Once again, as it
is customary for me, I have attended the Food & Wine Festival at Disney’s
Epcot. It is an event I look forward to
every Autumn and I truly enjoy. The festival
has grown every year and includes more and more countries each time with more
dishes to try. As an added bonus, one
gets to pair the sample-sized servings with regional wines. A win-win no doubt.
This year
however, I found the quality of the foods offered quite lame, and at times
without any flavor.
My first stop was
France. It is always my favorite country
when it comes to gastronomy. One of the
perennial offerings of this pavilion are the escargots. This year, they decided to do a nice
amuse-bouche and they put them into a crumbly pastry tart, thus a Tartlette aux Escargots. The result was good, and accompanied by the Kir à la Pomegranate it opened up the
appetite nicely.
Next I headed for nearby Canada,
as I wanted to try the Seared Rainbow
Trout, topped with bacon, friseé and L8 harvest vinegar. It is very hard to ruin trout, especially if
it’s not overcooked. Sadly, I have to
report that these people have managed to do it.
The fish tasted like nothing at all, the only flavor contributing to it given
only by the bacon. And friseé and L8 harvest?? I definitely missed it. A lonesome single string of lettuce without
any dressing whatsoever. Very bad
indeed. The Neige Première Apple Ice Wine I have had before. It should have been chillier.
As I kept walking I stopped
at the Italy pavilion, where I tasted some very good Limoncello, and later a
shot of acquavit in Norway. The former
very deliciously sweet and fruity, the latter highly alcoholic and without much
flavor. Italy also had in stock some
very unique porcelain to serve espresso, and to which I couldn’t help
myself. The line is called I*Wares, by Seletti, and they’re worth exploring. The espresso cups are made of fine white porcelain
and include a spoon. The only note of
bright colour is on the painted handles, making them ideal to mix and match.
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| The beautiful porcelain espresso cup, here paired with my Mikasa sugar bowl and some elegant Dalimayr coffee. Perfect cremma. |
In Germany, I got my hands on some wonderful apple schnapps,
which I’ve tried before and thought would be very good to have on hand to add
to some apple desserts now that Fall is upon us. Schönauer
Apfel is a
delicious mix of Germany's best apples and grain spirits that tastes
truly like pure apple heaven. In
Germany, it’s the way a party starts. It makes great apple martinis.
For my main course I wanted
something I’d never tried before, kind of exotic. I stopped at Africa’s outpost. After making sure there were no ivory animal
carvings around, I tried the Bobotie with
turkey and mushrooms. This is the
national dish of South Africa, pretty much like a frittata, made with egg, curried
meat and grapes. The portion was small,
but it was very filling. Going back to
quality ingredients, it made me think that in South Africa, where produce is
much fresher and better than here in the USA, this dish must indeed taste
wonderful. Here it was just okay. I had it along with M.A.N. Vintners Chenin Blanc, refreshing and very helpful in
counteracting the spicy flavours of the dish.
The Bobotie left me without any more want for savory. So I headed for the “Desserts &
Champagne” booth, where I order the customary Dessert trio. This was
probably the biggest disappointment of all.
Usually this trio of desserts is a pleasure to indulge in, but not this
year. It consisted of Passion Fruit Coconut Creamsicle (an
average custard with a jelly top), a Blueberry-Lime
Cheesecake Roll (the best one of the three, should just have had this
dessert in a bigger piece instead of the trio), and Chocolate Espresso Opera Cake, which was an insult to the excellent
dessert created by the Dalloyau patissiers (for an excellent Opera cake that
you can find locally, worth every one of your tastebuds, go HERE). Dry, tasteless chocolate, lacking the
requisite coffee flavour in the genoise layers.
A disaster.
The best part of the dessert experience
was the champagne. I ordered a glass of very
expensive Ruinart Blanc de Blancs. It was refreshingly clean, very smooth, and
did not overpower the flavours of the food.
A pity to have had it with such poor sweet pairings.
But even if dessert disappoints at the
Food & Wine Festival, if one is local, one has the privilege to bring some very
good ones from the French patisserie on site.
I selected Lemon-Merengue tarte
and Framboise at the end of my
journey and hurried towards the car, as the day was quite warm.
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| Italian merengue, slightly caramelized, on this citron tart. Heavenly creamy. |
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| "Framboise" is a combination of velvety raspberry mousse and chocolate genoise. |
The France pavilion has also
recently opened an ice-cream parlor.
They carry some unique European flavours, and I couldn’t resist trying
the Caramel Fleur de Sel. I bought a cone. It tasted mostly like caramel, and I couldn’t
really detect the “sel”. Still, who
cares when you’re hurrying home with some really good dessert under your belt?
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| Creamy caramel ice-cream finished off the journey |
