We’re back at the 2022 EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival and we’ve been eating our way through the booths!
We’ve seen all of the booths at the festival before, but one booth we’ve seen at MULTIPLE festivals — The Citrus Blossom! This booth has been spotted at EPCOT’s Food and Wine Festival and even the Festival of the Holidays, so let’s see what it has to offer this year at Flower and Garden.
Menu
There are TWO new food items on the menu at The Citrus Blossom this year — the Crispy Mojo Marinated Pork Belly and the Grapefruit Tart.
This booth is also where you can find that ever-so-popular Orange Bird Sipper.
Now, let’s try some FOOD!
Food
We ordered ALL of the food items at this booth, along with a whole flight of beer! Here’s a closer look:
The Citrus Blossom 🍊
🥑Crispy Mojo Marinated Pork Belly w/ avocado cream, corn salsa, salsa verde, & plantain chips
🍣Tuna Tataki Bowl w/ spicy yuzu glaze, mango, avocado, & pappadam crisp
🍮Grapefruit Tart: Grapefruit curd, lychee jam, ginger mousse, & yuzu cream
🍻Beer Flight pic.twitter.com/yAuS4JH9vn— Disney Food Blog (@DisneyFoodBlog) March 2, 2022
Let’s get into it!
We started with the new Crispy Mojo Marinated Pork Belly, with avocado cream, corn salsa, salsa verde, and plantain chips for $6.25.
The pork belly has some great flavor in this dish — we got a great tanginess from some lime. Unfortunately, this meat wasn’t very tender. It was really chewy and kind of hard in texture.
NEW dish at Citrus Blossom 🍊 Crispy Mojo Marinated Pork Belly, with avocado cream, corn salsa, salsa verde, and plantain chips 😋 pic.twitter.com/C25rpFDwXP
— Disney Food Blog (@DisneyFoodBlog) March 2, 2022
There is a slight heat to the salsa, but it’s not too overpowering (it does linger, though!). The avocado cream is refreshing and goes really well with the pork and the corn salsa also gives a nice crunch to the dish.
We wish there had been more plantain chips with our pork because they were really delicious! We enjoyed the crunch and flavor they brought to the table. Overall, this is tasty, but we wanted the pork to be more tender.
Next up, we got the returning Tuna Tataki Bowl with spicy yuzu glaze, mango, avocado, and pappadam crisp for $6.25.
We tried this back in 2020 and it was a huge hit! But, how is it this year? Well, the tuna is fresh but a little bland if you don’t get any of the sauce with it, so make sure you combine all the elements together to get a good bite!
The salsa is really spicy, so don’t expect it to be very refreshing! It makes everything in the dish spicy overall. And, the pappadam crisp is very tasty. It’s light and buttery with a pepper aftertaste. It also adds a nice crunch to the otherwise soft textures in the dish.
The next new item at this booth is the Grapefruit Tart. It’s made with grapefruit curd, lychee jam, ginger mousse, and yuzu cream. You can get it for $5.25.
This tart was absolutely delicious! The flavors all work really well together. The grapefruit curd is nice and fluffy — almost a pudding texture. It’s light and not too sweet, but still has a lot of flavor.
The lychee jam poured out of the tart when we cut into it! It was similar to caramel in that it’s sticky and gooey, but with a nice tangy lychee flavor.
The ginger mousse wasn’t too heavy on the ginger and is super light and fluffy! And, the yuzu cream was outstanding — it’s slightly buttery, almost like a whipped icing. The shortbread in this is also buttery but adds a good crunch to the treat, bringing some much needed contrasting texture to the otherwise soft dessert.
Beverages
Of course, it wouldn’t be an EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival without an Orange Bird Sipper! He comes with an Orange-Lemon Smoothie that’s non-alcoholic. You can get him with the smoothie for $15. This smoothie is literally like drinking an orange sherbet. We loved it!
Also available at this booth is the Islamorada Beer Company Key Lime Hibiscus Ale, the Wicked Weed Brewing Orange Peel Ale, and the 81Bay Brewing Co. Citrus Honey Cream Ale, which are all $5 for 6 oz. and $9 for 12 oz. each. But, you can also get all 3 beers in a flight for $10! This is what we decided to do so we could try all of them.
The Key Lime Hibiscus Ale is really delicious! It has a fruitiness to it that is very welcome in the springtime. But, we didn’t really taste the hibiscus, online the key lime. We were fine with that though, because it was still super tasty!
Moving on to the Orange Peel Ale, we found this one to be nice and light. It has a hint of orange but it does have more of a bitter kick at the end, but it’s not overwhelming. Know that this beer does have some hoppiness to it, though!
The Citrus Honey Cream Ale was our least favorite of the three. It was way too bitter for us! We did taste a slight bit of honey and sweetness, but not enough to cut through that bitterness. It just doesn’t blend together very well. We think this beer was going for an orange creamsicle vibe, but it didn’t achieve that unfortunately.
If you don’t want beer, there is an Orange Sunshine Wine Slushy for $6 that you can grab instead.
At last year’s festival, this slushy was $6.75 — so it has actually decreased in price this year!
Overall
Overall, this is a very refreshing booth with fun, fresh flavors that are perfect for the spring! We do think there is some room for improvement in some of these dishes, but we also appreciate the interesting and more unique flavors that are being used. If we were to recommend one thing from here, it would definitely be the Grapefruit Tart!
We’re eating and drinking our way around the world at this year’s festival, so stay tuned to DFB for more updates and food reviews!
Click Here to See the FULL MENUS for the 2022 EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival!
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Have you tried anything from The Citrus Blossom booth before? Let us know in the comments!
Mike says
Interesting comment about the pork belly, we had the pork belly from Brazil this past food and wine and it was also super underwhelming. It went from one of our favorite dishes to a one and done.