Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival returns with diverse dishes, live bands and lots of cat puns
The new carnitas-style pork belly with esquites corn mac salad at Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival is just one example of the diversity the culinary team is going for in this year’s menu.
Available at LA Style — one of the 10 festival marketplaces spread throughout California Adventure — the esquites corn salad also features habanero, chili-lime seasoning.
Disneyland Resort Chef Luis Madrigal said this dish was an effort to create something new with the popular pork belly while eliciting a Los Angeles cultural experience.
“So we wanted to incorporate it, carnitas being pork, but made in a different style,” he said. “We wanted to see how we can add it into this pork belly now and this pork belly piece … alongside with the esquites corn salad — esquites being a very street-friendly food in the streets of LA, or any outdoor vendors that like to sell their items outside. We wanted to include that cultural experience for guests that comes from chefs that experience it outside of work. That growing up they used to go to the elote man and have a cup of esquites and now bringing that together with the carnitas.”
The festival, which launched March 1 and runs through April 22, includes more than 80 new dishes across the festival marketplaces, participating dining locations and some carts. This year, there are two Sip and Savor Pass options available — a new four-coupon and the returning eight-coupon option. They can be used for select food items or nonalcoholic beverages.
Beyond the considerable amount of food and drinks available, there’s an educational component with local, celebrity and Disney chefs offering cooking demonstrations on the weekends at the Hollywood Backlot Stage.
Entertainment makes up the other half of the Food & Wine Festival experience with a new interactive children’s show in Hollywood Land, “Confection Purrfection with the SuperKitties,” inspired by Disney Junior’s animated series, “SuperKitties.” One notable element that the show brings over from the series is the free-flowing use of cat puns — from “cat-astrophe” and “that’s paw-some” to “cat-ch ya later” and everything in between.
“The series has a ton of cat puns, we just kept adding,” said Linda Love Simmons, show director for Disney Live Entertainment. “We were laughing constantly.”
The show includes on-screen appearances by the “SuperKitties” as well as cupcake decorating for children.
“We wanted to have some kind of activity for the youngest foodies to participate in,” she said.
For those looking for some live music, Simmons said this year’s festival features more bands — with 14 different live bands performing daily at the Palisades Stage and Paradise Gardens Bandstand, ranging from reggae, top 40 and ‘80s to R&B, jazz and big band.
“Cookin’ with the Jammin’ Chefs” is back for its third year with cooking-themed music, character dancing and performers dressed as chefs drumming on pots and pans. Characters like Chip ‘n’ Dale, Clarabelle Cow and Daisy Duck add plenty of spicy dance moves.
“I love the idea of celebrating everyone. I love the idea of having everyone see themselves in the stories that we tell,” Simmons said. “With ‘Confection Purrfection,’ the idea that when people feel included, it makes them happier. It makes everyone happier. We should all take that to heart, to make sure that everyone feels part of the story. And that laughter and fun is amazing. And that for the littlest chefs, that everybody has a superpower.
“And then for ‘Cookin’ with the Jammin’ Chefs,’ the last line in the show, I love so much: ‘Go taste everything or try everything, because food, like life, is a celebration.’ For me, that’s what Food & Wine is, it’s a celebration. It’s a celebration of the bounty of California. It’s the celebration of art. In the gazebo, down by the beer garden, there’s all the artwork that’s been created for the festival. … The mural is painted. So for the first four days of the festival, you could watch this mural come to life with an actual artist [Marcella Swett].”
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