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The Flavors From Fire booth also features a mock set for College Gameday.

Flavors From Fire Review – 2019 Epcot Food & Wine Festival

Flavors From Fire is back at this year’s Epcot Food & Wine Festival.  As the name suggests, all the items here are cooked over an open fire.  The grill sits behind the booth and provides an allure of smoky goodness.  Before you see the booth, you may be able to smell it!  If you want more details on the Food & Wine Festival, you can check out our Ultimate Guide to the Food & Wine Festival.

Before we go over the menu and food, I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t discuss the elephant in the room aka the corporate synergy idea.  This year the Flavors From Fire booth is hosted by ESPN’s College Gameday.  If you aren’t familiar with it, College Gameday is a College Football pregame show that airs Saturday mornings during football season.  It was a staple of my college years and through today, even if I don’t think it is as good as it used to be.  So I do have a bit of a soft spot for the show.  That said…

The masquerading of corporate synergy (ESPN is owned by Disney) as some great hosting is terrible.  There are these awful quotes on around the Flavors From Fire booth from each of the hosts of the show.  You can read the one from Desmond Howard, the former Heisman Trophy winner, below.  If you’ve ever heard him or any of the other analysts speak, you know they would never string together words like this.  It reeks of some Disney marketing person writing something down and just slapping it on the booth.  Desmond and all the other hosts probably never even saw this quote.

Okay, enough about that.  The good thing is it largely gets much better from here.  Flavors From Fire is another well thought of booth at the Epcot Food & Wine Festival, and that should continue this year.  There is some sadness that some of our readers have voiced about the fact that the Piggy Wings are no longer served here.  The Steakhouse Blended Burger takes the wings’ place, but it isn’t new.  It was served at the Earth Eats booth last year.

Beyond that, all the items on the menu are returning from last year, but with a few changes in the preparation of the food.  You can see the full menu for Flavors From Fire below.

You’ll find the Flavors From Fire booth at the Food and Wine Festival over on the backside of Innoventions West sort of off on its own.

I think we’ve adequately covered the booths basics, let’s talk about the food!

Smoked Corned Beef with Crispy Potatoes, Cheese Curds, Pickled Onions and Beer-Cheese Fondue — $5.25

The Smoked Corned Beef is a bit of a divisive dish for us as a group and for me personally.  But before we get to that, the corned beef is placed over a bed of crispy potatoes, cheese curds., pickled onions and beer cheese fondue.  You might wonder if the crispy potatoes would get soggy under such an amalgamation of food, but fortunately, they stayed very crisp.  We all found the corned beef full of flavor and lean; it wasn’t fatty at all.  We all universally agreed upon that.

When it came to the cheese curds and beer cheese fondue, we were divided.  Oddly, I wasn’t a fan of it.  There was something in the cheese that just gave it a weird, almost sour flavor.  It was the middle of a hot day, and maybe I was having some reaction to the heat and then eating a hot cheese fondue at Flavors From Fire?  I’m not sure.  It just didn’t taste good to me, but I was in the minority.  Anna and Elsa loved the cheese and the dish overall.

I’m going to chalk my experience up to a bad batch or something with the heat and tell you to ignore my experience because the rest of it was fabulous.  Do note that Carla could not have this meal because it is not gluten free, so she doesn’t have a point of view.

The portion here is very healthy and can serve as part of a more substantial meal for you.

The Steakhouse Blended Burger: Blended Beef and Mushroom Slider with Brie Cheese Fondue, Arugula, and a Truffle and Blue Cheese Potato Chip on a Brioche Bun — $5.25

The Steakhouse Blended Burger is a relatively simple burger.  I’d liken it more to a slider than a burger given the size of it.  The flavor of the burger is dominated by the Brie cheese fondue and mushroom that top it.  Probably more so the fondue, less the mushroom, but there is definitely a hint of it.  There is a potato chip on it to give it some crunch, but the chip was sort of lost in the burger.

The burger was what I would call just fine.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either.  The big problem I have here is more the portion size.  It’s the same price as the Smoked Corned Beef dish and probably a quarter of the food.  Maybe a third.  You’ll get maybe four or five bites out of them unless you are sharing with small kids as I did.  Either way, it won’t be very filling, and most of that filling comes from the hefty Brioche bun that the meat is stuffed between.

I wasn’t in love with the Flavors From Fire burger and would pass it.  Anna and Elsa, on the other hand, loved this burger, which isn’t overly surprising.  The flavors aren’t too bold, and it has plenty of bread.  Maybe it will be a tasty dish for kids to share.

The Steakhouse Blended Burger is a relatively simple burger.  I’d liken it more to a slider than a burger given the size of it.  The flavor of the burger is dominated by the Brie cheese fondue and mushroom that top it.  Probably more so the fondue, less the mushroom, but there is definitely a hint of it.  There is a potato chip on it to give it some crunch, but the chip was sort of lost in the burger.

The burger was what I would call just fine.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either.  The big problem I have here is more the portion size.  It’s the same price as the Smoked Corned Beef dish and probably a quarter of the food.  Maybe a third.  You’ll get maybe four or five bites out of them unless you are sharing with small kids as I did.  Either way, it won’t be very filling, and most of that filling comes from the hefty Brioche bun that the meat is stuffed between.

I wasn’t in love with the Flavors From Fire burger and would pass it.  Anna and Elsa, on the other hand, loved this burger, which isn’t overly surprising.  The flavors aren’t too bold, and it has plenty of bread.  Maybe it will be a tasty dish for kids to share.

Charred Chimichurri Skirt Steak on a Smoked Corn Cake with Pickled Vegetable Slaw and Cilantro Aïoli — $7.00

The last item we had at Flavors From Fire was the Charred Chimichurri Skirt Steak.  This is the grilled item I was looking for!  The smoked corn cake came topped by four healthy and thick slices of steak.  The steak is cooked just like I like it with a beautiful medium to medium-rare pink color.  The steak is then topped by the vegetable slaw and cilantro aïoli.  The slaw added an excellent crunchiness to the dish that helped offset the softness of the smoked corn cake.

The flavors of the slaw, aioli, and steak worked together wonderfully!  It was near perfection for me.  But that wasn’t just me, Carla, Anna, and Elsa also devoured bites of the steak with the toppings.  This was by far the best dish I had at Flavors From Fire.

I will say that the corn cake flavor-wise was excellent as well.  The only issue I had was that it turned into a bit of a soft mess by the time I got to it.  There was a nice crisp exterior to the corn cake, but when I got to the middle, it was a bit soft.  Too soft honestly.  That said, it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the meal.

Anna and Elsa were not fans of the corn cake.  Carla avoided it, as it was not gluten free.

At $7.00, this is another pretty good deal for the use of a snack credit.  We recommend getting this item here along with the corned beef.  We think you’ll be pleased with both of them

Wrapping Up

With that, we’ll wrap up our Flavors From Fire review from the 2019 Epcot Food & Wine Festival.  It’s a booth that you’ll definitely want to stop by.  We didn’t have the Chocolate Picante dessert here but have seen good reviews of it.  You may want to consider that if it sounds good to you.

If you’re looking for more of our 2019 Food & Wine Festival booth reviews, feel free to check out our Active Eats Review or our Australia review!

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