Foodie fans brought their appetites for the kick-off of Disney’s annual food and wine fest after missing last year’s event due to the closure of the Anaheim theme parks and having the 2020 edition cut short by the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival runs Friday, March 4 through April 26 with local, celebrity and Disney chefs offering cooking tips during culinary demonstrations, tasting seminars and signature events.
The DCA Food & Wine Festival was cut short in March 2020 by the pandemic closure of the parks and replaced by A Touch of Disney food festival in March 2021.
The 2022 Food & Wine Fest returns with 12 festival marketplace booths offering small plates highlighting California-grown ingredients. DCA eateries and food stands as well Downtown Disney restaurants will also serve festival fare.
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Disney chefs insisted on rolling out new offerings for 91% of the food and beverage items during this year’s festival, according to Disney California Adventure General Manager Gary Maggetti.
“We closed the Food & Wine Festival after three weeks in 2020,” Maggetti said. “We could have basically just restood it up with the same popular menu options. Instead, the chefs are like, ‘We’ve got two years of ideas.’”
Garlic Kissed is already shaping up to be the standout marketplace booth of this year’s festival, according to Maggetti. The two food items at the booth are already among the most popular: Carbonara-Garlic Mac & Cheese with peppered bacon and Grilled Top Sirloin with roasted garlic-Gruyere mashed potatoes and black garlic chimichurri.
Each year the DCA Food & Wine Festival always does two versions of mac & cheese.
“The Carbonara Mac & Cheese is our savory one and then this year we went totally out on a limb and did a Peanut Butter and Jelly Mac,” Maggetti said of the Nuts About Cheese marketplace booth food item. “You have to think about it like dessert. The inspiration for the dish was a Thai peanut sauce. Imagine instead of noodles it’s macaroni.”
This year the DCA Food & Wine Festival is going beyond the best of California ingredients to tell the culinary stories of the flavors Disney chefs grew up with.
“That was just very inspirational,” Maggetti said. “They’re doing the research and telling those stories of specific regions. The mouthwatering stories for many of these items have really come through in the menu itself.”
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The marketplace booths at DCA’s Food and Wine Fest have been in “soft opening” mode for a few days before the official launch of the event with the Disney Food Blog and WDW News Today taste-testing all of the menu items.
Disney Food Blog’s favorites included the “must have” Chile Relleno Empanada at Peppers Cali-Ente and the Mango-Carrot Gazpacho at Golden Dreams dubbed “one of the best things at this year’s festival.”
Disney Food Blog’s dislikes: The “disappointing” French Onion Grilled Beef Tenderloin Slider at Cluck-A-Doodle-Moo and the “odd texture” of the Chicharron-Crusted Artichoke Dip at I Love Artichokes.
WDW News Today loved the “spectacular” Grilled Top Sirloin at Garlic Kissed, the “delectable” Strawberry Cheesecake at Berry Patch, the “surprise hit” Peanut Butter & Jelly Mac at Nuts About Cheese and the Chocolate Hazelnut Crunch at Uncork California that “outshines nearly everything at the festival.”
WDWNT’s least favorite dish: The “disappointing” Blueberry-Buttermilk Pie at Berry Patch.
DFB and WDWNT both agreed the Frozen Avocado at the Avocado Time booth was a one-of-a-kind festival treat worth trying.
They were split on the IPA Sausage Dog on Soft Pretzel at California Craft Brews — with WDWNT saying there was “too much going on” and DFB calling it one of their “favorite eats” of the fair.
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DCA restaurants also join in the festival fun with a host of new menu items for the event that include Pepperoni Pizza Slider (Smokejumpers Grill), Old World Aged White Cheddar Lager Soup (Sonoma Terrace), Mushroom Bao (Lucky Fortune Cookery), Cookies and Cream Donuts (Lamplight Lounge) and Char Siu Ribs (Paradise Garden Grill).
New cocktails at the festival booths and restaurants include Spicy Honey Apricot (Nuts About Cheese), Cherry Chocolate Mint Dessert (Berry Patch), Passion Fruit Rum (I Love Artichokes), Pineapple Tiki Bitter (Golden Dreams), Rosemary Bitter Orange Mule (Garlic Kissed), Sake-Melon ’75 (L.A. Style), Strawberry Horchata with Spiced Rum (Cocina Cucamonga), Bourbon-Strawberry Lemonade (Paradise Garden Grill) and Smoked Pineapple Bourbon (Lamplight Lounge).
