The Disney California Adventure Food and Wine Festival is back. The annual culinary event is a delicious way for guests to eat and sip way through all the lovely flavors of California from now until April 22. The Nerds of Color and a few other journalists had the opportunity to chow down and drink up from the returning festival marketplaces like D•Lish, Nuts about Cheese, California Craft Brews , and a new one called Earth Eats.
Guests can choose from more than 80 new items at this year’s festival, with each item having a different range of flavors and textures. And so, Laura and I went this past weekend to help you make the right decision. We’d like to thank Disneyland Resort for extending an invitation to us. To have a more thorough festival experience, we highly recommend you purchasing the Sip and Savor pass, a special, commemorative credential that lets you sample different food and non-alcoholic beverage items at participating locations anytime throughout the festival. They are available in eight-coupons or four-coupons. After purchasing, you’ll get a complimentary menu, which gives you a look at what each booth as to offer. Once you browsed through the menu, head to a booth and redeem all of your coupons at once, that way you can give your receipt to a cast member who will hand you your chosen meal immediately. This saves you a lot of time from having to wait in line.
Laura and I would split up at our first two booths. She would get the Blueberry Pancake Cold Brew and the Fig Matcha Latte at the Golden Dreams, while I got the BBQ Pulled Pork Mac & Cheese with crispy dill pickle onions (New), it’s Nuts About Cheese‘s newest item. The Blueberry Pancake Cold Brew is a non-alcoholic beverage that blends the flavors of Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Co. Mexico Origin Coffee, with maple syrup, brown butter and demerara syrups, and oat milk with a blueberry sweet cream garnished with cinnamon-flavored cereal crumble. Though pancake flavor was lacking, the drink did taste a lot like cereal with maple syrup and cinnamon cereal. I imagine that selling it as a drink that’s a lot like drinking wet cereal doesn’t sound nearly as appealing as a Blueberry Pancake Cold Brew. Still, if you’re looking for something that is non-alcoholic, then this is the drink of choice – especially when compared to the other non-alcoholic drink, but more on that a little later. At $7.25, it may not be worth the coupon. However, you won’t have to venture too far to get two redeemed at the Nuts About Cheese booth, which is just a few steps away.
As for the Fig Matcha Latte, its another Non-alcoholic beverage offering that has matcha, soy milk, and coconut and simple syrups topped with a fig oat sweet cream and garnished with matcha powder. Laura found the drink to be smooth, and not overwhelmingly sweet, with the matcha adding a nice earthy flavor.
The BBQ Pulled Pork Mac & Cheese with crispy dill pickle onions is one of the newest items from Nuts About Cheese. While it was early in the festival, we still had 14 more coupons to redeem, this was by far one of the best dishes we had. The cheese was perfectly gooey and the pork was juicy. But the flavor that sealed the deal was the crispy dill pickle onions. It provided a nice sour flavor to contrast the barbecue sauce’s sweetness and cheese’s saltiness. At $9.00, I would recommend using a coupon at this location for this particular dish.
We also got the Mickey-shaped Macaron made with SNICKERS bar pieces. At $7.75, this is one of our favorite desserts as it felt like everything you love about macarons and Snickers thrown together for one sweet dessert combination. The macaron is topped with chocolate and peanut pieces and then drizzled with even more chocolate. In between the two macarons, theres that nougat and caramel. Honestly, I thought it was more like they pureed Snickers and sandwiched it between two macarons. Beware, this dessert is pretty heavy. So perhaps you may want to share this with some friends. But in the end, its well worth the coupon.
Across the two booths is the Uncork California booth, where you will find the Raspberry Almond Cake. We took a pass on the alcohol and went straight for dessert. The concept of the cake is simple. While the cake was dense, it was still moist enough that you didn’t have to work to cut through it. Aside from that textural issue, it is a delicious cake that is big on both raspberry and almond flavors. At $7.50, this is sweet treat was well worth the coupon.
Over at D•Lish, we had the Olive Oil Cake and the Huckleberry-Citrus Cooler. Both are priced at $7.00, and depending on your hunger or thirst, are worth a coupon (or two if you plan on getting what we ate and drank). The Olive Oil Cake was also dense, but had so many different flavors going on at once, you might not have known it. The lemon curd glaze had a perfect texture and wasn’t too sugary. The cake is topped with vanilla bean chantilly that might go unnoticed because it is finished with fresh candied lemons, strawberry crunch, and lemon-lime gelée. With so many different flavor profiles and textures, one would think that the cake would be all over the place, and yet, each component is important to the totality of the delicious cake – which tastes more like a lemon cake than an olive oil one. We believe that this is worth the coupon.
