Happy holidays from Disney World!

Today, we’ve been making our way around EPCOT for the 2021 EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays. Over in the Japan pavilion, the Shi Wasu Holiday Kitchen booth has some NEW items as well as some returning favorites! Are any of them worth a try? There’s only one way to find out… .

Menu

You’ll want to head towards the Japan pavilion to check out Shi Wasu Holiday Kitchen!

The menu is full of Japanese eats like sushi and soba.

All of the food items are returning, but ALL of the drinks are new!

Eats

First up is the iconic Chirashi Sushi Tree for $6.50. This snack is made with sashimi-grade tuna, salmon, ikura, and yellowtail with vegetables decorated on an artistic bed of rice shaped like a Christmas Tree to celebrate the holidays.

This was a brand new item in 2019 and is just SO festive! It’s a pretty good size dish for the price, but there aren’t really any standout flavors (at least in our experience eating this dish in the past). This is a festival item you could definitely get just to post on Instagram, and there’s nothing wrong with that! When we had it in the past, we felt that it was pretty plain, but it will please classic sushi fans.

Next is the New Year Celebration Soba which is made with buckwheat soba noodle in a hot dashi soup with shrimp tempura, fish cake, shiitake mushrooms, and chopped green onion. This dish will cost you $8. We first tried the soba in 2018, but it had a few ingredient changes in 2019. Ramen fans will probably really like this snack! We loved the shrimp in the bowl because of the tempura texture and flavor.

Lastly, you can grab dessert at this booth with the Mont Blanc Tart! It’s a matcha mousse tart with a sweet red bean center sprinkled with konpeito sugar candy for $6. Last year the treat was filled with strawberry and Bavarian cream, but now there is a sweet red bean center instead and matcha mousse.

The strawberry and bavarian cream version we had in 2020 was new to the festival last year and it reminded us of the strawberry tart we’ve had at Les Halles Boulangerie Patisserie (spoiler alert: we liked the France pavilion treat much more). This year, the dessert has those red bean and matcha flavors, so if you’re a fan of that you might want to stop and give it a try.

Beverages

As we mentioned above, ALL of the drinks on this year’s menu are brand new! Let’s check them out. We started with the nonalcoholic Chocolate Banana Boba which is made with cocoa, Calpico (which is a Japanese, somewhat milky drink), banana syrup, and strawberry popping boba pearls. Ours also had some whipped cream on top.

The drink had a strong chocolate milk flavor, with just a hint of banana. One reporter described it as tasting like “chocolate milk that a banana whispered to.” 😂 Overall, it’s fine if you’re a fan of those flavors, but not a stand-out drink and nothing we’d get again.

You can try this drink for $5.50.

If you’re looking for a boozy version of this drink, check out the Chocolate Tokyo Banana for $8! It’s basically the same drink without the boba since it’s made of cocoa, Calpico, banana syrup, and vodka.

This drink tasted essentially the same, except that adding the vodka in cut the sweetness a bit. It didn’t have a strong boozy flavor.

In our opinion, if you’re looking for chocolate alcohol, a better option would be to head to the Le Marche de Noel booth in the France pavilion for their Frozen Hot Chocolate Martini, which is made with Vanilla vodka, vodka, chocolate milk, and whipped cream.

At the Shi Wasu booth, you can also get a Choya Sparkling Plum Wine for $8. The booth describes this as Umeshu Smooth Sparkling Wine.

Also new to the festival is the Pomegranate Draft Lager which is described as a rice lager with hints of pomegranate and lemon. You can grab this drink for $5 for a 6oz option, and $9 for 12oz.

Overall

Overall, the Shi Wasu Holiday Kitchen is a great spot to get some tasty ramen if you’re a ramen fan, and a bit of festive sushi. The new chocolate drinks were alright, but not something we’d go out of our way for or get again in the future and (in our opinion) there are better alcoholic chocolate drinks available at the festival. Still, if you’re looking to try something new, you can stop by this booth during your trip. We’ll be covering everything happening at the EPCOT Festival of the Holidays, so stay tuned to DFB for more!

Click here for more info on the 2021 EPCOT Festival of the Holidays!

Have you ever visited this booth at past EPCOT festivals? Let us know in the comments!