Festival!! A Food and Wine at DLR trip report (Complete! - 5/31)

Everything looks good. We've done the EPCOT F&W festival for years, always torn between the wine classes and cooking demos. Cool to see all the neat things out in California. Thanks for the review.
 
Hoppin' on the sub bandwagon here!

Love me some BriarRosie and foodporn...

in that order, of course. ;)

Can't wait to read the rest!

Aww, I'm feeling the love. :hug:

Never a bad thing! Food Porn no matter how it's comes it PERFECT! :cool1:

Every post should come with a drool bib. ;)

Subscribing - the pictures look good enough to eat.

While I don't make a habit out of eating photos, the food itself was remarkably tasty. :laughing:

We have asked about the drink menu ourselves since mu husband and I used to try to make it to every hotel at WDW and Disney for the specialty drinks. They have gone to one menu for all hotel bars ..:confused: It's good you found someone who knew your drink .. I think Disney is missing out on all the lushes .. like myself!!! Oh well less travel time more drink time! :thumbsup2

I'm sad to say that the Borg Queen got a hold of the drink menus at Disneyland as well at WDW, so all drink menus have been assimilated. :(
I refuse to order a blue glow-tini out of protest!

Oooooh! I'm just joining in now. Can't wait to dig into your report! :cool1:

I've got quite a few pics to post, and the best (and worst) is yet to come!

Yum, Lori! Can't wait to hear more.

I'll try to post another installment tonight. :)

too bad the soft shell crab roll was blurry!

enjoying your reviews, photos & commentary

oh - and that chocolate cake martini looks inviting!!!

I have a confession to make. I lied about having only one blurry pic. I realized that I have another blurry pic later, but luckily it wasn't anything that exciting. ;) The lemon twist puts a spin on the chocolate martini. I love it.

The veg tempura and teriyaki chicken looked really good!:goodvibes

It was really tasty. The teriyaki sauce was perfect for me. I dislike overly thick sauces, and this wasn't. And the tempura wasn't greasy, which is also a plus.

Ditto!

droolicious reviews! :thumbsup2

I like your word, droolicious! :)

Everything looks good. We've done the EPCOT F&W festival for years, always torn between the wine classes and cooking demos. Cool to see all the neat things out in California. Thanks for the review.

The nice part about the demos in CA is that the venues are close to each other, but many demos overlap. By that I mean one demo could be for 1:30, and the wine demo could be at 2 or 2:15pm. But since you usually need at least 30 minutes (longer on weekends) to wait in line, you need to choose which demo you want to see more. That's typically the same at WDW, too. But there's also a larger selection to choose from at WDW, and many tend to repeat. Nothing repeated that I could tell at DL.
 

Friday, April 18, 2008:

Well, well, well. I finally made it to my first full day of my trip. Earlier than should be humanly possible. I forced myself to go back to sleep when I woke up around 5am. Around 6am, my body told me I had to wake up, and I thought it might possibly be an early entry day.

After I showered and changed, I arrived at the Security line at Downtown Disney at 7am to find that Fridays are not early mornings. Poop. Well, I also find that I'm not the first person there, either. One family was ahead of me, with 3 generations ready to experience the park.

Finally, around 7:30am, they allow us to get our bags checked so we could sit and wait the last half hour at the turnstiles. Not too much later after I am standing at the front of the gate, my phone rings. It's my friend who spotted me through a throng of people. I have no idea how she managed to do that, but I think it was my red hair. Still, I found that pretty impressive!

My plan was to do the Great Nemo Dash, not to be confused with the Dumbo Dash. Let the stroller crowd handle that. I wanted to ride the subs and get that over with. My friend had other plans, none of which included Nemo, so I told her that I'd call when I finished my quest.

Since I was first person at my turnstile, something that has never happened to me in my life, I thought I'd share the picture I took of the family chosen to open the park. I did use my zoom lens a bit, but still, I was very close.