I was more partial to the Huckleberry-Citrus Cooler for a non-alcoholic drink than Laura was. If you love Arnold Palmers, then this cooler is just for you. Gold Peak Black Tea was very prominent at first, but then you get those unexpected huckleberry and agave syrups, grapefruit soda, and lemon and orange juices to finish it off. It’s finished with an orange wedge garnish, which I see as an extra treat that pairs well with the drink. While Laura wouldn’t use the coupon, I think it is well worth it.
After all of the early sweet cakes, savory dishes, and flavorful drinks, I was mixed on Garlic-Kissed’s Grilled Top Sirloin with roasted garlic-gruyère smashed potatoes and black garlic chimichurri sounded appetizing at first, but it ended up being one of the more lackluster offerings. The steak on it’s own was flavorless, with the chimichurri being the only thing to elevate it to another level. Honestly, I could have that on its own if that was an option. While the mashed potatoes looked like it came straight out of a box, it went nicely with the steak. And the peppers gave it a nice kick. While I didn’t like it, at $9.00, it may be worth the coupon if you are more forgiving of the flaws and remember that this is being made for all of the guests in the park.
At LA Style, guests can find the Carnitas-style Pork Belly with esquites corn mac salad featuring Tajín Habanero. The carnitas flavor is a bit too subtle for my liking, and the meat was a bit on the dry side, but it was still one of my favorite dishes. Although I didn’t get the toasted corn flavor, the combination of macaroni, mayo, cheese, and chile makes for a tasty elotes in salad form. At $9.00, I’d like to think that this is is definitely worth the coupon.
The Earth Eats booth isn’t too far away. There we had the IMPOSSIBLE Chicken Parm Bites with tomato and cheese sauces and grated parmesan. As someone who doesn’t normally eat plant-based food, I was pleasantly surprised by how it tasted. However, Laura was quick to chime in that it was a plant-based nugget covered with tomato and cheese sauce. Considering my bias to plant-based food, I wouldn’t have given this place a second thought. And yet, I found it to be delightful. At $8.50, is it worth a coupon? I don’t think so.
While I was mixed on the Grilled Top Sirloin with roasted garlic-gruyère smashed potatoes and black garlic chimichurri, Peppers Cali-Ente‘s Chile Relleno Empanada with Arbol pepper salsa and Oaxaca and Cotija cheeses was one of the most disappointing dishes we had. Ours was salty, lacked that peppery bite you’d get from salsas, and was dry. It was so bad that I had to rush out to get a bottle of water. While not all empandas are made the same, we would not recommend this dish. That is, unless you like salty food. Then by all means, use that coupon. It would save you $8.50.
At Cluck-A-Doodle-Moo, we had the Cheese Pizza-flavored Wings with ranch dip ($8.50), BBQ Beef Brisket Slider with smoked white cheddar and dill pickles on salt and pepper brioche ($9.00), and the non-alcoholic Kiwi-Apple Lemonade ($7.00).
Our honest assessment of the Cheese Pizza-flavored Wings with ranch dip, was that it tasted like a chicken wing dusted with pizza-flavored Pringles. Despite the fact that chicken and pizza pair well with ranch sauce, the dressing doesn’t do much to elevate any of the flavors. However, seeing as the pizza flavoring acts as a dry rub for the chicken, having the ranch sauce is very important. This dish amounts to one of that more popular dishes you’d find on a sports bar menu.
BBQ Beef Brisket Slider with smoked white cheddar and dill pickles on salt and pepper brioche felt more like a pastrami sandwich than anything else. The smoky barbecue flavor is there and it’s contrasted by the sour dill pickle, but the brisket was a bit on the drier side and bites into something that is more reminiscent of corned beef. While the sandwich isn’t as advertised, at least in my opinion, it still was delicious. So I think it’s worth the coupon.
Our final item from this booth is the non-alcoholic Kiwi-Apple Lemonade. If you are a fan of Gatorade or just flavored syrup mixed with water, then this is might be the drink you are looking for. It was like drinking a soda syrup minus the carbonated water. Again, since these are made in mass quantities, we might have gotten the one that wasn’t mixed properly. Regardless, we believe that this isn’t worth the coupon.
We finished it off with the S’mores Caramel Tart at California Craft Brews ($7.00). Sadly, this is another tally under the disappointment column, at least in my opinion. I could see how they attempted to elevate the concept of a s’more by reimagining the graham crackers and turning it into a tart shell and then filling with caramel and chocolate ganache topped with a toasted marshmallow, but the ganache was too heavy, and the caramel was faint.
Like any food festival and depending on your flavor profiles, dishes and drinks are more likely to be hit or miss. That being said, the entire festival is meant to be a celebration of everything that California cuisine has to offer. So if you don’t have the time to travel to Napa wineries, visit the heart of Downtown Los Angeles, or head to Bay Area for some flavorful plant-based dishes, then a why not make trip around to the Disney California Adventure Food and Wine Festival where you can have all of that. It may not be authentic, but it’s pretty close.
Disney California Adventure Food and Wine Festival is currently running until April 22, 2024.
