We've been dying to go to EPCOT's Food and Wine festival for years. Our birthday, which falls around Thanksgiving, is always within a few days of the festivals ending, so over the past few years, we have gone to Disney near our birthday and missed the amazing festival. Not this year! We went to one of the first weekends for the event during Dapper Day weekend. We are lucky - while we live about 3 hours from Orlando, my in-laws have a lovely home near Disney. Since this was a celebration trip (both of Jason getting a job and our 'unanniversary', a random, fun celebration of our anniversary we hold in September every year), we decided to get a hotel room and have me take a half day so we could do our Friday outing in EPCOT.
Jason and I have become big beer drinkers over the years. What started as liking a few certain beers at a brewery in Hawaii opened us up to trying more things and expanding our palettes. While I hate some of them still (I can't do porters or stouts at all), I really love some. For instance - the Shiner Wild Hare Pale Ale in this flight was my favorite of the night. They even had Kona on draft at the Hawaii stand - a beer from that special place in Hawaii I was talking about.
After our initial beers to get us started, we started to get hungry. That's when we started going 'around the world' to sample both the food and drink. I honestly believe this should be deemed the 'Food, Beer, and Wine' festival. Because it all pairs so amazingly.
Pulled pork with pineapple chutney and spicy mayo paired with pineapple wine and Kona Brewing Golden Wave from Hawaii. Jason's fave from the night.
A yummy filet mignon with mushroom and truffle sauce and a Moosehead lager from Canada. (Not as good at the one inside, but for 7 bucks, I'll take it)
My favorite stand of the night? By and far Brazil. These little cheese breads (pao de queijo) were the perfect drinking food, and the frozen caipirinha was delicious and surprisingly strong for a frozen drink at Disney. And not sweet - I don't do overly sweet frozen drinks, and this was exactly how a frozen cocktail should be. Plus, how AMAZING does this stand look, even on a fairly raining evening?
We're going back to the food and wine festival in early November, so look out for more photos from the event then!
What!? This is the coolest!
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