Taste Track Review: Epcot Food & Wine Festival

Taste Track is a food truck in Future World at Epcot that operates during the summer tourist season at Walt Disney World. Currently, Taste Track has a special menu for the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival, and that’s what we’ll be reviewing.

This new menu at Taste Track includes the famed Pancake Milkshake and a bunch of croissant doughnuts. To be honest, we have a vague suspicion that if this menu proves popular at Taste Track, and the new poutine menu is popular at Refreshment Port, both of these will become permanent offerings beyond the Epcot Food & Wine Festival.

In other words, if you want an all cronut, all the time menu at Epcot, vote with your wallet and order like 20 of these bad boys. As you can see from the above photo, we’re doing our part. Actually, we’re probably getting ahead of ourselves–let’s review the quality of these cronuts before we start daydreaming about this menu becoming permanent…

In terms of basic info about this Epcot snack spot, there’s not really much to know. The name is pun on the nearby Test Track attraction, which is obvious to anyone who doesn’t simply mistake the name for that ride’s actual name. It’s located by the Test Track Cool Wash, which is a misting station turned Coca-Cola stand.

For the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival, a limited number of tables are scattered around outside the Taste Track food kiosk. Should those tables be occupied–as is often the case–there are trash cans as far as the eye can see, which make a great tabletop for enjoying $25 worth of croissant doughnuts.

Prior to this new menu, Taste Track was closed for a while, and prior to that, it had a variety of elaborate ice cream sundaes (pictured above for reference–not available now). Historically, it’s always been a grab and go location, serving refreshing snacks guests could enjoy while walking, with no expectation that people would linger.

Here’s a look at the current menu:

In case your eyesight is as poor as mine, here’s all of that spelled out:

• Croissant Doughnut in Cinnamon Sugar — $6.00
  • With Gelato — $8.00
• Croissant Doughnut with Chocolate and Marshmallows — $6.50
  • With Gelato — $8.50
• Croissant Doughnut with Chocolate Hazelnut Cream — $6.50
  • With Gelato — $8.50
• Croissant Doughnut with Sprinkles — $6.50
  • With Gelato — $8.50
• Gelato (Chocolate, Hazelnut, White Chocolate Raspberry or Vanilla Bean) — $5.00
• Pancake Milkshake — $5.00

Here are our photos and reviews of each menu item at Taste Track in Epcot…

This is the ‘standard’ cronut, and the kind that previously has been available at Refreshment Port near Canada in World Showcase. In case you’re unfamiliar with cronuts, they are the beautiful marriage of croissants and doughnuts (hence the name) and have become trendy in the last 5 or so years since the concept was pioneered in New York. (It was also trademarked, which is why Walt Disney World doesn’t use the name cronut, despite everyone calling it that.)

At their best, cronuts are at once crunchy, doughy, and flaky, embodying all of the best qualities of croissants and doughnuts. If you get one that has been sitting around too long, there’s an emphasis on the crunchiness. The standard cronut at Walt Disney World is coated with cinnamon sugar, and is similar to a churro, but superior in every way (sorry not sorry). This is a good introduction to the wonderful world of cronuts.

The cronut with sprinkles is my least favorite of the bunch. While I like the vanilla icing and think it complements the cronut nicely, the sprinkles are a cheap distraction from the great flavors underneath.

Your mileage may vary depending upon your thoughts on sprinkles–it’s not necessarily a bad option.

The next two are my favorites of the bunch. This one with chocolate and marshmallows has a nice texture from the graham cracker crumble, making it loosely like a s’mores cronut.

My absolute favorite, and the one I’d recommend to advanced cronut enthusiasts. As usual, ‘chocolate hazelnut cream’ is Walt Disney World menu code for Nutella (another trademark usage issue…or perhaps Disney uses the off-brand because they can’t afford the real stuff?), they just don’t spell it out. Here, the Nutella works fantastically with the cronut, and the raspberries are another nice touch.

Two final notes about the cronuts. First, the quality of the cronuts very much depends upon how long ago they were made. This booth was really busy over opening weekend of Epcot’s Food & Wine Festival, so that was not an issue. However, during an off-season weekday, you might get one that has been sitting around all day, which might cause you to question why the heck we spoke so highly of this hockey puck-like snack. These are all close enough in quality that asking the Cast Member at the order window which is freshest–and choosing that–might be your best bet on a slow day.

Second–and related to the first–we opted to order these without gelato for the sake of an “even” comparison (and so we didn’t drop another $8), but we would strongly recommend them with gelato. Any of these should pair well with the hazelnut or vanilla bean gelato. The bonus upside to gelato is that it’ll permeate the cronut, making it a bit less noticeable if you do get one that’s not quite as fresh.

Finally, we have the Pancake Milkshake. Literally everyone in our group loved this. We all had different opinions about its taste, ranging from dead-on pancake to birthday cake and some other oddball responses.

I didn’t think it was a dead-ringer for pancakes, but agree with the sentiment that it tasted like something batter. It’s really good–but also pretty small. I’d recommend it if only for the novelty and the Rorschach test of determining what you think it tastes like.

Overall, Taste Track was a surprise bright spot of the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival, and we really hope this menu sticks around. Normally, these “other snacks” booths are afterthoughts with unambitious, crowd-pleasing fare for those who don’t like the adventurous options at the Global Marketplaces. This year, that’s only partially true. Booths like Taste Track do offer crowd-pleasing fare, but it’s also inventive, fun, and delicious.

Check out our 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 Epcot’s 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!

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YOUR THOUGHTS

What do you think of the cronuts and pancake milkshake at Taste Track? Have you tried any of these items at this booth? What did you think of them? Do you long for a great big beautiful tomorrow with 4 different cronuts offered permanently in Future World at Epcot? 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!