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Did you notice the Mickey flowers behind them? To the right of Mickey's face, you'll see Tinkerbell. Every minute or so, the trail of yellow flowers on the left of Mickey, aka "pixie dust", will sparkle with twinkling lights, catching up to Tinkerbell, who then sprinkles pixie dust into Mickey's face, causing him to twinkle, too. It's a cute effect, but I didn't get any photos of it.

At the Opening Ceremony, I made a beeline with the crowd around the left bend of the Matterhorn, as I heard that's where you had to follow the line to the Submarine Voyage.

Hmm, at a certain point, we had to follow the funeral processional to the entrance queue.

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See that guy with the blue jacket in the middle of the picture? He was the cast member designated as the processional leader. You see those cast members in the background near the umbrella? It took us a while just to walk there. Brides walk down the aisle faster than we walked. Snails were passing us, cursing us out for moving too slow.

This, my friends, was the goal. I was 7th in line, so I knew I'd be on the first sub. :banana:

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The submarine pilots were going through their paces as pre-opening procedures. In fact, I saw all sorts of cast members, paperwork, and clipboards. The subs weren't finished doing their rounds, so it seemed like hours before they'd let us on.

The ride takes 20 minutes or so. They let us into the sub around 8:20 or so, give or take a few minutes. But it was 8:45am before I was out of the sub and on my way to other things. Egad. I didn't return later to see what the wait times were, but I hope this super slo-mo start to my day was worth it.

I rode Mr. Toad and Pinocchio first thing, as those were attractions I love that I can't ride at WDW. I called my friend back to have her meet me in Fantasyland. She shared something quite startling to me.

Did I happen to see the news? No. I didn't turn on the TV because Catherine was still sleeping. Then my friend broke the news to me that Illinois had an earthquake. ILLINOIS?? I travel to California, land of the earthquake, and central IL had a 5.2 earthquake that could be felt in Chicago. The irony of that situation slapped me around a bit.

We did a few Fantasyland rides, and swung over to ToonTown to ride Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin. We waved some people past us to take a look at some of the queue details. I never noticed the wallpaper in Baby Herman's dressing room has Jessica Rabbit shaped pattern. I pointed out my favorite thing in the pre-boarding area: On the wall, just behind the ride vehicles, you'll find Our First Simolean. Instead of a typical dollar bill, it figures the Toon version is a "one simolean" bill. I just love those fun details.

Soon after, we headed to DCA so I could pick up a chocolate croissant to curb the no breakfast hunger and head to the avocado culinary demo at Pacific Wharf.

The chef was Mr. Personality, and just the cutest thing, but I don't recall his name.

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What was he making with avocado? A sauce. An avocado tomatillo sauce to go on a piece of salmon made with a chipotle glaze, topped with a salsa relish made with roasted corn and black beans.

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He said that he often doesn't care for the color of the blended product, so he'll often brighten the colors up by devious means. Ok, I added the devious part, but the guy had a point. By adding bunches of spinach and chicken stock into the sauce he made with avocados, garlic and tomatillos, the color was a brighter green.

Get those drool bibs out! Here comes the salmon!

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This was a thing of beauty. And the portion was mighty generous. He used some serrano chiles in this dish, so there was a bit of heat, but nothing that made me want to dunk my head in a bucket 'o water. In short, it was delicious.

But like the mushroom demo, I felt that the avocado was a secondary player in the dish. I shouldn't complain, because both dishes were delicious!

At this point, I realize that I should have looked at my phone because I didn't feel my phone signal me that I had a message. I noticed that I had a couple text messages Catherine sent me yesterday pop up. Strange! But also, there was another message from Catherine wondering where we were. Uh oh, was she awake in time to go to the demo?

After we caught up with her, we found out that she was not around in time for this demo, but she managed to tell us that:

1. The room fridge was set to Eskimo. Her bread pudding was frozen solid. She had to take it out into the sun to thaw it.

2. She found a nearby liquor store to purchase her Diet Coke for less than the $2.75 highway robbery prices at Disney. She was buying Diet Coke at the time my other friend and I were waiting for the demo.

