oybolshoi
DIS Legend
- Joined
- Aug 16, 2004
- Messages
- 11,879
Wednesday, October 15th - And We're Eating and Eating and Eating ...
Despite the ongoing nuclear meltdown in the financial markets, Jay and I did our best to mentally disconnect from the world's events while at WDW. We both work in the finance / banking / automotive industries and knew that there would be plenty of problems waiting for us when we arrived back in Stinktown. Why borrow trouble when you can pretend to be blissfully ignorant while stuffing yer face and getting yer buzz on?
And that, no doubt, is the reason why this day turned out to be one of the best days of an already very fine trip. We made our way back over to Epcot and positioned ourselves in Canada shortly before 11AM in order to implement our simple yet brilliant Food & Wine strategy: E = MC2.
Eating = Masses Circumvented(twice)
Yes, Einstein ... we theorized that the World Showcase would be a lot more enjoyable if we began our snacktacular quest with the booths in Canada and worked our way around the lagoon counter-clockwise like a pair of drunken fishies swimming against the school.
First stop: The Brewer's Collection... a vast selection of beery goodness from around the world. I liked this booth for many reasons, but most especially because they asked me for an ID!!!
Someone's been at the beer early if I'm being checked for ID!
There were seven beers to choose from: Stella Artois, Hoegaarden, Staropramen, Boddingtons, Tennents Lager, Harbin Beer, and Tiger Beer.
After ruling out those beers we had already tried (Stella's Hoeing the Gaarden of Boddys) and eliminating the one that sounded like a newly discovered form of antibiotic-resistant, flesh-eating bacteria, we opted for a lager since it was still early in the day - there was no need to drink anything too heavy before noon.
Tennent's Lager ... TA DA!!!
Considered Scotland's best selling pale lager, Tennent's was the first lager brewed in Scotland. Interestingly enough the brewery is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bass Brewers, which is in turn owned by that global brewery gobbling behemoth INBEV!!!
Stinktonians still harbor (harbin?) some hard feelings over the recent acquisition of Anheuser-Busch by InBev. While Jay and I weren't huge fans of many AB products, the brewery and the Busch family were certainly a force in the local community and could always be counted on to give generously to organizations and charities that needed a helping hand. They also had a really cool beer song and a beer wagon and beer horses who lived on a vast expanse of land in the middle of suburban St. Louis that just happened to hold a little log cabin where Sam Grant used to live.
You tell me where else in this great country you could take a field trip that includes the former home of a Civil War general and US President along with massive stables for the beer horses, a pseudo-Bavarian town square, and a beer-baron mansion of truly epic proportions thats always off-limits to the grubby public?
Viva le Stinktown! Or so it used to be after thirty free beer samples and a burping contest of epic proportions. Now with the advent of InBev all free beer goodies and genial public displays of digestive gassiness are gone gone gone! And the worst thing about it ... InBev actually puts out some damn fine beer so we can't even stay annoyed with them.
But we could be slightly annoyed with the beer booth thanks to their woeful and inadequate food supply which consisted of a sad selection of potato chips.
ICK!
ACK!
GACK!
Who eats potato chips with beer? Our inner Gollum wants a hot pretzel with some spicy mustard or a sausage dog or nachos dripping with processed cheese food. When it became quite clear that none of these options were available Jay strolled over to Turkey and ordered some food to accompany our beer.
Manti with Yogurt Sauce and Meze
The Manti was basically a spicy meat dumpling with yogurt sauce drizzled attractively over the top. It was a strange taste combination warm noodle, warmer spiced mystery meat, and chilled, slightly sweet yogurt sauce. I ate a little bit of it but left most for Jay because I just didn't care much for it.
Meze roughly translates as a selection of appetizers or small dishes; in this case we received some steamed eggplant and peppers, some grilled pita bread, and a kind of psuedo-hummus. I liked the psuedo-hummus and the pita bread, although I would have liked the bread better if it had been soft. The veggies must have been OK but neither one of us recall much about them.
From Turkey we strolled halfway around the World Showcase to find ourselves in America Town and the Hops & Barley Market.
Even more beer choices ...
This is one of those booths that never changes from year-to-year. They offer something like ten different choices of Sam Adams beer varietals, an overpriced lobster roll, and a crab cake. If they ever offered something new at this booth I think I'd drop dead right there outside of America Gardens Theatre, which at last check didn't really have a garden.
Well, since we were here and hungry Jay and I decided to order the lot, less nine beer selections. Behold: Boston Crab Cake w/ Corn & Barley Salad; New England Lobster Roll; Sam Adams Cream Stout.
