Epcot Food and Wine Festival: Six Booths Worth It

The Epcot Food and Wine Festival runs from mid-July into late November, and by October the World Showcase loop carries more than thirty market booths selling small plates at five to nine dollars each. It is easy to spend a whole evening grazing badly, so I walked the loop twice in one week, once in the first hour after open and once after dark.

I kept six booths, and the rule was the same for each: the portion has to justify the price, the queue has to sit under ten minutes at some point in the evening, and the walk between two picks must not send me back the way I came. Everything below was paid for at the counter in the second week of October, prices before tax.

The festival also runs a tasting passport, a card you preload and tap at each booth, and it saves the queue at every stop where cash would otherwise change hands. I used it for all six picks and never missed the coins in my pocket, mostly because the booths take exact change badly when the line is six deep.

The loop itself runs about 2.4 kilometres one way and the shaded stretch is short: after seven the light drops behind the pavilion buildings and the path fills with people moving slowly in both directions. I planned the six as a single clockwise run rather than doubling back, which is why the order below matters as much as the food.

Canada: cheddar soup that works as lunch

The booth sits just past the pavilion entrance, and at open it is the quietest of the six. A bowl of beer and cheddar soup costs about six dollars and comes with a pretzel bread roll, which is filling enough for one adult to skip a table service lunch and save the reservation for dinner. After seven in the evening the queue reaches twenty minutes, so I take it at the start of the loop or leave it behind.

• Arrive in the first hour and the wait is about five minutes.
• Ask for the roll on the side, it survives the walk to France.

France: the small plate that behaves like a meal

The France menu is short and one item sells out on most evenings. I had the ham and gruyere croissant at about seven dollars, eaten standing at the rail with the lagoon in front of me and the sun still on the water. It travels badly, which I learned by carrying one as far as Japan, so eat it where you buy it.

The line looks longer than it is, because staff take orders at both windows and the pickup point sits around the corner. Order at the right window if you want to keep walking, since the left one is where the photographs get taken and it stalls whenever a family stops for a picture.

I also skip the wine flights on this loop. They cost as much as two plates and they slow the walk down, and the point of my route is that it can be finished before the headliner show starts.

Japan: the skewer I queued for twice

Eight dollars buys a glazed filet of beef skewer, and it is the only booth I went back to in the same evening. The grill runs hot and fast, so the wait rarely passes ten minutes even at nine at night, when the lamps over the pavilion turn the queue orange and the light is worth stopping for. The glaze is salty, and the water refill station sits behind the bubble tea counter two steps away.

The staff here work two grills at once and call names rather than numbers, so keep the receipt in your hand. On the evening I went back, the queue looked like forty people and cleared in nine minutes, which is the fastest turnaround of any booth selling hot food.

Belgium: dessert only once the heat drops

A warm waffle with chocolate runs about five dollars and the queue forms early, because it is the sweetest stop on the loop. I skip it while the afternoon is still above twenty-five degrees and take it on a cooler evening instead, when standing outside with something hot stops feeling wrong. The booth stays open until park closing, which is not true of every dessert counter in the festival. Take it to the tables behind the pavilion rather than eating on the move, because the chocolate sets on your fingers within a minute and the nearest sink is two countries away.

Ireland: the savoury bite at the halfway point

Warm cheese with bread costs around six dollars and the portion is small on purpose. It is the pick I use where the loop turns for the long stretch back, because it is quick to eat and does not sit heavily before an hour of walking.

The booth shares a wall with the whiskey stand, so the queue looks worse than it is. I order food first and decide about the drink afterwards, which also keeps me from carrying a plastic cup through two more pavilions.

Mexico: the cheapest proper bite of the six

At about six dollars the impossible empanada is the one item on this list I would eat before a sit-down reservation without feeling cheated. The booth sits in the shade next to the pavilion, which matters at two in the afternoon when the loop offers almost no cover. It splits easily between two children, and the second window for drinks keeps the line moving.

The six at a glance

Start with Canada in the first hour, when the soup is hot and the loop is still empty, then work clockwise and let the queue lengths decide the rest of the order. The booths I left off this list were not poor, they were repeats of what these six already do, and the evening gets easier on the feet when the route stays short.