3. She was going to the beer demo starting shortly.

Ok, I'm for that! I didn't actually catch Catherine in person until I got into line at the beer demo. The Karl Strauss Brewing Company was doing this demo at the booze demo location across the Wharf area.

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This was our Beer Ambassador. At least that's what her shirt said. Catherine blurted out what I had been thinking. We both wanted one of those shirts. :cool1:

Now I've done the Sam Adams beer demo at WDW. This is how we got our samples:

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And here was how the Karl Strauss beers were served:

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We have their Endless Summer Light, the Amber Lager, the Stargazer IPA (Pale Ale), and Windansea Wheat Hefeweisen. My favorite was the Amber Lager.

Nice, no? However, there was a beer accident before we were seated, but some tacky guy who was seated across the way took advantage of some of the remains of beer that survived the tumble by doing shots and returning to his seat. Classy. :rolleyes:

Unlike the Sam Adams demo, this lady knew her stuff. In fact, we were practically becoming intern brewmasters, if you looked at the visuals next to her on the display. This was more than I ever needed to know about brewing beer, and I remember practically nothing of the process.

It's no accident the Karl Strauss beer cart is two steps away from the demo area. :laughing:
Since our friend was on her own, Catherine and I got some lunch with the festival offerings. I ordered the lobster lollipop and the cheese soup, and Catherine had the soup and the beef slider.

Lobster Lollipop
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This was a hit. The entire thing worked, and the red pepper remoulade was tasty! The outside was crispy and the lobster was tender. In order to get the remoulade, I had to slide the lobster toward the top of the stick each time I wanted to dip. Yum!

White Cheddar Soup
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Le Cellier, eat your heart out! I think this soup surpassed Le Cellier's similar soup. I found this less salty than the famous cheddar soup from WDW, but there was the same bacon flavor under it all. If this was Iron Chef: Cheddar Soup Battle, the DCA version would win. The bread bowl is a cute touch, too.

Pepper Crusted Beef Tenderloin Slider
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Catherine said this was "just ok".

Since we had to be at the Winemaker Dinner at Steakhouse 55 at 6pm (or so I've been led to believe), I didn't want to have any more food at the culinary demo. Catherine and I met up with our friend by Sam Andreas Shakes.

Word to the wise, folks. You don't want to hang out there any longer than you have to. There's a percussive area with what looks like farm equipment and cowbells tacked on a wall, and kids are allowed to make an unholy racket on those items, creating a cacophony that requires a side order of Advil.

We left this area quickly to head to Monster's Inc. I keep wanting to add "Laugh Floor". You can tell I still have Walt Disney World on the brain! I'm so glad we managed to ride this. Our friend pointed out the queue line things that made Roger Rabbit queue look tame. There's a great menu on the wall that reads like a gross version of a sushi menu, and it was just too clever. By the time we got the vehicle loading area, the vending machine had some great snack items like Bag 'o Calories and Sugar, Salt & Fat. Finally! Truth in advertising! :laughing:

The coolest thing ever was in the Animation Building. I hadn't seen it before, but I heard about the Toy Story Zoetrope. This thing is pretty amazing, and I think everyone needs to see this. A typical zoetrope is cylindrical, with slits cut at intervals. Painted images on the inside are sequenced on the inside, like animation drawings. When you spin the cylinder and look through the slits, it causes an optical illusion that mimics the same effect as a motion picture, so it appears to be animated.

This version is three dimensional on a platform. Each animation is part of a series of poses in concentric circles on a circular platform. When the platform is not moving, you can see where each sculpture is posed differently. Once it starts spinning at high speeds and a strobe light is added, the magic happens, and you're seeing some really fun three dimensional animation.