Eat them up, yum!
We thought the lobster roll was actually pretty good, even if it carried a rather steep six dollar pricetag. Since we don't have things like this on menus in Stinktown we have no way to gauge it against the real item that one might find in Boston or elsewhere along America's upper East Coast, but we enjoyed it, especially with the cream stout.
The crab cake was tasty but it sure looks to me as if the corn and barley salad were stranded somewhere and didn't quite make it to our plate. I'm pretty sure the salad was burried under the crab cake but it did not make much of an impression.
Surprise of the morning? I really liked the Cream Stout!!! It definitely poured out of the tap like motor oil but it smelled like coffee and had a slightly sweet coffee flavor ... it was really quite good!
We're never so happy as when drinking beer ... unless we're drinking wine ... or scotch ... or some other type of booze
Our next stop was Ireland where we made our second mistake of the day. The first mistake was trying to purchase something from the F&W booth in Japan where mass confusion reigned over several Key to the World cards, the Dining Plan, four guests, two cast members, and at least three different languages. We lost fifteen minutes of our vacation in Japan and we want them back ... with interest!
Anyway, our second mistake was in ordering the boxty in Ireland instead of sticking with the Irish cheese plate. Since we'd ordered the cheese plate at last year's festival we wanted to try something new this year ... all I can say is next time I'm going back to the cheese. It's hard to screw up sliced cheese.
Ireland has the cutest F&W booth!
The official name of our food selection was Boxty with Bacon Chips and Kerrygold Garlic & Fresh Herb Butter. I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't this:
Pancake with onions and a butter globual...
Maybe I'm a little too Americanized, even for an American, but I like maple syrup with my pancake, not fried onions. And I don't see bacon chips ... I see one bacon bit. And as for that huge mound of butter ... Jay and I together wouldn't use that much butter on an entire stack of pancakes much less one. Our final verdict: avoid the boxty at all costs ... it's greasy and overcooked and just not that good.
We hoped that our next stop would be more productive and stopped in Eye-Ta-Lee to see what they had to offer.
My bologna has a first name, it's G-E-O-R-G-E...
Here we selected the Baked Ziti; Cream Puff w/Mascarpone & Gianduja Chocolate; and a Moretti Beer. We chose to ignore the other food option - sausage pizza.
Hooray food!
The baked ziti was very good and certainly large enough for two hogs like Jay and me to share comfortably - it also paired quite nicely with the Moretti Beer, which we'd never tried before. It reminded us a lot of a light beer ala' Bud Light ... oh wait, I guess that's InBev Light, now.
The Cream Puffs were delightful but would have tasted better with some Prosecco or some Rosa Regale rather than with the warm remnants of our beer. As we continued our slow trek through the world showcase look at who we stumbled across! Two of our three dinner partners for the coming evening ... the founding members of TheDISneyFamily!!
Michelle & Steve
Self-portrait #87 - yes we can!
We exchanged greetings and talked a little F&W ... we were eyeballing Spain's booth and had it on good authority from Michelle and Steve that the tuna was definitely worth ordering. And we all agreed that the Cheesemonger booth was one of the best at the festival. Eventually we parted ways since Jay and I had a reservation for afternoon tea over at the Grand Floridian. But before we left Epcot we had time for one more stop at ...
Spain!
I miss the PAIN sign with the floating letter "S".
Taking the advice of our friends we selected the Chilled Tomato and Garlic Soup and Seared Tuna Loin w/Spicy Red Pepper Coulis and Garlic Herb Ciabatta. I also decided that we should end the afternoon with some bubbly and selected the Poema Cava Brut to wash down our food.
Excellent!
Let's start with the chilled soup ... we both really enjoyed this ... a nicely blended mix of tomatoes and garlic with some crispy croutons bobbing along for added texture. I particularly liked how well the soup had been pureed. A few years back we tried gazpacho at Spain's booth and it was like trying to eat cold picante sauce right out of the bottle.
This was a marked improvement.
The tuna was also very tasty and very generously portioned - there are actually two pieces of loin on the plate, but one has been drowned in red pepper coulis. I avoided the sauce for the most part but thought the tuna was excellent and so did Jay. This dish was one of the best we sampled at the entire festival.
And both dishes paired nicely with our champagne, which was light and dry ... not a hint of sweetness to it which is just the way we typically prefer our bubbly.
And then check out what we spotted on our way out of the park ... we were over by the odyssey where it's often less crowded and the bathrooms are less busy ...
TURTLE SOUP!!!
