Gourmet Landscapes Booth Review & Food Photos: 2024 EPCOT Arts Festival
Gourmet Landscapes is a Food Studio at the 2024 EPCOT Festival of the Arts, with this food booth being located in the Canada pavilion near the entrance of World Showcase. This Walt Disney World dining review features photos of everything on the menu at this booth plus our thoughts on each dish.
For those who are unfamiliar with it, Gourmet Landscapes is one of the newer food booths at the event, having replaced the Masterpiece Kitchen a couple of years ago. Walt Disney World describes it as follows: “Graze on delish dishes artfully composed with fine ingredients from the land.”
Despite the different names, there really isn’t a huge difference between Gourmet Landscapes and its predecessor, Masterpiece Kitchen. Both are the de facto Canada pavilion food booth, both feature elevated and ambitious cuisine, and both serve up fairly earthy dishes.
Another similarity between the two is that both are among the best booths for those using the Disney Dining Plan. Gourmet Landscapes has two dishes in the $10 range that are still considered snacks on the 2024 DDP. This is a tremendous use of these credits, which is unsurprising since EPCOT festivals are their own entry in our List of Best Disney Dining Plan Snack Credit Uses.
Of course, bang for buck is an objective measure. The better question is subjective–should you use your Disney Dining Plan credits, money, or stomach space on the dishes at Gourmet Landscapes? That’s what this Food Studio review seeks to answer.
Let’s start with the Gourmet Landscapes menu:
Food Items
- Verjus-roasted Beets with goat cheese, petite lettuce, blackberry gastrique, and spiced pecans
- Roasted Bone Marrow with onion marmalade, pickled mushrooms, and petite lettuce
- Wild Mushroom Risotto with truffle shavings and zinfandel reduction (Plant-based Item)
Beverages
- Whole Hog Brewery Raspberry Chéret Double Radler
- Schlumberger Cuvée Klimt Brut
- The Meeker Vineyard Winemaker’s Handprint Merlot
- Frozen Scotch Cocktail: Scotch and herbal tea garnished with a chocolate nail
Verjus-roasted Beets – This is basically charcuterie for vegetarians. But instead of meats, you’ve got beets. That plus goat cheese, petite lettuce, blackberry gastrique, and spiced pecans.
Although I preferred the prior Beet Tartare served here, I still enjoy this dish. The beets and goat cheese are fantastic paired together, and the other accompaniments are nice added earthiness. I’d rather have stuff like this than more fake meats. Let the plant-based dishes actually feature stuff from the ground, and not a lab.
Roasted Bone Marrow – I very much want to love this. There is something oddly empowering about walking around EPCOT with a bone in hand–takes me back to my caveman roots. I’m also a big fan of roasted bone marrow–I’d book a meal at Takumi-Tei in a heartbeat if they brought back that dish.
Sadly, this is heavy on the bone, light on the marrow. I’ve ordered it twice and both times have been incredibly disappointed. I assume this is why there’s such a generous helping of onion marmalade–to mask the absence of marrow. But if you like marrow-less bones, marmalade, pickled mushrooms, and petite lettuce…I guess this is for you?
Wild Mushroom Risotto – This is everything the bone marrow should be. It’s an elevated dish that’s far more ambitious than you’d expect, with perfect preparation and a nuanced flavor profile. This is probably the best dish at any version of the Canada booth, and that includes the Le Cellier filet mignon served during Food & Wine.
The truffle shavings and zinfandel reduction elevate this above a ‘simple’ mushroom risotto and make this a truly phenomenal dish. It’s pricey at almost $10, but I think it’s worth it given the caliber of the cuisine. Plate this up differently and it could be served at Le Cellier or Topolino’s Terrace for double the price (or more). It’s an absolute no-brainer buy with a Disney Dining Plan snack credit.
Overall, the Gourmet Landscapes Food Studio at the 2024 EPCOT International Festival of the Arts is a mixed bag. I’ve come to be a big fan of the Canada food booth at pretty much every event except Food & Wine (where it’s massively overrated). At all of the other festivals, it’s an underrated spot with ambitious dishes. Accordingly, I’ve developed elevated expectations for it.
To be sure, Gourmet Landscapes is ambitious. I’m shocked and impressed that a food booth is doing roasted bone marrow–that’s a big swing. Unfortunately, it’s also a miss. Fortunately, the other two items are good to great. I just wish there were also a dessert (something Canada booths have also done really well), but that’s a minor quibble, especially since Gourmet Landscapes has 3 savory dishes at a time when most Food Studios have been reduced to 2 items total.
As this event isn’t just about the cuisine, you’ll also want to read our full Guide to the 2024 EPCOT International Festival of the Arts for info about the non-culinary side of the festivities. That covers the Disney on Broadway concert series, visual arts, performing arts, participatory arts, 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
What do you think of the Gourmet Landscapes Food Studio? Have you tried any of the food items at this booth? What did you think of them? Do you agree that this is one of the more ambitious and interesting Food Studios at the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts? Questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
We stayed at GF the opening week of Festival of the Arts. Art was meh, very Christmas mall booth vibe. The Canadian food booth didn’t look enticing at all and the description here reinforces that. After going around Epcot we decided on the braised beef at Germany. I know I know….it’s the same at Cinderalla’s Castle, BOG and the French Restaurant….but really, it is alway delicious and the whole fam loves it. The sauce was potent and definitely needed to be stirred first, which made it all the better. We’re going back this week for a day trip and I have my eye on the L’arte mozzzarella fritta. I hope it is all that it sounds it will be. Yum!
“Let the plant-based dishes actually feature stuff from the ground, and not a lab.”
Thank you, Tom. You are so right. I am geriatric millennial who became a lacto-ovo vegetarian at 16 so after 20 years as a vegetarian the absolute last thing I want to eat is Beyond or Impossible. It would be fine if the Impossible dishes were in addition to other plant-based options. It is the replacement of plant-based dishes created with actual vegetarians in mind with all the lab grown meat that is so frustrating because finding find things like tofu at Disney World and Disneyland wasn’t always practically impossible.
Yup, jumped to the comments to say similar things. We have gone vegetarian in the last few years and I just can’t bring myself to eat lab meat, which greatly reduces our food options at a lot of places. This isn’t just a Disney issue, it’s an *everywhere* issue.
That being said, I’m down for basically any of the vegetarian non-lab-meat options I’ve seen at the booths this year. Grateful for what options we do have!
I’ll be the first to admit that we were big fans of the Impossible and Beyond stuff at first, and even still enjoy some of it. But the novelty has mostly worn off, and now we’re left wondering: what did they do to make this taste this close to the real thing?
At this point, I’d rather just eat plants or meats, not plants plus chemicals and who-knows-what masquerading as meats. To each their own, though.
Same! I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 12. I think there are so many ways to enhance plant-based but it seems like everything is Beyond or Impossible, neither of them tasting good. Much better options can be made with a bit of creativity!