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

OMG!!! I will have to get to DL at some point for this festival!!
 
I had just entered Disney's California Adventure, picked up a Festival Guide at the Welcome Center, and I was on my way to lunch at the Farmer's Market. I saw a picture of the California Wrap there, reviewed on AllEars, and I had to get one for myself.

You can't miss the Farmer's Market area, as there's a big honkin' sign FARMER'S EXPO boldly displayed there. All the counter service places had a Food and Wine event inspired item, and that's why I was making a beeline there for that wrap.

I can't describe the sandwich as eloquently as Disney:

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Quite exquisitely written, no? Sure I want my sauces to be laced with something, except when I say it, it sounds like the word arsenic would closely follow. :rolleyes: But I'm sure you want to know what it looks like.

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Since this came wrapped whole, I had to take liberties to show you the wrap by taking off the paper and cutting it in half. And no, your eyes aren't deceiving you. That ain't fries. That ain't apple slices. Pita chips were offered, and I couldn't say no to that.

I immediately tasted the marinade on the chicken, and they weren't skimpy on the greens, either. I was glad that they were very light on the sauce. The fruit did seem to be adding juice to the tortilla as I was eating it. But it never got too soggy. Overall, I think it was a very good choice! :thumbsup2

I wanted some dessert, so I decided to mosey over to the festival's tasting area at the Lucky Fortune Cookery venue. When I got there, to the far left were these ladies selling wines by the bottle:

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Over to the right, you can see a display board next to the cast member ringing up the items you want, bringing the receipt to the pick up window about 20 feet behind them. There were 9 items here, ranging between $4-6, similar to what you can get at the WDW festival. With some major exceptions.

Here, the selections were limited to the Lucky Fortune Cookie area, with one sporadic item at other counter service locations, like the California Wrap. At Epcot, there's a luxury of World Showcase hosting various International kiosks with usually 3 food offerings and either beer or wine, as well. Obviously, this festival is smaller in scope.

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There are more flowery descriptions of the food on the sign above the pickup window:

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Oh yeah, did you want to see the pictures I took of the photo board? The descriptions are there, along with the "beauty shots" of the food:

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Ah yes, the Chocolate Marquise. Now that you have seen the beauty shot, here's an artistic photo I took near the ladies slinging the booze:

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If that's not enough, EXTREME CLOSE UP!

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The berry sauce was a great compliment to the chocolate. The bottom part was a mousse-like consistency, and the band of dark near the top was difficult to cut into with a fork. It broke up in large chunks, and it tasted like a really good version of a Nestle Crunch bar. And that big honkin' decorative piece of chocolate wasn't too shabby, either. Ghirardelli rocks.

Next: Killing time before the first culinary demo, and more food porn!

Yum!! I want one of everything!! Is it just me or does it seem that the DL Food and Wine fest offerings are nicer?
 
it does seem that although there are fewer F&W offerings (than at WDW) what they do have are more embellished!

love the photos - you're the best!! :worship:
 
YUM! I didn't know Disney was carrying Stacy's pita chips! Stacy started her business in the building where my DH works out of.
 

Nothing like coming home from a Vegas glutton-fest to find DL food porn from BriarRosie! :thumbsup2

Yum, that's all I can manage right now. :laughing:
 
I was just in Vegas this month - doing the Food Network tour - Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill, Mario Batali's Enoteca San Marco, Emeril's Delmonico Steakhouse (I had fish) - that's the place to do eating.
 
We were actually a little concerned that the restaurants in Vegas were going to be big on hype and fall short on the food, but everything was incredible.

We were so pleased with everything we tried and already have a new list of places we'd like to try the next time we make it out there (once our budget and our waistlines have recovered ... :rotfl2: ).

I was just in Vegas this month - doing the Food Network tour - Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill, Mario Batali's Enoteca San Marco, Emeril's Delmonico Steakhouse (I had fish) - that's the place to do eating.
 
it does seem that although there are fewer F&W offerings (than at WDW) what they do have are more embellished!

love the photos - you're the best!! :worship:

Thanks! Most of my photos came out ok, which is more than I could say about the Larded and Loaded report pics. I tend to have out of focus issues. :rolleyes1

YUM! I didn't know Disney was carrying Stacy's pita chips! Stacy started her business in the building where my DH works out of.