Stay tuned for another report on afternoon tea at the Gardenview Lounge ... and thanks for reading!!
Despite the ongoing nuclear meltdown in the financial markets, Jay and I did our best to mentally disconnect from the world's events while at WDW. We both work in the finance / banking / automotive industries and knew that there would be plenty of problems waiting for us when we arrived back in Stinktown. Why borrow trouble when you can pretend to be blissfully ignorant while stuffing yer face and getting yer buzz on?
And that, no doubt, is the reason why this day turned out to be one of the best days of an already very fine trip. We made our way back over to Epcot and positioned ourselves in Canada shortly before 11AM in order to implement our simple yet brilliant Food & Wine strategy: E = MC2.
Eating = Masses Circumvented(twice)
Yes, Einstein ... we theorized that the World Showcase would be a lot more enjoyable if we began our snacktacular quest with the booths in Canada and worked our way around the lagoon counter-clockwise like a pair of drunken fishies swimming against the school.
First stop: The Brewer's Collection... a vast selection of beery goodness from around the world. I liked this booth for many reasons, but most especially because they asked me for an ID!!!
Someone's been at the beer early if I'm being checked for ID!
There were seven beers to choose from: Stella Artois, Hoegaarden, Staropramen, Boddingtons, Tennents Lager, Harbin Beer, and Tiger Beer.
After ruling out those beers we had already tried (Stella's Hoeing the Gaarden of Boddys) and eliminating the one that sounded like a newly discovered form of antibiotic-resistant, flesh-eating bacteria, we opted for a lager since it was still early in the day - there was no need to drink anything too heavy before noon.
Tennent's Lager ... TA DA!!!
Considered Scotland's best selling pale lager, Tennent's was the first lager brewed in Scotland. Interestingly enough the brewery is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bass Brewers, which is in turn owned by that global brewery gobbling behemoth INBEV!!!
Stinktonians still harbor (harbin?) some hard feelings over the recent acquisition of Anheuser-Busch by InBev. While Jay and I weren't huge fans of many AB products, the brewery and the Busch family were certainly a force in the local community and could always be counted on to give generously to organizations and charities that needed a helping hand. They also had a really cool beer song and a beer wagon and beer horses who lived on a vast expanse of land in the middle of suburban St. Louis that just happened to hold a little log cabin where Sam Grant used to live.
You tell me where else in this great country you could take a field trip that includes the former home of a Civil War general and US President along with massive stables for the beer horses, a pseudo-Bavarian town square, and a beer-baron mansion of truly epic proportions thats always off-limits to the grubby public?
Viva le Stinktown! Or so it used to be after thirty free beer samples and a burping contest of epic proportions. Now with the advent of InBev all free beer goodies and genial public displays of digestive gassiness are gone gone gone! And the worst thing about it ... InBev actually puts out some damn fine beer so we can't even stay annoyed with them.
But we could be slightly annoyed with the beer booth thanks to their woeful and inadequate food supply which consisted of a sad selection of potato chips.
ICK!
ACK!
GACK!
Who eats potato chips with beer? Our inner Gollum wants a hot pretzel with some spicy mustard or a sausage dog or nachos dripping with processed cheese food. When it became quite clear that none of these options were available Jay strolled over to Turkey and ordered some food to accompany our beer.
Manti with Yogurt Sauce and Meze
The Manti was basically a spicy meat dumpling with yogurt sauce drizzled attractively over the top. It was a strange taste combination warm noodle, warmer spiced mystery meat, and chilled, slightly sweet yogurt sauce. I ate a little bit of it but left most for Jay because I just didn't care much for it.
Meze roughly translates as a selection of appetizers or small dishes; in this case we received some steamed eggplant and peppers, some grilled pita bread, and a kind of psuedo-hummus. I liked the psuedo-hummus and the pita bread, although I would have liked the bread better if it had been soft. The veggies must have been OK but neither one of us recall much about them.
From Turkey we strolled halfway around the World Showcase to find ourselves in America Town and the Hops & Barley Market.
Even more beer choices ...
This is one of those booths that never changes from year-to-year. They offer something like ten different choices of Sam Adams beer varietals, an overpriced lobster roll, and a crab cake. If they ever offered something new at this booth I think I'd drop dead right there outside of America Gardens Theatre, which at last check didn't really have a garden.
Well, since we were here and hungry Jay and I decided to order the lot, less nine beer selections. Behold: Boston Crab Cake w/ Corn & Barley Salad; New England Lobster Roll; Sam Adams Cream Stout.
Eat them up, yum!
