{"id":2243,"date":"2010-09-01T09:15:58","date_gmt":"2010-09-01T13:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.extrawdwmagic.com\/?p=2243"},"modified":"2012-10-23T17:49:43","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T21:49:43","slug":"tastings-at-epcot-food-wine-festival-2009-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/extrawdwmagic.com\/?p=2243","title":{"rendered":"Tastings at Epcot Food &#038; Wine Festival 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<h2>Visit #2<\/h2>\n<p>Went back again tonight. Since we had already scoped things out, we were hoping to enjoy the cooler temperatures with some warmer food (in the past, we thought we hadn&#8217;t enjoyed the F&amp;W so much because a lot of the food offerings seem to be &#8220;cooler weather foods&#8221;). One thing we hadn&#8217;t counted on&#8230; the wind (haven&#8217;t mentioned yet that Nick really really dislikes wind and Nora really dislikes it too).<\/p>\n<p>Entered through the International Gateway at the back of the park and headed over the bridge toward France right away. Nothing was really grabbing me and Nick was just chilly&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Finally, at the booth for Vienna, Germany I found something to try &#8211; Paprika Beef Stew &amp; Bacon Dumpling &#8211; every bit of the beef, except my last morsel, was very tender and flavorful; nicely spiced, it had a bit of a zing to it, but not enough to put off most people (I guess); the bacon dumpling = eh&#8230; I was expecting something more along the lines of a boiled biscuit with bacon or at least some sort of boiled\/stewed dough product containing bacon; nope, this was a grilled nugget of bread-type stuff, very bland, could have benefited from some onions or garlic IMO. Nick doesn&#8217;t like paprika , so none of this went too him. Me, I probably wouldn&#8217;t get this again.<\/p>\n<p>We met a lovely couple at the pool bar last night &#8211; he said that Buenos Aires, Argentina had the best food &#8211; and he claimed to have tried everything at F&amp;W. So, we walked around World Showcase, looking, smelling, watching a little bit of cooking going on (and I mean that literally*). When we got around to the Buenos Aires booth, decided to be adventurous and order both of their offerings; we were comforted somewhat by the long line here (have I mentioned that the crowds just weren&#8217;t? crowds that is).<\/p>\n<p>Buenos Aires, Argentina &#8211; Beef Empanada with Tomato Salsa &amp; Grilled Beef Skewer with Chimichurri Sauce and Boniato Puree &#8211; both were good. The skewer sampling contained good components, but I felt that they were better separate than all together in one bite. Beef was warm, almost hot, and freshly grilled. The chimichurri was herby &amp; spicy with a hint of some sourness. The boniato puree most closely resembled lumpy mashed potato (yum). The beef empanada was a bigger hit with both of us &#8211; nicely spiced, very tasty, and not soggy; the tomato salsa that was paired with it wasn&#8217;t your regular Pace Picante Salsa, the tomato flavor really came through with a hint of sour. Don&#8217;t think we&#8217;d go out of our way to get these at WDW again, but the empanada could be a snack at some point, especially if the weather is chilly.<\/p>\n<p>To finish off our evening, we stopped at the beer stand in the UK pavilion and got 2 Bass Ales. Always yummy. Sat and enjoyed these, decided we were done for the night, and left Epcot to return again.<\/p>\n<p>Nora<\/p>\n<p>* one complaint we have with the Epcot Food &amp; Wine Festival &#8211; it&#8217;s supposed to be a &#8220;festival&#8221;&#8230; so&#8230; why isn&#8217;t all the food &#8220;street food&#8221; or at least the majority? why is so much of it like bad buffet food? it seemed really difficult to find something that wasn&#8217;t pre-prepared and just sitting there getting &#8220;stale&#8221; &#8211; not appetizing&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> Visit #2 <\/p>\n<p>Went back again tonight. Since we had already scoped things out, we were hoping to enjoy the cooler temperatures with some warmer food (in the past, we thought we hadn&#8217;t enjoyed the F&amp;W so much because a lot of the food offerings seem to be &#8220;cooler weather foods&#8221;). One thing we hadn&#8217;t <\/p>\n<p>continue reading <a href=\"https:\/\/extrawdwmagic.com\/?p=2243\">Tastings at Epcot Food &#038; Wine Festival 2009<\/a> &#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[211,201,215,216],"class_list":["post-2243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epcot-food-wine-festival","tag-epcot-theme-park","tag-tasting-booths","tag-walt-disney-world-2","tag-wdw-2","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/extrawdwmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/extrawdwmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/extrawdwmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extrawdwmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extrawdwmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2243"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/extrawdwmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4972,"href":"https:\/\/extrawdwmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions\/4972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/extrawdwmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extrawdwmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extrawdwmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}