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Post by johnb on Sept 2, 2024 16:43:36 GMT -5
We did a short (Friday night to Sunday night) WDW trip.
HBD Lounge lunch on Saturday--excellent as usual.
Flying Fish dinner--excellent as usual. They've tweaked the menu just a bit (new hamachi app and they changed the pork belly app a little--same pork belly, new peach glaze with tiny fried onion and a slaw that brightens the dish).
Food and Wine for lunch yesterday. Two huge misses and I had no interest in trying anything else.
Garlic parm wings at Brew-Wing in the Odyssey building. The wings had a gross texture, totally soggy, and they were severely over-sauced. The sauce was congealed all over the wings.
Pumpkin Mascarpone Ravioli with Sage-Brown Butter, Pecorino Cheese and Hazelnut Praline. Really bad. Don't be fooled by the photo on the F&W website. No sauce. Gummy pasta. One sliver of cheese. The saltiness of the cheese should balance the sweetness of the pumpkin mascarpone filling, so the lack of cheese made the dish overly sweet. It was terrible.
The Thai noodles with shrimp were pretty good.
Like most things in WDW, the F&W focus is clearly to maximize profit at the expense of quality. I don't know how someone within the organization could greenlight that pasta unless it was solely "it's fifty cents of food that we can sell for $6."
DD said, "They probably hope that people drink so much that they don't notice how bad the food is."
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Post by Adelard of Bath on Sept 2, 2024 21:46:31 GMT -5
"it's fifty cents of food that we can sell for $6." tbh I feel that way about most of the F&W. The lightbulb moment for me was when I saw a booth labelled "Poland" selling pierogies. I said yum, I bought them, and six dollars later the little cardboard boat held two (two!) pierogies virtually indistinguishable from what I can buy in a cardboard box in the freezer aisle of the local grocery store all day, every day. I will say that since then, I've had a few good things. |
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Post by PirateLinda on Sept 3, 2024 7:07:45 GMT -5
The F&W is my least favorite festival. Most of the bands for the Beat to the Eat concert, I don't know.
But, we have gotten some good food. Canada is usually good, Hawaii used to have a spam hash that was tasty. Unfortunately, it's hit or miss on the food and it can get pricey for what you get.
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Post by bakerworld on Sept 3, 2024 8:12:49 GMT -5
When we first started to go to F&W - around 2010 - the wine taskings were $3 (which I think is appropriate for 2 ounces) and the food was around $3 - $6. Now, most of the wine I can buy in PA and the food we've gotten really picky on although we've always get the sausage in pretzel rolls (YUM).
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Post by johnb on Sept 3, 2024 9:13:36 GMT -5
When we first started to go to F&W - around 2010 - the wine taskings were $3 (which I think is appropriate for 2 ounces) and the food was around $3 - $6. Now, most of the wine I can buy in PA and the food we've gotten really picky on although we've always get the sausage in pretzel rolls (YUM). Our first was in 1997 and they had...free!!!!!!!!...beer tastings. They also had really cool food and wine pairing dinners in the Odyssey building, where they had wineries pair up with some really great chefs (this is before celebrity chefs were a thing). We did a five course dinner with a chef from Ft. Lauderdale and a winery from Italy. The atmosphere was extremely laid back. I asked the chef a question about the preparation of one of the courses and he invited me into the kitchen to watch. Very cool. |
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Post by baymaxfan on Sept 3, 2024 12:07:41 GMT -5
We are going on our first Food and Wine at WDW this October. This was always something I wanted to do but couldn't get around the school schedules. However, my expectations have been tempered over the years as it seems the value of the food offerings (price to size ratio) has decreased dramatically. And in the near endless festivals at Epcot have diminished the uniqueness. I'm still looking forward to it, and it is probably a good thing that I now have low expectations.
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Post by Adelard of Bath on Sept 3, 2024 12:24:14 GMT -5
I asked the chef a question about the preparation of one of the courses and he invited me into the kitchen to watch. Very cool. This is way cool. |
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Post by a1000monkeys on Sept 3, 2024 14:40:48 GMT -5
About a decade ago I envisioned that my wife and I would go to F&W every year once we started travelling more with out the kids. Sounded like a fun food festival. Then we finally got to try it a few times and I was unimpressed. Eating mediocre food, with overpriced portions in the hot sun over a trash can did nothing for me. From what I have seen and read, the quality has only gone down more while the prices have gone up. I have no plans to ever go back.
