La Isla Fresca Menu & Food Review: Epcot Flower & Garden Festival

La Isla Fresca is an Outdoor Kitchen between the France and Morocco pavilions of World Showcase during the Epcot Flower & Garden Festival. In this Walt Disney World dining review, we’ll look at the menu prices, share food photos, and offer thoughts on what is worth your money and what to skip.

Relocating from the typical Islands of the Caribbean booth nearer Future World, La Isla Fresca is now on almost the complete opposite side of World Showcase, back in the garden that’s frequently home to the Brazil booth during the EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival. In our view, the new spot suits La Isla Fresca well.

Whereas the lineup at the front of World Showcase is stacked, with a half dozen great options all adjacent to one another, good Outdoor Kitchens are harder to come by on the “back half” of World Showcase Lagoon. If you’re approaching from France, it’s the last solid stop for a couple of countries and a breather from the crowds. If you’re approaching from Morocco, it’s the first good option since American Adventure…

We’ll start with a rundown of La Isla Fresca’s food menu:

  • Arepas topped with melted queso fresco (Gluten/ Wheat Friendly)
  • Arepa topped with shrimp, crushed avocado ají, and tomato sauce (Gluten/ Wheat Friendly)
  • Arepa topped with chorizo (New)
  • Coconut Tres Leches: Vanilla cake soaked in oat milk, almond milk, and coconut milk with toasted coconut (New) (Plant-based) (Garden Graze)

There are also plenty of drinks on the menu for La Isla Fresca Outdoor Kitchen:

  • Tropical Breeze: Lemonade, grapefruit juice, and simple syrup (non-alcoholic) (New)
  • Coconut Key Lime Ale
  • Tropical Perception White Sangria
  • Tropical Breeze with rum (New)

Now our photos of each item at La Isla Fresca, which Walt Disney World’s official site touts as a spot where you can “nibble on Caribbean-seasoned dishes that’ll send appetites swaying to the island beat!”

Let’s go from most to least expensive with our La Isla Fresca food reviews…

New Items

Arepa – We opted to order just the chorizo arepa, figuring we could extrapolate from there about the other two.

While Disney typically does a decent job with shrimp at these events (they’re usually not too rubbery), the chorizo is likely the best of the bunch. Rich and flavorful, it’s a decent option.

Coconut Tres Leches ($4.50) – Vanilla cake soaked in oat milk, almond milk, and coconut milk with toasted coconut.

This coconut tres leches isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just nothing special. The consistency didn’t quite hit the mark, being a bit too dry and light, rather than thicker and more moist. Flavor is fine, but again, nothing special. The dessert leans too heavily on the whipped cream topping, too.

Past Items

Sugar Cane Shrimp Skewer with Steamed Rice and Coconut-Lime Sauce ($7) – Shrimp skewers are always a gamble at EPCOT festivals. In the past, our perspective has been that if you have the Disney Dining Plan snack credits to burn, roll the dice on them. Despite the DDP menu icons, that’s obviously not an option at this year’s EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival.

With that said, we really liked this sugar cane shrimp skewer. The coconut-lime sauce was addictively good, with a sweet creaminess, plus a bit of zest. On top of that, the shrimp were fresh, plump, and perfectly prepared, making for one delicious dish that, we thought, was actually worth the money. If you got unlucky and received rubbery shrimp that had been sitting under the heat lamp for a while, you’d likely reach a dramatically different conclusion about this dish.

Lamb Curry with Sweet Plantains and Rice ($6.25) – No equivocation here: this lamb curry is amazing. It’s one of our favorite savory dishes of the EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival thus far, and absolutely worth the money.

The photo doesn’t do it justice, but this is hardy helping of curry, with a generous portion of tender and flavorful lamb. This dish definitely has a gamey taste along with a mild kick from the curry, but it’s fantastic. The only thing we didn’t love about this is the sweet plantains, which were just a tad too mushy. Still, highly recommended.

Tropical Mousse Cup ($4.50) – This dessert consists of several layers of passion fruit cake with coconut mousse in between and topped with a tropical fruit glaze and fresh pineapple.

This Tropical Mousse Cup is very good, but nothing revolutionary. You can probably envision exactly what it is and how it tastes based solely upon the photo. The most noteworthy thing about it as compared to similar dishes at past EPCOT festivals is its layers, and how the texture of each elevates the overall dessert. We recommend it if you’re already ordering one of the savory dishes, but don’t make a special stop for it.

Overall, La Isla Fresca Outdoor Kitchen at the EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival is a definite winner. At this booth and France, you could order one of everything on the food menus, then enjoy a leisurely snack session under the popcorn lights in the garden here or at an alcove in the Streets of Paris area near Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure with the Skyliner gliding overhead. The menu at La Isla Fresca is not quite as “stacked” as France, but this trio is solid. With several booths that are skippable, simply ordering the whole menu at La Isla Fresca will be the efficient and satisfying approach!

Check out our Outdoor Kitchen Booth Menus & Food Photos at the EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival post if you want to see and read more about every menu this year. You’ll also want to read our full Guide to the EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival before you go to get an idea of what to do, strategy for the festival, photos of the topiaries and floral displays, 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

Thoughts on gambling with shrimp at EPCOT festivals? What do you think of La Isla Fresca Outdoor Kitchen? Have you tried any of the food items at this food booth? What did you like or dislike? Portion-size or quality-wise, did you have better or worse luck than us with what you ordered? 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!

4 Responses to “La Isla Fresca Menu & Food Review: Epcot Flower & Garden Festival”
  1. SB2021 March 4, 2021
    • DebC March 4, 2021
  2. Melissa C. March 3, 2021
  3. DebC March 3, 2021

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