Fan favorite sweets and many new treats at Disney Food & Wine Festival
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A Mickey-shaped macaron made with Snickers bar pieces is carefully piped with peanut butter ganache by Stephanie Yee, pastry sous chef at Disneyland Resort’s central bakery.
“You can never have too much ganache,” Yee said during a cooking demonstration in Anaheim at the opening day of the Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival.
The chocolate sweet returns each year for the Food & Wine Festival, which kicked off on Feb. 28 and runs through April 21. The annual event brings chef demonstrations, special entertainment and more than 100 food and beverage items to the park, inspired by the diverse cultures and fresh ingredients found in California.
Some sips and bites are only available for a limited time during the festival, and the chocolate Mickey macaron is among the sweets guests look forward to each year.
“It’s a fan favorite because it has a little bit of everything, it has chocolate, it has peanut butter, it has Snickers; it is balanced with sweet and salty,” said Yee. “We can’t help but bring it back for our guests.”
Parkgoers can buy four-coupon or eight-coupon Sip & Savor passes to redeem for select food items or nonalcoholic beverages at festival marketplaces, like Garlic Kissed and Peppers Cali-Ente.
An additional marketplace, Mercado de Antojos (“Market of Cravings” in English), is new this season, offering even more options for hungry visitors, like birria macaroni and cheese. Disneyland Resort chef Daniel Duke Brown was on hand to demonstrate the new pasta dish topped with the traditional Mexican-braised meat, finished with onion-cilantro sauce and tortilla bits for crunch.
“Some of the consomé gets folded into the cheese sauce, so you are going to have that flavor throughout the whole dish,” Brown said as he presented the finished plate, loaded with red-spiced meat for the audience to see.
Other new dishes include corn chip chili pie, inspired by a popular snack made inside a corn chip bag. Disney’s version features Impossible beef with a spicy cheese sauce, tomatoes, sliced jalapeños and sour cream. There are also creative beverages like a pickle whiskey sour cocktail, a callback to Disneyland’s pickle lemonade that blends sweet and salty flavors for a lip-puckering sip.
The Paradise Beer Garden offers flights of local brews, and Uncork California has cocktail and wine flights. Some dishes take inspiration from other Disney properties like musubi fried rice, an Aulani Resort-inspired steamed rice with egg, glazed spiced ham and furikake.
Besides cooking demonstrations from Disneyland Resort cooks, chef-led culinary demonstrations from Orange County chefs and visiting celebrity chefs are scheduled for weekends throughout the festival. Chef Paul Cao from Irvine’s Burnt Crumbs will cook up some fun on March 16 at 6 p.m., and chef Shachi Mehra from Anaheim’s ADYA will spice things up on March 22 at 6 p.m.
As part of the Golden State theme, the park also welcomes the return of Soarin’ Over California, a hang-gliding ride focused on California landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge and Yosemite National Park. The stomp-style musical performance “Cookin’ with the Jammin’ Chefs,” with performers using pots and pans to make music with Disney characters, also returns, and guests can enjoy live music at the Paradise Gardens Bandstand throughout the festival.
Outside of California Adventure there are ways to get a taste of the fun too. At Hearthstone Lounge inside Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa, guests can book “A Walk on the Silverado Trail” experience with specialty wine and cuisine pairings. Or they can try the new Dinner and Scotch event, which features hors d’oeuvres and live music followed by an intimate, four-course dinner experience with scotch pairings.
Great Maple Modern American Eatery located inside Pixar Place Hotel will offer a California wine country inspired special of red wine-braised short ribs, and at Downtown Disney, special limited time food specials are available at Ballast Point Brewing Co., Kayla’s Cake, Parkside Market, Salt & Straw and Splitsville Luxury Lanes.
Brown said the culinary team explores the local dining scene and confers with contemporaries to keep up on food trends and assure the festival offerings are new and exciting each year.
“We go out to eat ourselves, we go out and do the research, but we also talk to the guests and get their feedback. We also have other chefs in Southern California that we talk to and bounce ideas off of,” said Brown, although he maintains California’s bounty of ingredients is always at the heart of the inspiration.
“One of the best things is just getting into that kitchen with our team of chefs, getting some ingredients in and just seeing what we come up with.” said Brown.
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