The Epcot Food & Wine Festival enters its 20th years with a fresh new batch of Marketplace foods and drinks -- as always, an enticing mix of flavors. Today I'd like to introduce you to my newest cocktail crush, the Frozen Chew-tini.
My favorite beverage this year -- so far; I can't drink them all in one visit -- is this sweet-tart slushy cocktail. The refreshing concoction is a blend of lemon vodka, mango-carrot juice, and citrus-sour mix. Pick one up from the Sustainable Chew marketplace (it's new, and tied to the ABC TV show The Chew), start sipping on a hot afternoon, and you'll quickly get a much bigger kick out of your fellow guests than you did before. Read: You can barely taste the booze.
I introduced you to several new Epcot Food & Wine Festival foods back in July -- here's that blog post -- but I feel compelled to share on final item. I'm not even sure this is a festival item. It might be offered all year long.
This is vanilla ice cream with cherry sauce sandwiched between two chocolate chip cookies. It's sold at a gelato kiosk outside the Italy pavilion. Cherry-vanilla ice cream and chocolate-chip cookies don't go, really. I know that. Yet guess what? This was one scrumptious sweet treat. The flavors didn't clash. If they did, I would have slurped out all the ice cream and then started in one the cookies. That would have been great too.
May I just add this? With its regular entertainment line-up and Festival extras, Epcot Food & Wine can be a ton of fun. Witness these musicians, energizing a whole crowd with their culinary-themed performance.
It's time to head to Epcot. The Food & Wine Festival runs through November 16, 2015.
Eat enthusiastically, Rona