Lotus House – 2013 Epcot Flower & Garden Festival

The Lotus House is located directly across from Nine Dragons. Although we saw lots of people stopping to look at the menu board, we rarely saw anyone purchasing and consuming anything from this booth (much like all the other booths). We managed to get a table that was at least partially in the shade outside of the Lotus Blossom Cafe, thank goodness. It’s interesting that during the Food & Wine Festival, we don’t usually look around for tables or places to sit and eat… maybe we’re just paying more attention to what we’re doing this spring?

The educational poster here was about Taro, it was also located around to the side and in back, it was pretty hard to find and even harder to get a good photo of it. (I don’t have any fun agricultural or food facts about taro, in fact, I’m not even sure that I’ve ever eaten any)

The listed featured plantings are Strawberry, Taro, and Tea…

The menu…

We started with the savories, we’d tried the Spring Pancake earlier in the Festival and weren’t that impressed with it (it was pretty greasy) – we decided to give it a second chance anyway.

This time, it was less greasy and more meaty (chicken thigh meat) than the first time.

This was flavorful, most of the chicken wasn’t too dry (but some of it was tough and dry). The meat was flavored with or marinated in hoisin sauce. The vegetables and apple were a nice contrast & provided some flavor and texture. When we were able to get a bite with everything in it, it was good. Definitely easier to eat and to share than the YakiSoba Pan from Japan (better tasting and healthier too!).

I would describe the Pan-Fried Vegetable Bun – as a steamed bun lightly pan-toasted on the bottom. It wasn’t deep fried and it wasn’t as oily as pot stickers can sometimes be.

Without the sauce, this was bland bland bland. The sauce was a bit spicy, there were little flecks of red pepper flakes in it.

You could definitely see the vegetables! This really wasn’t bad. The bun (the steamed bread) was quite good – as good as mine when I make steamed buns, it wasn’t undercooked or soggy… good job.

The sweet offering here is the candied strawberries…

We didn’t have high expectations for this… First of all, it was impervious to knife and fork, I couldn’t cut it or get it off the stick for love or money. However, it wasn’t impervious to nick’s teeth…

It was very much like a candied apple. The berries had loads of flavor and they were huge (usually large strawberries are more show than substance). We both liked the added flavor from the sesame seeds – without these, it would have been bland.

These were quite good, very messy, and much tastier than expected.

Final Thoughts…

The spring pancake was pretty good when not greasy.

The vegetable bun was pretty tame.

The candied strawberries were the best sweet we had during the festival… yay! a winner