We thought the lobster roll was actually pretty good, even if it carried a rather steep six dollar pricetag. Since we don't have things like this on menus in Stinktown we have no way to gauge it against the real item that one might find in Boston or elsewhere along America's upper East Coast, but we enjoyed it, especially with the cream stout.
The crab cake was tasty but it sure looks to me as if the corn and barley salad were stranded somewhere and didn't quite make it to our plate. I'm pretty sure the salad was burried under the crab cake but it did not make much of an impression.
Surprise of the morning? I really liked the Cream Stout!!! It definitely poured out of the tap like motor oil but it smelled like coffee and had a slightly sweet coffee flavor ... it was really quite good!
We're never so happy as when drinking beer ... unless we're drinking wine ... or scotch ... or some other type of booze
Our next stop was Ireland where we made our second mistake of the day. The first mistake was trying to purchase something from the F&W booth in Japan where mass confusion reigned over several Key to the World cards, the Dining Plan, four guests, two cast members, and at least three different languages. We lost fifteen minutes of our vacation in Japan and we want them back ... with interest!
Anyway, our second mistake was in ordering the boxty in Ireland instead of sticking with the Irish cheese plate. Since we'd ordered the cheese plate at last year's festival we wanted to try something new this year ... all I can say is next time I'm going back to the cheese. It's hard to screw up sliced cheese.
Ireland has the cutest F&W booth!
The official name of our food selection was Boxty with Bacon Chips and Kerrygold Garlic & Fresh Herb Butter. I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't this:
Pancake with onions and a butter globual...
Maybe I'm a little too Americanized, even for an American, but I like maple syrup with my pancake, not fried onions. And I don't see bacon chips ... I see one bacon bit. And as for that huge mound of butter ... Jay and I together wouldn't use that much butter on an entire stack of pancakes much less one. Our final verdict: avoid the boxty at all costs ... it's greasy and overcooked and just not that good.
We hoped that our next stop would be more productive and stopped in Eye-Ta-Lee to see what they had to offer.
My bologna has a first name, it's G-E-O-R-G-E...
Here we selected the Baked Ziti; Cream Puff w/Mascarpone & Gianduja Chocolate; and a Moretti Beer. We chose to ignore the other food option - sausage pizza.
Hooray food!
The baked ziti was very good and certainly large enough for two hogs like Jay and me to share comfortably - it also paired quite nicely with the Moretti Beer, which we'd never tried before. It reminded us a lot of a light beer ala' Bud Light ... oh wait, I guess that's InBev Light, now.
The Cream Puffs were delightful but would have tasted better with some Prosecco or some Rosa Regale rather than with the warm remnants of our beer. As we continued our slow trek through the world showcase look at who we stumbled across! Two of our three dinner partners for the coming evening ... the founding members of TheDISneyFamily!!
Michelle & Steve
Self-portrait #87 - yes we can!
We exchanged greetings and talked a little F&W ... we were eyeballing Spain's booth and had it on good authority from Michelle and Steve that the tuna was definitely worth ordering. And we all agreed that the Cheesemonger booth was one of the best at the festival. Eventually we parted ways since Jay and I had a reservation for afternoon tea over at the Grand Floridian. But before we left Epcot we had time for one more stop at ...
Spain!
I miss the PAIN sign with the floating letter "S".
Taking the advice of our friends we selected the Chilled Tomato and Garlic Soup and Seared Tuna Loin w/Spicy Red Pepper Coulis and Garlic Herb Ciabatta. I also decided that we should end the afternoon with some bubbly and selected the Poema Cava Brut to wash down our food.
Excellent!
Let's start with the chilled soup ... we both really enjoyed this ... a nicely blended mix of tomatoes and garlic with some crispy croutons bobbing along for added texture. I particularly liked how well the soup had been pureed. A few years back we tried gazpacho at Spain's booth and it was like trying to eat cold picante sauce right out of the bottle.
This was a marked improvement.The tuna was also very tasty and very generously portioned - there are actually two pieces of loin on the plate, but one has been drowned in red pepper coulis. I avoided the sauce for the most part but thought the tuna was excellent and so did Jay. This dish was one of the best we sampled at the entire festival.
And both dishes paired nicely with our champagne, which was light and dry ... not a hint of sweetness to it which is just the way we typically prefer our bubbly.
And then check out what we spotted on our way out of the park ... we were over by the odyssey where it's often less crowded and the bathrooms are less busy ...
TURTLE SOUP!!!
Stay tuned for another report on afternoon tea at the Gardenview Lounge ... and thanks for reading!!