Start singing now: "It's a small world after all..." ;)

Everything looks so good!:thumbsup2

Well, I'm not going to burst your bubble, but I did have a pretty mediocre experience during the trip. Luckily, that seemed to be the only blah food.

Nothing like coming home from a Vegas glutton-fest to find DL food porn from BriarRosie! :thumbsup2

Yum, that's all I can manage right now. :laughing:

I aim to please. ;) I can't wait to see your glutton report.

I was just in Vegas this month - doing the Food Network tour - Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill, Mario Batali's Enoteca San Marco, Emeril's Delmonico Steakhouse (I had fish) - that's the place to do eating.

But on the other hand, isn't what happens in Vegas supposed to STAY in Vegas? :cool1:

Everything looks good :)

When it was good, it was very good. And when it was bad, it was only once. Thank goodness.

:yay: DL Food and Wine! Very exciting. Can't wait to here all about it and how it compares to WDW.

Overall, I really think DL has a really great variety of food, often more than at WDW. There were places I just never got to go back to because of stuffing my face at the festival.

Count me in!!! We are going to DL in October for the first time, even though the FWF won't be going on I would love to see what they offer..plus any other treats you may have along the way!! :goodvibes

Well, I only have one "real" food report from a non-festival dining venue, but that happens to be the last review of my report. So I guess you'll just have to suffer though my drivel until I get to it. :teeth:

YEA LORI! Thanks for doing this! Love the start.. can't wait for more!:cool1:

I'm just getting warmed up! I'm still posting Day One! I think I'm turning into CampbellScott! :eek: (Ok, that's not such a bad thing! :laughing: )

OMG!!! I will have to get to DL at some point for this festival!!

Be prepared to bring your wallet. My "lunch" buying festival items at the Lucky Fortune Cookery cost me just about as much as my final lunch at a table service restaurant. But the cooking demos are often generous with their FREE food samples.

Yum!! I want one of everything!! Is it just me or does it seem that the DL Food and Wine fest offerings are nicer?

I thought the quality of the pay-per-nosh items and the freebie demo items were all very high. The free demos were often quite a bargain!
 
Hoppin' on the sub bandwagon here!

Love me some BriarRosie and foodporn...

in that order, of course. ;)

Can't wait to read the rest!
 
I'm just getting warmed up! I'm still posting Day One! I think I'm turning into CampbellScott! :eek: (Ok, that's not such a bad thing! :laughing: )



Never a bad thing! Food Porn no matter how it's comes it PERFECT! :cool1:
 
It's still Thursday? Yep.

I arrived, checked in, had lunch and dessert in DCA....now what? I decided to kill some time before the next scheduled culinary demo at the Pacific Wharf area.

There was a cart near the culinary demo area that seemed to be the only place to buy the festival related items.

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See the pins? In a couple of days, those pins will be MIA from that cart. I didn't think they'd sell out that quickly, but I didn't see them again. Luckily, I bought one. :goodvibes

Been there, done that. Bought the tshirt:

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They had a lot of interesting items, from cookbooks, to the pins, shirts and aprons, to ornaments. I did not see a recipe booklet like the WDW festival has, though.

Do my eyes deceive me? No! There's the margarita stand I remember from three years ago!

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Hmm, what should I order?

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Strawberry Margarita!

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Just to the right of the Lucky Fortune Cookery and next to the waterfront, there is a culinary demo stage setup. There's a similar setup at the Bountiful Valley Farm area and across the Pacific Wharf area for the booze demos next to the beer cart. Mostly, they look like this.

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Did you happen to notice a lot of seats are in the sun? Me too. During the earliest demos of the weekend, the sun isn't out in force. But the demo I went to was in mid-afternoon, and I didn't like the blazing sun seats. More on that in a minute.