We left DCA to grab a FastPass for Indiana Jones for later. We decided to go see the original Tiki Room show because well, the original show beats the Under New Management show at WDW. Our minds went to the gutter when we were standing in the preshow area. There's just something about Maui that we never noticed before, and it really cracked us up. Since this is a family board, I can't share it. :rolleyes1

But the interesting thing was that our cast member for the show looked like the Pat character from Saturday Night Live. Seriously. The hair. The glasses. The ambiguous androgeny. Male? Female? I'm thinking female, but it was pretty wild to see a character come to life. The last time this happened to me, I saw the real life Ned Flanders from The Simpsons at the Adventurers Club. :laughing:

After riding Pirates and Haunted Mansion, we left to head back to change clothes for our Winemaker Dinner.

Next: Winemaker Dinner and the Funniest Comment Overheard.
 
Sounds like a scrumptious day, Lori! The lobster lollipop and the cheese soup along with a Karl Strauss would be a perfect lunch for me too.

Every time I step into DL I feel like I am in a warp. I recognize things but they are just not in the right place, you know?? ;) Love the differences and in some ways DL surpasses WDW.

I look forward to reading more of your culinary adventures. Thanks for taking the time to write and share it.
 
It's still Thursday? Yep.
I learned something new at this demo. He used a bottle of verjus (vair-ZHOO), which is unfermented juice from from the first press of wine grapes. It's meant to be a replacement for vinegar in the dressing. :teacher:
The chef brought around a little sample of it to try if we wanted to taste it, as we were served our salads.

I suggest that I could buy her a drink at the Hearthstone Lounge at the Grand Californian, and that's what we did. The drink menu didn't thrill us, and I noticed that many of the same drinks at WDW (Blue Glowtini anyone?) was on this menu, too. The drink menu used to have a chocolate cake martini, and lucky for us, the bartender here knew how to make one.

I'd heard that Verjuice had made a comeback in modern recipes but this is the first time I've seen it used. I've used Verjuice when I recreate Medieval dishes because it was a standard ingredient in the Middle Ages ( I teach Culinary History as a side job). I've had to make my own up to now by pressing unripe grapes which i grow in the garden. It's good to know it can now be purchased commercially.

Do you know what goes into the chocolate cake martini? I wonder if it's like the Italian wedding cake martini.
 
that lobster lollipop sounded delicious, as well as the cheese soup in the breadbowl - really enjoying your reviews here!
 
Enjoying the reviews.
 
I was telling DH about your review and we decided we will definitely have go out to DL next year for their version of the F&W Festival. Everything looks absolutely DELICIOUS! Thanks for the food porn-we can't get enough over here! :thumbsup2
 
The DL F&W offerings look a little more inventive than the WDW F&W ones. I noticed over the years, the WDW F&W offerings have homogenized a little. I hope that doesn't happen in DL.

That said, your review thus far is making me want to grab DH & drag his butt westward!
 
Sounds like a scrumptious day, Lori! The lobster lollipop and the cheese soup along with a Karl Strauss would be a perfect lunch for me too.

Every time I step into DL I feel like I am in a warp. I recognize things but they are just not in the right place, you know?? ;) Love the differences and in some ways DL surpasses WDW.

I look forward to reading more of your culinary adventures. Thanks for taking the time to write and share it.

Aww thanks. :blush: The first time I went to DL, I had the same time warp when I went into the west side of the park. It was like I was in the Bizarro Universe because I was so familiar with WDW. And yes, in a lot of ways, DL surpasses the Magic Kingdom. I really felt that difference while on Main Street. There are only two things at WDW that surpass DL for me. The castle and the refurbed version of the Haunted Mansion.

I'd heard that Verjuice had made a comeback in modern recipes but this is the first time I've seen it used. I've used Verjuice when I recreate Medieval dishes because it was a standard ingredient in the Middle Ages ( I teach Culinary History as a side job). I've had to make my own up to now by pressing unripe grapes which i grow in the garden. It's good to know it can now be purchased commercially.

Do you know what goes into the chocolate cake martini? I wonder if it's like the Italian wedding cake martini.

I hadn't heard about verjus (verjuice?) until this trip. I'm an ignorant cretin in many ways. :laughing: I don't know what goes into most drinks. I let the pros make them, and I'll just stick to drinking them. ;)

that lobster lollipop sounded delicious, as well as the cheese soup in the breadbowl - really enjoying your reviews here!

