Review: 2024 Garden Graze at EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival

The Garden Graze is the food stroll at EPCOT’s Flower & Garden Festival, highlighting plant-based dishes from the event’s menus. Plant-based can be a dicey category, from “dishes that came that way” to “dishes that required some science”. Read on to hear what we think are the best choices to collect your stamps and your prize!

Garden Graze Basics

Before we begin our vegetarian promenade, let’s review the rules. There are eight dishes you can choose from. For each dish that you buy, you’ll get a vegetable stamp in your Festival Passport. When you’ve got 5 stamps, take your Passport to the Pineapple Promenade Outdoor Kitchen to redeem your prize. This year’s prizes are a packet of wildflower seeds and a Dole Whip in a keepsake plastic cup.

You’ll find a page in your Festival Passport that lists the eligible dishes. This year they are:

• Bauernmarkt: Farmer’s Market (Germany Pavilion)
  • Potato Pancakes with House-Made Apple Sauce –$5.25
• BRUNCHCOT (Near Test Track)
  • Avocado Toast with Marinated Tomatoes and Plant-Based Cheese Crumbles on Toasted Ciabatta –$6.00
• EPCOT Farmers Feast (Near Test Track)
  • Grilled Street Corn on the Cob with Savory Garlic Spread and Plant-Based Cheese –$5.75
• Florida Fresh (Near Disney Traders)
  • Florida Strawberry Shortcake –$5.00
• La Isla Fresca (Between the France and Morocco Pavilions)
  • Coconut Tres Leches: Vanilla Cake soaked with Oat, Almond and Coconut Milks topped with Toasted Coconut –$5.00
• Refreshment Outpost
  • Seasonal Fruit Parfait with Sweet Chili Sauce and Mango DOLE Whip® $7.00
• Refreshment Port (Near Canada Pavilion)
  • Plant-Based Buffalo Chicken Tender Poutine on Crispy Potato Barrels with Plant-Based Ranch and Blue Cheese Crumbles –$10.00
• Trowel & Trellis (Near Disney Traders)
  • Impossible™ Farmhouse Meatball with Lentil Bread, Spinach, Marinated Vegetables and Creamy Herb Aioli –$6.00

A couple of key points: you don’t need to finish the whole Graze in one day – keep your partially stamped Passport and come back on a different day to finish if you prefer. You can turn in your Passport any time through the end of the Festival on May 27. And, you don’t need to buy 5 different dishes! If you’re in love with the first dish you try and you just want to get that one 4 more times, it counts.

Now, let’s see what the best picks are to get all your stamps!

Recommended Garden Graze Dishes

Bauernmarkt: Potato Pancakes

These are salty, piquant, crunchy, AND filling, with a bit of sweet from the apple on top. If you prefer your pancakes to be fruit-less, you can also get them without applesauce. These were a winner in our book.

BRUNCHCOT: Avocado Toast

This is our park team’s most favorite of the returning dishes. It’s ginormous, gorgeous, and so, so good. A little bit crunchy, tangy with avocado and tomato, and edible flowers are always fun. The watermelon radish and tomato and flowers make it so beautiful!

Farmer’s Feast: Grilled Street Corn on the Cob

The corn was sweet and marvelous like always, with a bit of depth from the plant-based cheese on top. One thing that does not translate through the internet is how good this corn smells as you’re walking past the grill. If you were not already hungry, you will be.

 

La Isla Fresca: Coconut Tres Leches

Floofy coconut topping and some lightly sweetened vanilla cake! And a giant serving at that! No complaints here. More please.

Refreshment Outpost: Seasonal Fruit Parfait

The sweet chili sauce (it’s Tajin) is nice with the mango Dole whip – a classic combo! This isn’t daring and it’s a great option. We think they should sell this all year long.

Refreshment Port: Plant-based Buffalo Chicken Tender Poutine

This will set you back a pretty penny, but it might be the most enormous dish of the festival – and it was good! As long as you like a vinegar-based buffalo sauce (we do) this will be a hit. This was lovely and filling and not too spicy.

Garden Graze Dishes to Skip

Trowel & Trellis: Impossible™ Farmhouse Meatball

We are not fans of Impossible. The aftertaste lingers so long on anything “Impossible”. We understand that it doesn’t taste like chemicals to everyone, so if you are an Impossible-fan you might have a different take on this than we did. But the chemical taste that we were left with cancels out anything nice we could say here.

Florida Fresh: Florida Strawberry Shortcake

This is not a new dish, but it isn’t the same as last year – it went from biscuit to cake, and we feel that was the wrong direction. The cake wasn’t very flavorful, and it felt like the balance was wrong. We can’t say that cake, strawberries, and whipped cream tasted bad, exactly, but this was so meh compared to what it could have been.

Are you heading to the Garden Graze? What looks good to you? Let us know in the comments!