There were tables alongside the entrance to the demo area, with nice views of Paradise Pier:

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So I sat there sipping my 'Rita, waiting until I had to get into line for the demo. I messaged my friend who arrived, and she was off doing her own thing, so I would see her later at dinner. Catherine was still in transit, supposed to land at 2:30pm.

Out of nowhere, these cute little birds came flying straight towards me. I thought I was under attack, but they flew right by me. Still, it freaked me out a minute. Sheesh, I thought only seagulls did that!

The food demo was Magnificent Mushrooms, and I have no idea who the chef was. I didn't catch names of any chef at any demo, but they all worked as chefs around the Disneyland resort. So as I am about to get into line, the cast member standing there passes out laminated cards with numbers on them.

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Yes, I was third in line. I sat and waited with a bunch of nice people until the venue opened seating. From what I heard, the demo areas hold about 70 people, and I think the numbered card system is great. At WDW, you get into line about 30 minutes early (a little longer on weekends), and you have no idea if you're going to be seated. I definitely like this number system! At least you know if they run out of numbers, you're not getting in.

Soon it was time to be seated, and I was sitting in the sun. While I was wearing sunscreen, I wasn't covered in some areas, so I did burn a little bit. Each seat had this waiting for each person.

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I thought it was nice that we had water to drink and note paper. Here's the work station and mirror.

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The chef was making a salad that would feature some morel mushrooms. Here he is making the vinagrette for the salad.

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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.

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This salad is mainly comprised of yellow tomato, Tuscan melon, mixed greens and crispy prosciutto, with slices of morel, which actually seemed to be an afterthought. I think the salad would have been good with or without them.
This elegant little salad was served at some event at DL recently. And the verjus was very tart, which made sense in terms of the way it's used in the salad dressing. But I think I expected something else that would feature mushrooms front and center.

Now that I got my fill of food, I wanted to do some park stuff! I headed to Golden Dreams right across the bridge, and it looked like it was ready to start in a few minutes. So I went in and enjoyed that movie. The golden theme continued as I rode the Golden Zephyr, a ride I hadn't been on before. They look like silver rockets, and it was a good thing the ride was a walk-on. I wouldn't stand in line for it.

I decided to get into the single rider line at Soarin', and I noticed I had some text messages from Catherine. She was stuck in traffic because there was a bomb scare on the 5 and 605, so they had to take the 405 instead. I marveled at this while in line, and this guy who was also in the single rider line behind me struck up a conversation with me.

I mentioned how my friend is going through her travel drama, and that she, another friend and I were all coming to meet up at Disneyland for the food and wine festival from different cities. I think I mentioned that I was looking forward to our dinner at Yamabuki. Soon, Kronk...Puddy...The Tick...ok, Patrick Warburton interrupted to tell us to board the ride.

After the ride, I did something else I hadn't done before. I explored the Challenge Trail. I discovered that rope bridges and I have issues. I didn't have anything to drink, yet I felt like I crossed the bridge as if I was three sheets to the wind! Egad.

Soon I had another text message that Catherine arrived, and we wanted to get a drink at the Wine Cellar at Hook's Pointe. So I made my way back to the Disneyland Hotel, reached the wine cellar around 4:30pm....and the door was locked. Hmm, I have no idea when they open, and I walked around the building and found Catherine.

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.

Chocolate Cake Martini with a lemon twist.
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I started eating the bar snacks until I realized I needed a photo:

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Catherine and I relaxed, and as we were talking, our attention was diverted to a guy nearby who was doing some strange gyrations. Chippendale's he ain't, but I think he was trying to be funny for the woman he was with. I don't know about her, but I found him amusing.

After our drink, we decided to go to Disneyland and ride the Haunted Mansion, hoping to also find some Haunted Mansion Mickey ears. As we got into the DoomBuggy, the cast member poked his head around the vehicle and greeted Catherine loudly, which completely startled her and sent me into a giggle fit.