Yes, both of those were very good. I'm glad the pictures came out great, too.

Enjoying the reviews.

Glad to see you made it over here. :hug:

I was telling DH about your review and we decided we will definitely have go out to DL next year for their version of the F&W Festival. Everything looks absolutely DELICIOUS! Thanks for the food porn-we can't get enough over here! :thumbsup2

LOL! I'm a bad influence on you and your hubby! :lmao: This year, being only the third year of the California festival, was the first year they extended it to every day, not just weekends.

The DL F&W offerings look a little more inventive than the WDW F&W ones. I noticed over the years, the WDW F&W offerings have homogenized a little. I hope that doesn't happen in DL.

That said, your review thus far is making me want to grab DH & drag his butt westward!

I've noticed that the WDW offerings cycle out. Some years they'll offer escargot in France, and other years, it would be something like frog leg chowder. Some of the more popular items never leave, like the Canadian Cheddar Cheese soup. It would be interesting to see how the DCA festival offerings play out next year. And about go westward...you better hurry. The festival ends May 5th, I believe. ;)

Karl Strauss and Maui rock my world.

You're just easy. :teeth:
 
Wow Lori, I live less then two hours away and you did way more then me this year.. everything looks great. We were impressed by the size of the demo portions also. Can't wait to hear about your wine event. We went to Taste last year and are missing this year to do a wine event in Vegas. Next year we hope California wont have record heat during the festival for all of us to enjoy it a little more! Thanks for posting all this!
 
Wow Lori, I live less then two hours away and you did way more then me this year.. everything looks great. We were impressed by the size of the demo portions also. Can't wait to hear about your wine event. We went to Taste last year and are missing this year to do a wine event in Vegas. Next year we hope California wont have record heat during the festival for all of us to enjoy it a little more! Thanks for posting all this!

I did a heckuva lot more later, too! Cram a lot in because it'll be a while before I'm coming back. Luckily, it's later this year for me. Prior to that, it was 3 years in between visits. I just heard about some big food and wine event in Vegas, so if that's the one, tell us how it went!

i have 2 words...LOBSTER POP

i will take 7 please ;)

No kidding! They were good, but I only had one lobster lollipop the entire trip. I did find time to have a duplicate on the chocolate item. I have priorities. ;)
 
LOL! I'm a bad influence on you and your hubby! :lmao: This year, being only the third year of the California festival, was the first year they extended it to every day, not just weekends.

I like to hang with the bad crowd! :lmao: Your report was exactly the thing for me to convince DH to head west (I'd been trying to do that for a few years now with no luck). DH thinks of vacations in terms of food not the destination. :laughing:
 
Word to the wise, folks. You don't want to hang out there any longer than you have to. There's a percussive area with what looks like farm equipment and cowbells tacked on a wall, and kids are allowed to make an unholy racket on those items, creating a cacophony that requires a side order of Advil.

That made me laugh out loud. A lot. :lmao:

I love your reviews. I'm a DL AP and didn't make it to the Festival this year...Not. One. Single. Day. I'm happy to get to experience it vicariously via your report!
 
I can't see the pictures while I'm at work ... insert expletive here ... but I really enjoyed reading your latest installement with all that picturesque white space. :rotfl2:

You were in fine snarky form, and ate lots of food that sounds yummy to me. I'm with Gina ... I'll take a forest of lobster pops please, just based on the description! :thumbsup2
 
I did a heckuva lot more later, too! Cram a lot in because it'll be a while before I'm coming back. Luckily, it's later this year for me. Prior to that, it was 3 years in between visits. I just heard about some big food and wine event in Vegas, so if that's the one, tell us how it went!
QUOTE]

I will! It's the Wine Spectator event not the Bon App. one. My husband picked between the two so we will be eating along our own way! ;) We need a Non-Disney eating food thread to give reviews from all travels.. I bet you have a ton of great spots in Chicago I'd love to hear about!
 





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