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The FOMO crowd was out en masse on Friday morning when the festival kicked off at 10:30 a.m. leading to long lines at many marketplace booths. The tail ends of the lines for the Peppers Cali-Ente and I Love Artichokes marketplace booths were bumping into each other as the festival got off to a roaring start.
Sip & Savor passes are back again this year, allowing festival-goers to purchase a prepaid card with eight tabs good for individual items at food and beverage stands throughout the event.
The trick to using the Sip & Savor card is finding the shortest line at any of the marketplace booths and ordering everything you want to eat during your visit. You don’t need to go to each individual booth to place your order for each item. Just do it all at once at a single booth. The strategy requires some planning, but it will save you a ton of time. The ordering and pick-up lines ebb and flow throughout the day at each booth — so use your best judgment about when to jump in line and when to wait a little longer just like you would with any ride.
Look around for the shortest line at any of the 12 marketplace booths to place your order. Your best bets: The Nuts and Cheese booth that had four registers in operation on opening day and the out-of-the-way Golden Dreams booth near the Grizzly River Run lift hill. Both booths had virtually no lines on Friday around lunchtime when 40 people were waiting to order at the Garlic Kissed booth.
Then you just hang onto your receipt as you pick up your food throughout the day at your own pace. Marketplace booth employees will cross off each item as you pick them up.
You can do the same thing without the Sip & Savor card — just make sure you know what you want to eat ahead of time. The order-all-at-once strategy takes some of the spontaneity out of the foodie festival crawl, but it will pay dividends in time saved.
The Sip & Savor card costs $57 for eight redemption tabs good for food and drinks at the marketplace booths and sample-size versions of some items at DCA’s restaurants. Magic Key passholders save $5 on the Sip & Savor cards.
You’ll want to do the math to make sure you’re getting the best bang for your buck with the Sip & Savor card. The eight tabs average out to $6.50 apiece for passholders and just over $7 for the general public. That means when you “buy” something using a Sip & Savor tab for under that amount you’re tipping Mickey Mouse a little extra cheese. Use the Sip & Savor tabs for bigger ticket items and opt for cash or credit for the less expensive things.
Next up for Disney: Moving the Sip & Savor laminated card into the digital realm and onto the Disneyland app with mobile ordering capabilities.
“We’re working on that,” Maggetti said. “I don’t have a timeline for it, but it’s very, very important for us.”
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Goofy has handed off his role as head chef at the kid’s table during the festival to Alice in Wonderland from Disney Junior’s “Alice’s Wonderland Bakery.”
Disney’s tech team has pulled off a clever blending of a digital Alice who interacts with live host Rolly Pin via a massive set of video screens at the back of the Hollywood Land backlot stage.
Rolly and Alice encourage a few dozen preschoolers to let their “imagination do the decoration” as they add pink and blue icing and colorful confetti sprinkles to cupcakes during the show. The adorable kids really get into the decorating action as their paper chef hats slide down over their eyes and they pile on enough icing to double the height of the cupcakes.
Minnie Mouse makes a brief appearance in her pink polka dot bakery best to provide a bit of entertainment as Rolly peppers the crowd with one bad baking pun after another.
Chef Goofy can still be found near the Hyperion Theater marquee posing for socially distanced meet-and-greet photos.
Nearby, the Jammin’ Chefs dance the day away during a series of showtimes at the top of DCA’s Hollywood Boulevard. Daisy Duck, Clarabelle Cow and Chip and Dale put on a street show designed to get feet tapping and hands clapping.
Street painter Nate Baranowski is creating a 3-D work of art during the Food & Wine Fest on Friday and Saturday in the Paradise Gardens gazebo that will create the 3-D illusion of a visitor being trapped by a chef under a domed service plate cover. Baranowski will paint additional 3-D illusions based on “Encanto” at Downtown Disney on Sunday and Monday and “Beauty and the Beast” at the Disneyland Hotel on Tuesday and Wednesday.
