This review reflects our experience in September of 2015.
One of the best times to head to Walt Disney World is in the fall for the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival. During this time Epcot’s World Showcase fills with various food stands that offer snack size portions of authentic international cuisine and beverages. For the last few years there was an all vegan booth sponsored by Gardein™ named Terra. We were pretty upset to hear that Terra had been removed this year until we found out that a few booths have introduced vegan items. Not only is there still vegan items, but those items are being integrated into international booths. Now vegans get to experience several booths and meat eaters can try a meatless item a try without being separated at it’s own booth.
Our first stop during Food and Wine was to the Greece booth with featured a Vegan Moussaka. Neither of us had ever tried Moussaka before but we found out it’s essentially a Greek Lasagna. The Moussaka consisted of Gardein™ Sausage Crumbles, eggplant, potato, tomato, béchamel sauce and Daiya Cheese.
The eggplant was really hard to cut because of the size of the cup and the plastic utensils. It seemed like the eggplant could have been cooked more. The potato in it was pretty non-existent and didn’t add much.
The Gardein™ Sausage Crumbles in it were incredible. The sausage was really the best part of this dish. There wasn’t a ton of Daiya on top so if you’re not a fan of their cheese you really won’t taste it. We couldn’t taste the sauce on it and as a whole were not very impressed with this dish. It’s pretty cool that we have an option in Greece and it is also the only Moussaka on the menu!
Another option at Food and Wine is from the South Korea booth. Here, there is a Vegan Korean Barbecue with Steamed Rice and Cucumber Kimchi. We were really excited to try this because this booth always seemed to have a huge line. When we finally got around to trying it we were extremely disappointed to find out that they didn’t even have any of the vegan dish at the booth ready and were told to wait for them to bring out more. The cast member wrote on our receipt to return in 20 minutes to get the dish.
After 20 minutes I returned to the booth only be told they still didn’t have it. We were very upset that they have this awesome vegan option and they don’t even have it in the booth if others are wanting it. After 45 minutes they finally restocked the dish and we were able to try it.
The dish featured Gardein™ Beefless Tips. The sauce was essentially a spicy soy sauce, not much flavor and a little sweet. We enjoyed the beefless tips, we just wished the sauce wasn’t so thin so they could have more of the sauces favor.
Mixing the sauce with the rice was pretty good since it was just kind of soy sauce. The Kimchi Cucumbers reminded us of bread and butter pickles. After waiting 45 minutes for this we were pretty unimpressed. There is a meat version of this on the menu as well, we wish they had made it the only version to encourage people to try more meatless options, but you can’t win them all. Overall I enjoyed this item more than the Moussaka, it also felt like there was more food in this dish than the other.
While we were walking around World Showcase we came across Refreshment Port and saw they have Dole Pineapple Soft Serve that you can get plain or with Bacardi® Coconut Rum. This is a nice cool option for those random hot days in Florida fall.
We had a pretty good time at Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival this year. We felt the vegan options were about as good as they had been in previous years, not great but still enjoyable. We were really happy to see they have integrated the vegan items into the various international booths instead of removing them all together. Hopefully next year they will switch more of the vegetarian items to being vegan.
Corey & Melissa