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Post by baymaxfan on Sept 3, 2024 14:54:45 GMT -5
About a decade ago I envisioned that my wife and I would go to F&W every year once we started travelling more with out the kids. Sounded like a fun food festival. Then we finally got to try it a few times and I was unimpressed. Eating mediocre food, with overpriced portions in the hot sun over a trash can did nothing for me. From what I have seen and read, the quality has only gone down more while the prices have gone up. I have no plans to ever go back. You are not instilling confidence. LOL. In reality, I am worried about overpriced mediocre food with small portions. We'll try it this year and are committed next year too with friends. After that, I expect it will be a skip. |
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Post by johnb on Sept 3, 2024 15:21:44 GMT -5
About a decade ago I envisioned that my wife and I would go to F&W every year once we started travelling more with out the kids. Sounded like a fun food festival. Then we finally got to try it a few times and I was unimpressed. Eating mediocre food, with overpriced portions in the hot sun over a trash can did nothing for me. From what I have seen and read, the quality has only gone down more while the prices have gone up. I have no plans to ever go back. You are not instilling confidence. LOL. In reality, I am worried about overpriced mediocre food with small portions. We'll try it this year and are committed next year too with friends. After that, I expect it will be a skip. I tend to ignore the price and eat what sounds interesting to me. I avoid anything I can make at home. It's usually the not so common ethnic foods that I like. |
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Post by reblzmom on Sept 3, 2024 18:53:15 GMT -5
There are good things to try - we still enjoy it. I agree that the tastings and demonstrations and such are greatly missed. Be selective. Have fun.
Also - its just way too hot to eat most of these things in August and September! This festival for me is much more enjoyable once the weather cools down a bit.
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Post by ajc on Sept 4, 2024 0:05:50 GMT -5
My favorite is Flower and Garden Festival.
There are some good food options (Brazil, Belgium, Canada, Mexico).
Be discriminating and we bring containers for savory breakfast trials since I can only eat 3 small plates per meal. There are some gems in the mix so share with a partner to try the options rather than fill up on everything available.
Check out DFB with AJ for best of the festival reports.
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Post by Joeli on Sept 4, 2024 5:52:36 GMT -5
Not to promote anything, so if this post needs to be removed, please do so.
We use an app on our iPhone called “Food&Wine”. (There are a bunch of bad apps), this app shows a map, all the food at each location, pictures if submitted, pricing. Also, you can favorite all items you want so that when you are at the park you can be on a search and destroy mission! 😂.
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Post by melk on Sept 4, 2024 6:21:49 GMT -5
Not to promote anything, so if this post needs to be removed, please do so. We use an app on our iPhone called “Food&Wine”. (There are a bunch of bad apps), this app shows a map, all the food at each location, pictures if submitted, pricing. Also, you can favorite all items you want so that when you are at the park you can be on a search and destroy mission! 😂. I use this app too. I check off the boxes I think I might like to try, then once I see some reviews I end up deleting some, maybe adding a couple. When I’m there I already have an idea of what I want to try and I’m not buying on impulse. But as others have posted, if it’s super hot and humid all bets are off, I don’t feel like eating anything. |
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Post by brp on Sept 4, 2024 8:54:20 GMT -5
We go annually and generally find something good. Things like pastas we don;t generally eat anyway, so would steer clear. We have some old favorites and have pretty good luck with new ones. We hit some, but really few, klunkers.
As for being overpriced for the portion - is this really a revelation for Disney? If one isn't expecting this even before they go, they're not paying attention.
Much of the stuff is not bad, and we can make a meal of something like 4 of these, so it's not that bad price-wise.
As to Eat to the Beat - I do know a number of the bands, and they play 20 minute sets. Sometimes I know enough of the songs to go see the has-been or, more often, never-was band with like 1 or 2 hits.
An example was going to see "Orchestra," which is a pale imitation of Jeff Lynn'e version that we just saw a couple of days ago.
F&W never disappoints since we know what to expect. Sure. we really liked to food demos, but they're gone and we've moved on.
Cheers.
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