a couple more cheese curds for balance, but we’re guessing Disney assumed the addition of the burrata cheese upped the cheese landscape. The small ball of burrata was tasty, and surprisingly was still chilled, despite being served atop the warm poutine. There wasn’t a lot of basil included, but the few leaves present gave a subtle herby-ness that perked things up.
The braised beef on the dish was so good that, when we reached the Germany food studio, The Pastoral Palate, we once again opted for the Red Wine-Braised Beef Short Rib dish ($8.75). This one came with parsnip purée, broccolini, baby tomatoes and balsamic glaze. The short ribs were melt-in-your mouth tender, with just a hint of sweetness in the gravy. The baby tomatoes were a mixed lot, two were very tart, while two were uber-sweet. The broccolini was firm, without much seasoning, but definitely provided a contrast next to the parsnip purée, which was also a touch sweet, but with a very homemade texture to them. The balsamic drizzle on the plate was also a good choice, as it was a delicious accompaniment to the beef and veggies.
We also opted for the Black Forest Cake ($4.75) at this booth, but calling it a “cake” wasn’t really an accurate description. The Black Forest was delicious, but it was really more of a chocolate mousse dome, topping a small base of Devil’s food cake, covered in a firm, dark chocolate shell on the outside, and served with Morello Cherries and Chantilly Cream. Both the cream and the chocolate mousse were very light and airy. At first glance, this dessert looked like it would be a dense, heavy dessert, but it was quite the opposite. This was also the kind of dessert that was sweet, but not overly so. It also wasn’t the kind of dish that, halfway through, you’d say, “Enough, I can’t eat anymore.” You could happily polish this one off by yourself.
Speaking of mousse…. We had a very different mousse in the France pavilion, at L'Art de la Cuisine Française. We couldn’t decide between the two salmon dishes there, so we opted for the Duo de Saumon Hot and Cold ($14.75), which included both of the salmon dishes on offering at this booth.
The cold salmon choice, the Saumon Fumé Mousse et Aspic, Blini et Fromage de Chevre ($7.95), was the mousse dish that we should have skipped for the day. It probably showed more poorly because it was plated next to the warm salmon pastry. We might have liked it more if we’d ordered this one by itself, but it just didn’t do it for us. It was a sculpted pile of salmon mousse, made of smoked salmon, dill and flaxseed. We kept eating it, even after the first bite or two, hoping there was something better to come. There really wasn’t. There was a lot of pastry involved, but it was just kind of there. There were, in fact, pieces of salmon present, but they didn’t stand out in the dish up against the rather dry pastry.
On the other hand, the salmon that was served hot, the Vol-au-Vent de Saumon et Epinards with a Sauce Chardonnay ($7.95) was a bonus. A light and flaky puff pastry was filled with salmon and spinach, and mixed with a chardonnay-shallot sauce. The spinach flavor came through in a strong (yet good) way, and the sauce worked well to hold the dish together. There were also some nice-sized pieces of salmon included.
We are a seafood-loving family, so we also made a stop at the Mexico studio, El Artista Hambriento. There, we liked the Tostada de Langosta ($8.00) so much that we came back a second day to have it again. This fried tostada was crunchy, and stayed crunchy in spite of all the toppings piled on. The toppings included chilled lobster with a chipotle aioli that had an unexpected kick, along with pungent onions, sweet bits of mango, and a good-sized handful of shredded cabbage. A smooth layer of guacamole on the bottom held the tostada together, and while there was a drizzle of the hot sauce on the veggies, it wasn’t overly spicy. The highlight though, was the lobster, which was fresh, and came with lots of sizable chunks of the seafood in a salad like format. While forks were available, the best way to tackle this dish was to just pick it up and pop it in your mouth. Considering this was lobster, it was a nice option for the price.
Goshiki, at the Japan Pavilion, is a fan and family favorite stop at the Arts festival, and this year was no exception. It was more seafood there, with the Sushi Donut ($8.75). Sounds, weird, yes. But this donut-shaped sushi is made not of pastry, but from salmon, tuna, shrimp, cucumber and sesame seeds. It’s decorated with Wasabi Aïoli, Sriracha Aïoli, and Eel Sauce. It was a sushi delight. The sushi was fresh and full of flavor, and the rice had a nice stickiness to it, which not only is how we like our rice with sushi but made it all easier to eat while balancing dishes – always a challenge at an EPCOT festival.
Somehow, we also snuck a non-seafood dish into our tour at the Japan studio, with the Wagyu Bun ($9.75). It’s a steamed bun filled with American Wagyu beef served with green shiso sauce. The bun was on the soft side, and the meat had a wonderful sweetness to it.
These two – the Sushi Donut and the Wagyu Bun – ranked as a great combination that would make for a nice light meal. Two thumbs up.
For the non-seafood lover in our group, we made a stop at the Canada pavilion to Gourmet Landscapes. A bowl of creamy Wild Mushroom Risotto ($9.75) waited for us there, and while it was a delightful dish, it wasn’t lost on us that it was more expensive than the lobster dish in Mexico. The risotto was a perfect texture, and had several different kinds of mushrooms included. The mushrooms were cut into chunks rather than slices, and it gave the dish a more substantial feel that way. The broth was rich and earthy, made from a zinfandel reduction (and we’ve long been zinfandel fans, so that worked well for us.) A sprinkle of parmesan on the top of the risotto brought a little saltiness to the dish to balance the milder rice. We enjoyed this dish, but were a little skeptical of the price point for the size of the serving. Perhaps the advertised “truffle shavings,” which didn’t really seem to factor much into the flavor profile in our serving, pushed the price up. This selection is also one of the plant-based offerings available at this festival.
Late on one of the evenings, we made our final stop of the night while waiting for a seat at the “Disney on Broadway” concert series to start. At the America Pavilion, The Artist’s Table was dishing up Duck and Dumplings ($7.25). We love duck in our family, so we had high hopes for this one – and we had mixed opinions. The three slices of smoked duck breast were interspersed with ricotta dumplings, baby vegetables, and drizzled with duck jus. While the duck itself was tasty, with a firm texture that was still tender, the ricotta dumplings were just so-so. They were very salty, harder than expected on the outside, but still a bit soft on the inside. The au jus was nicely seasoned, and had a light touch that acted as a background flavor. The carrots were perfectly al dente, but the parsnips were thin and bland. While we love duck, we recommended that another family member, also a duck fan, skip this dish when they returned with us another day – the three small slices of duck just weren’t worth the lackluster flavors the rest of the plate gave up.
The Festival of the Arts wraps up in just a few short days, so if any of these dishes interest you, you’d better hurry. The Disney grounds crew and landscaping teams have already started installing the topiaries and butterfly tent for the 2024 International Flower & Garden Festival, which runs February 28-May 27, 2024.
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Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.
Get The Disney Planner: The TO DO List Solution by Ray Keating. More information at
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