Flavors from Fire Booth Menu & Review: 2023 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival

Flavors from Fire is a booth at the 2023 EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival located near Test Track. In this Walt Disney World dining review, we’ll share menu prices, food photos, and offer thoughts on what’s worth your money.

We won’t bury the lede. Flavors from Fire is the among the best booth at the event this year, marking the fifth straight year it has earned high marks. In previous years, Flavors from Fire was our #1 booth. It hasn’t necessarily gotten worse at the 2023 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival, it just has a smaller menu and the competition is better.

The Flavors from Fire menu has changed over that time, with some new items and some dishes rotating in and out. While some of our personal favorites are gone, there has yet to be a “bad” change here–just different. The current menu is solid, but we’re holding out a bit of hope that the expanded roster for Flavors from Fire returns in 2024, as this booth could be–and has been–even better than it is right now!

Let’s start with a look at the Flavors from Fire menu for the 2023 Epcot International Food & Wine Festival:

• Chimichurri Marinated Skirt Steak Taco with Crushed Avocado, Grilled Corn Salsa, Pickled Red Onions, Queso Fresco and Cilantro-Lime Cream (NEW)
• Spiced Chocolate Tart with BBQ Potato Chip Crust, Salted Whisky-Caramel and Smoked Sea Salt (NEW)
• The Impossible™ Burger Slider with Wasabi Cream and Spicy Slaw on a Sesame Seed Bun (plant-based item)
• Smoked Corned Beef with House-made Potato Chips, Cheese Curds, Pickled Onions and Beer-Cheese Fondue (Emile’s Fromage Montage item)

Flavors from Fire drinks:

• Saugatuck Brewing Company Bonfire Beer, Douglas, MI
• Four Virtues Bourbon Barrel Zinfandel, California
• Swine Brine featuring Jim Beam Bourbon

Above is the Flavors from Fire booth a few years ago, when it was hosted by ESPN College Gameday, sponsored by Home Depot, and had a lot of college football tie-ins. That was a lot of fun, and the area surrounding the booth offered a pleasant atmosphere thanks to its array of seating areas. We spent several nights under those popcorn lights.

This year, the only tie-ins to the NFL on ESPN are cumbersome and unnecessarily convoluted names. The seating area is largely behind the Creations Shop construction walls. Definite downgrade on the ESPN synergy and atmosphere fronts. Fortunately, that’s where the disappointment ends with Flavors from Fire…

While we don’t normally fixate on booze, it’s worth drawing your attention to the Saugatuck Brewing Company’s Bonfire Beer. In previous years, Flavors from Fire has featured beers from Bell’s Brewery. Both of these are based in Southwest Michigan, a stone’s throw from my hometown (in different directions).

While I’m not super familiar with this year’s brewery, Bell’s was my introduction to craft beer. Lots of great memories–and just as many forgotten ones–from my younger years drinking Bell’s. This can’t be a coincidence–must be a Michigander putting together the drink menu for Flavors from Fire!

Next up is the Swine Brine, which is the infamous drink that has created the most social media buzz of everything at Food & Wine. Don’t get me wrong–I am 100% on board with “infusing” more things with meat, and I find weird, gluttonous concoctions to be one of America’s greatest exports and national pastimes.

The Swine Brine is Jim Beam Bourbon mixed with lemon juice, apple cider, and dijon mustard. All of that is topped with a piggy wing. Yeah, that’s right. Despite every other item on the menu being like a paragraph long, this one carefully omits all the other stuff aside from the bourbon. That’s probably for good reason, as you might’ve thrown up in your mouth a little upon reading those ingredients.

I’m guessing someone at Walt Disney World gave this the green light because they figured it’d be like the Beverly Challenge–some people would try it despite knowing what it is because we’re dummies who like “conquering” foods, and other people would try it not knowing any better.

Unlike Beverly, this is inexplicably good. Sweet and sour…plus pork. Almost like a sharper version of apple cider. This reinforces the universal truth that pork is a panacea and can fix any dish no matter how irreparably broken it might seem. And to think, Gordon Ramsey duped us into watching like 7 seasons of Kitchen Nightmares, while the answer for fixing bad food was right under our noses all along. In short, the Swine Brine is a must-try drink both for its bizarre novelty and for its delicious taste.

Now let’s turn to the main event–the food reviews for Flavors from Fire…

Smoked Corned Beef with Crispy Potatoes, Cheese Curds, Pickled Onions and Beer-Cheese Fondue ($6.50) – Basically, it’s smoked corned beef on a bed of house-made potato chips, and topped with fondue.

This is one of my favorite items of everything at the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival. The fondue is complex, and the corned beef is lean and tender, with an excellent smokiness. It’s a perfect marriage of flavors; an ambitious comfort food that’s perfect for fall. Highly recommended.

Impossible Burger Slider ($6) – Since first trying them, Impossible burgers have really won me over. They are getting more and more convincing, and both Impossible and Beyond leading the way.

If you’ve never had one, give this a try. It’s juicy and savory, and you might just not be able to tell it isn’t meat. The wasabi cream helps, too. I’ve said before that even the best vegan burger isn’t as good as the worst beef burger, but that’s changing.

Chimichurri Marinated Skirt Steak Taco ($6.50) – This taco is topped with Crushed Avocado, Grilled Corn Salsa, Pickled Red Onions, Queso Fresco and Cilantro-Lime Cream. (Note that in the photo above it’s a corn pancake, not a taco.)

This is a bit pricier and smaller, but the tender skirt steak compensates for that. Again, a perfect melding of flavors, with the pickled slaw, chimichurri and cilantro cream providing a piquant and refreshing tang to the dish. With that said, the steak stands apart and above the rest of the dish, and doesn’t need any accompaniments to taste great. Another highly recommend dish at Flavors from Fire. (Sarah prefers this; I prefer the corned beef.)

Overall, we were once again really pleased with Flavors from Fire. While the atmosphere is a definite downgrade from last year, the best of the savory items return and the dessert is even better than its predecessors. Thanks to that, Flavors from Fire is once again the #1 booth at EPCOT’s Food & Wine Festival.

The three items we tried here cost $16.25 total, which is not cheap but not terrible considering the quality of the steak and portion size of the corned beef. about on par with a counter service meal. We’d recommend ordering the entire food menu at Flavors from Fire, and consider adding on a drink or two, as well.

Check out our Global Marketplace Booth Menus & Photos for the 2023 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival Booth Menus post if you want to see and read more about every menu this year! You’ll also want to read our full 2023 EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival Guide before you go to get an idea of what to do, strategy for the festival (yes, you will need a strategy), and much more!

Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!

YOUR THOUGHTS

Do you have any favorites from the Flavors from Fire marketplace booth? Anything you’re excited to try? Would you like to see more individual Food & Wine booth reviews, or a condensed ‘best of’ post (or posts)? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!