Epcot Food and Wine Festival 2010

Yes, we have a small child. Yes, we both have the entire summer off of work. But the real reason that we keep our Disney annual passes is so we can go to the Epcot Food and Wine Festival every year. In fact, we renew our passes in October each year, so that if we ever decided not to renew, we'll still be able to go to the next year's festival. This just by way of background.

Friday last was the opening night of the 2010 festival, and we braved the crowds to get an early taste of the food. There were lots of returning favorites and some new booths to celebrate the festival's 15th anniversary. There is also a cookbook, which I am totally buying next time we go.

It's always tough to choose whether to start to the left or the right; this year, we chose right, and It Was Good. Before hitting up a country's booth, we stopped at a random beer tent for some Prosecco and cheese fondue. The fondue was superb: tons of bite from the Swiss, a little extra acid (lemon?) compared to most fondue, and accompanied by chunks of sourdough baguette and fingerling potatoes (also doused in lemon). The Prosecco was really nice for cutting through the richness of the fondue. Now if they'd just dispense with those ridiculous tiny plastic cups!

We look forward to Canada every year, even though their offerings are actually regular menu items from the Le Cellier steakhouse. Technically, we could get that spicy beer-cheese soup and maple-glazed salmon with lentils any time of year, but we never manage to dress up enough to eat there. The line was insane this time around, though, so we'll wait until we can escape to the festival on a weeknight.

Speaking of old favorites, we (rightly) stood in line for about half an hour at the Ireland tent for lobster and scallop fisherman's pie (creamy, rich, and brimming with chunks of sweet shellfish), molten chocolate cake smothered in Bailey's (past its prime as a trendy recipe, but still freaking delicious), and Meade's honey wine (which smelled like honey and tasted like ass).

Primarily, we started to the right this year to ensure we got to France as quickly as possible. In recent years, they have abandoned the goat cheese and caramelized onion tartlets of which I was so inordinately fond, but they still serve garlicky escargot inside three tiny, buttery, crunchy bread bowls. Couple them with a pomegranate Kir royale (or, in our case, several pomegranate Kir royales) and you've got yourself a lovely evening on the water, watching the sunset with the Eiffel Tower at your back.

Reluctantly, we moved on, only to discover that our festival experience took a downturn. I've always cautioned Dori against eating at the Italian restaurant at Epcot, both because I know that institutionalized Italian food has little chance of being decent and because said restaurant is called "Alfredo's"--and no self-respecting, authentic Italian restaurant would go for something that ridiculous. (1) Still, Dori pressed on, and we made our way through the Italian tent for cheese ravioli with bolognese and polpettini in tomato sauce. Seriously. And it was every bit as bland and disgusting and institutional as I'd feared; it was even served in what looked suspiciously like airline-food containers. Ugh.

Stuffed to the gills, but needing something to redeem our faux-Italian experience, so we stopped at the China tent for street-vendor-style BBQ chicken and crispy black pepper shrimp over chile-garlic noodles. The former was a little too dark-meat-y for my tastes, but it was perfectly charred on the outside and tender inside, and had the complex flavors of a homemade 5-spice rub: sweet, smoky, salty. The shrimp were largely unnecessary on my plate (and notable for their complete lack of black pepper), but the noodles on which they sat were tremendously good. Intensely spicy and garlicky, with sharp flecks of scallion and--oh, THERE you are, black pepper! I love you on the noodles, but the shrimp really could have used your help!

The garlic breath was really persistent from that point on, so we made our way to the dessert and champagne booth at the end to balance things out. Unable to properly decide on a dessert, we got all three offerings, plus two more itty bitty glasses of champagne, and took them to the water's edge to watch the fireworks. On our delicious little plate was a delicate trifle of strawberry, vanilla custard, and angelfood cake (Dorian's clear favorite, which surprised the hell out of me, as I'm usually the fruit dessert person), a pear-and-custard tart on an extremely short pastry crust (my favorite, as I'll eat anything with fruit and a buttery, flour-y pastry), and a dark chocolate cake with chocolate frosting (a yummy counterpoint to the fruit, but nowhere near as good as the pear thing).

Full of champagne bubbles, we settled in to watch Epcot's extremely lame fireworks display (we are so spoiled by the show at Magic Kingdom, which is fucking EPIC) with its stupid floating globe-on-fire, and let our food digest a bit. We headed out before the grand finale and drove home, sated and excited about our next visit, when we will start with Canada, Belgium (moules frites and a fruit-slathered waffle), Argentina (roasted corn empanadas), Poland (kielbasa and pierogies), and the US (bison chili with wild mushrooms). Maybe Australia (last year's barramundi with arugula salad and lemon oil) and another go at France. Haven't decided on South Africa, which kept last year's Grilled Beef with Sweet Potato and Mango BBQ Sauce (Dori's favorite) but ditched, mysteriously, their amazing Mealie (a corn chowder with a lethal drizzle of chile oil). Can't wait.

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(1) Disclaimer: I did also openly mock a restaurant in Delaware called "La Casa Pasta" on the same grounds, only to find out that it was the single best and most authentic Italian restaurant I'd even found in the US. So, I can be overly judgmental at times.