Monday, October 19, 2009:
Welcome to my final day of the food and wine festival trip. I'm sorry to see it end. On the schedule for the day was a wine seminar from La Crema winery in California, plus some noshing in World Showcase before Magical Express needed to take Catherine and me to the airport. Since our flights were actually around the same time, they scheduled us to be on the same bus back.
Let's cut to the chase, shall we?
The demo was scheduled for noon, and off we went to the Festival Center. We arrived to our seats with these three wines poured for us.
These were all La Crema pinot noirs. Russian River Valley, Los Carneros, and Alexander Valley were the regions the grapes were grown. They all had distinct flavors, and the presenter from La Crema was engaging. I've had the Los Carneros varietal from Costco. The one I liked the best was Russian River Valley. Very smoooooooooth. I found out that if you buy a bottle labeled as Sonoma Coast (which I saw at Costco recently), it's a blend of some of the grapes from these regions.
Excellent demo.
We didn't have much time to do much noshing, but we managed to get a few done. We're troopers. The things we must suffer through to make sure the food porn is shared on the DIS.
Catherine and I shared some of the items, as I sort of did my Food Pusher thing to her.
We stopped at the Cape Town, South Africa kiosk for:
Mealie Soup with Crabmeat and Chili Oil
See that chili oil on top? That totally gave this soup a much needed spicy kick. I think you probably could request the soup without the chili oil, but I think the soup would be very ordinary without it.
I give it a Good rating.
We stopped at the Bangkok, Thailand kiosk, which we noticed was the ugly stepsister kiosk at the festival the way the crowds on Saturday avoided this kiosk like the plague. Since I tried (and liked) the shrimp dish, I wanted to try the soup.
Chicken and Coconut Soup with Mushroom, Lemongrass and Ginger
I really don't remember much about this soup. I'm going to say it must have been ok. If I had remembered it, it would have been because the soup was really good or really bad.
So this gets an OK rating.
We stopped at the Vienna, Austria kiosk for the mushroom soup with chive dumplings, which was Catherine's pick. I thought it was nasty, and I did not have a photo of it. I'm giving it a Bad rating.
That's my only Bad rating for the entire festival kiosk noshing. I like mushrooms, but the dumplings were just a nasty additive for a really bad soup. I wanted some of Artist Point's portobello mushroom soup to wash away the memory of this soup. Blecch.
The last kiosk we visited was Tokyo, Japan. I wanted the Tuna Sensation, and I forced Catherine to share it with me, of course.
Tuna Sensation
Tuna Sensation translates to sushi grade tuna and avocado in a soy sauce blend. I immediately enjoyed this, but Catherine said it was not good because it was too strong on the soy sauce. Apparently, if you grabbed some tuna or avocado near the top like I did, it was not overpowering. But as you grabbed some near the pool o' soy at the bottom, it can be a bit too much.
I still enjoyed it enough to give this a Good rating.
And there you have it. I conquered 5 nights / 6 days of gluttorious and not-so-gluttorious food and wine. I've discovered:
- If it's possible to defect to La Cava del Tequila, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
- Tim Keating at Flying Fish Cafe does have a Pastry Goddess Extraordinaire working for him.
- Todd English is a Leather Muppet who must be smoking something to justify the dinner he presented.
- It's possible to cover a lot of kiosks at Epcot if you sacrifice park time elsewhere.
- They still need to serve more than a thimbleful of wine at the food demos.
- 5 nights/ 6 days still doesn't feel like enough time to do the Festival.
- Nothing makes a meal more enjoyable than a table full of like-minded goofballs like me.
I hope you enjoyed my views of Gluttoberfest. See you next year.
)
Too funny! And Brenda's FDR imitation...
Cheri is very talented, too.
Not to mention the food looked incredible. I'm with you on that Epoisses- that cheese is soooooooo stinky and sooooooo runny and sooooooo yummy! Great review!