Of course the store didn't have Haunted Mansion ears. But it had a lot of Jack Skellington crap. This was reminding me of 2005. Why isn't there any real Haunted Mansion merchandise? Sigh. So Catherine and I decided to take the train back to the Main Street Station. I was looking foward to this, as the train is completely different at DL than WDW. When the narrator started to talk, I thought, "Hey, isn't that the grandpa narrator from Horizons??" I totally think the narrators are the same. I was having a great Horizons flashback moment. :cloud9:

The Mad Hatter shop didn't have any Haunted Mansion Mickey ears, either. So Catherine and I left Disneyland to get ready to meet our other friend for dinner at Yamabuki at Paradise Pier Hotel.

When we arrived, we saw our friend sitting at the bar waiting for us, and who was behind the bar? None other than the random guy I was chatting with in the line of Soarin'! How wacky is that? He didn't tell me he worked at Yamabuki, and he realized somehow that my friend was one of the people I was meeting with. Ok now, sing with me: "It's a small world, after all..."

After the chance encounter, we were soon seated. And I took pics of all the food, too! Here's a pic of the ceviche my friend ordered:

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It was very beautifully presented, and she let me try it. It tasted just as good as it looked.

Catherine ordered the sashimi:

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And I ordered the Yamabuki Combo. You get miso soup and salad to start, followed by tempura and teriyaki chicken or salmon, I think. I had ordered the chicken. Catherine and I also ordered some maki rolls. She ordered spicy tuna, and I had the soft shell crab hand roll.

Salad and Miso Soup
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Spicy tuna roll and Soft Shell Crab (aka Spider) hand roll
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Lucky for me, this was the only blurry pic. I had serious food blur with my Larded and Loaded pics, so one blurry pic here is just fine with me.

Veggie Tempura and Chicken Teriyaki
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Everything was delicious, and the teriyaki sauce was just wonderful. But we were amused by what the couple celebrating their anniversary got at their table.

Introducing Citrus Mickey!

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How cute is that? We didn't get any stinkin' Mickey made out of oranges.

Catherine and I parted ways with our friend after dinner, but as she had a jones for some of Ralph Brennan's Jazz Kitchen's bread pudding, and I had a jones for some beignets, we walked through Downtown Disney again to get some at their Jazz Kitchen Express location.

The bad news...I forgot to take photos of these treats! We brought the treats back to the room to enjoy. Catherine had one big honkin' piece of bread pudding, and it looked great. She saved half to store for her breakfast the next day. So I also gave her one of my beignets. There must have been half a pound of confectioner's sugar in that paper bag after I finished, sheesh.

Our bellies were happy, so we called it a night. It was a long travel day for all of us, and we needed to crash.

Next: Friday begins!
 
Love the pictures even if most of them are of things I'd never eat. ;)

Actually I thought the salad you tried at the culinary demo sounded kind of interesting (sans mushrooms, of course) and am going to pass on to Jay the information you provided about verjus.

Kudos on picking up the shirt and pin on your first viewing! I've learned my lesson and will be buying right away this fall. ;)

And ... citrus Mickey actually looks a little scary to me. :scared1:
 
Love the pictures even if most of them are of things I'd never eat. ;)

Actually I thought the salad you tried at the culinary demo sounded kind of interesting (sans mushrooms, of course) and am going to pass on to Jay the information you provided about verjus.

Kudos on picking up the shirt and pin on your first viewing! I've learned my lesson and will be buying right away this fall. ;)

And ... citrus Mickey actually looks a little scary to me. :scared1:

Oh, you and other mushroom haters would have been fine at this demo. Seriously, other than two slices I found, the rest of it was mushroom free. And mighty tasty.

And about that shirt thing...I have the WDW food and wine shirt. Catherine managed to find one for me during her trip, so I do have it now. But I learned my lesson not to put off buying the festival items I want if I find them!

Citrus Mickey does look a bit scary, but still managed to be cute, too.
 
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.

Chocolate Cake Martini with a lemon twist.
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!

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
 
Oooooh! I'm just joining in now. Can't wait to dig into your report! :cool1:
 
Yum, Lori! Can't wait to hear more.
 
too bad the soft shell crab roll was blurry!

enjoying your reviews, photos & commentary

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














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