Festival Fridays: Top 3 Vegetarian Items from Flower and Garden Festival!
Welcome to MickeyBlog’s brand new ‘Festival Fridays’ article series! Every Friday during the Flower and Garden Festival, I’ll be spotlight-lighting my favorite topiaries, the best entertainment acts, the tastiest eats, and the coolest merchandise from this year’s Fest!
Today, I’m kicking off the first-ever ‘Festival Fridays’ article with the top three vegetarian items you’ll find at the 2021 Flower and Garden Festival…let’s get into it!
3- Sope de Chorizo
I’m a vegetarian, and I feel that Disney offers a great variety of vegetarian and vegan options in their restaurants. I haven’t, however, felt the same way about the previous two Epcot Festivals. The Flower and Garden Festival came my rescue in 2021 though, offering so many plant-based options there was no way I could taste them all on my first visit. So, I did what any good Epcot goer does and fit in as many food items as I could!
Plant-based meat substitutes have come a long way in recent years. They’ve come SO far that I know many non-vegetarians who regularly opt for Impossible and Beyond burgers over the traditional burger when dining out. Vegetarian sausage, though, had yet to convince me. In my experience, it usually tastes like plant-based burger meat masked behind some spices attempting to make it taste ‘spicy’.
Not the case in Mexico! The plant-based chorizo they are serving atop a bed of black beans and soft corn tortilla base is the BEST plant-based sausage I’ve had yet! They’ve somehow managed to not only perfectly capture the flavor profile, but also capture the oily texture and chew that real chorizo is famous for!
2- Avocado Toast
You can call me a basic millennial all you want, but I LOVE me a good avocado toast. To be honest, what drew me to this particular dish had everything to do with the gorgeous presentation (this dish is so gorgeous it should have been a part of the Arts Festival!). Believe it or not, everything down to the flower is edible!
To be considered good avocado toast, the avocado spread has to be perfectly smooth and ripe, and the bread has to be toasty and crunchy. This dish more than ticked all of the boxes! The avocado spread was citrus-y and contrasted the crisp, buttered bread wonderfully. The addition of goat cheese on top really brought the whole thing together in my opinion, adding an extra-creamy texture and rich flavor to the already smooth avocado spread!
1- Korean ‘Short Rib’
I made it a point to try the fully vegetarian kiosk featuring the highly sought-after Korean ‘short rib’ on my first visit to this year’s Festival. Of COURSE the booth featuring a full menu of vegetarian options was the top destination on my list! The Korean ‘short rib’ is a new item to this year’s Festival, and I was curious…
Made from pure plant protein, I was wholeheartedly convinced I was biting into a piece of meat when I took my first bite of the ‘short rib’! The plant-based meat is cooked perfectly to emulate the tender, fall-off-the-bone texture associated with short ribs. I was equally surprised at how flavor-packed this plant-based dish was too! If you’re looking for a plant-based meat dish that won’t weigh you down in the hot Florida sun, this is the dish for you! Check out my latest YouTube video featuring even more dishes and topiaries from the first day of the Flower and Garden Festival!
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