Two Loops Around the World and Back

After enjoying the Food and Wine Festival at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia, last year, it seemed like a good idea to go back and hit the festival again. There were a number of booths we’d had to skip last time just because we were stuffed and didn’t have room. Combined with a few of the older booths that had been swapped out, and with a number of menu refreshes across, it felt like going back to the theme park for another taste around the world would be a great idea. So we got our tickets (which, for theme park tickets, weren’t the worst price we’ve seen) and headed over to Williamsburg to sample the wares.

As a bonus, this time my wife and I were joined by a couple of friends, so between the four of us we could sample more items without the risk of getting as full by the time the whole walking tour ended. It actually worked out well as, aside from a couple of booths that sounded terrible and we outright skipped, we could try a little of just about everything.

Virginia

As with last year, we started in Virginia, as it’s right at the start of the park, before heading on a counterclockwise path around the whole of Busch Gardens. Virginia’s booth is located in the Scotland section of the park, and acts as its main food booth (with, curiously, no Scottish food on offer from the festival’s booths). We’d had Virginia's items last year, both the Chesapeake Crab Cake Slider along with the Jalapeño & Cheddar Hush Puppies, but they were so good we had to get them again. And then we added on the Apple Crisp because we wanted something new to sample as well.

As before, the crab cake was great. Served on a soft bun with micro greens and a remoulade sauce, the slider was very tasty. The cake itself was crispy on the edges, soft in the middle, and it perfectly sat between gooey and crunchy as a crab cake should. Paired with the hush puppies, which were crunchy, spicy, and just a touch salty, the whole meal was delightful. I really will get this every time we go to Busch Gardens, so long as the theme park continues to have it on offer.

The Apple Crisp, meanwhile, was pretty good. It was sweet, with a good apple and caramel flavor, without being overpowering. It was served with an oatmeal walnut crumble, and then topped with bacon jam, but honestly the bacon part was completely forgettable. The walnuts were nice, and added some needed crunchy, and the oatmeal kept the whole thing from being too moist. The bacon, though, wasn’t really a jam; it was more like they were crumbles carelessly placed on top. They were underwhelming and added nothing to the experience. So while it was a decent dessert, it had too much going on without really coming together quite as well as it should.

• Chesapeake Style Crab Cake Slider: A
• Jalapeño & Cheddar Hush Puppies: S
• Apple Crisp: B

Africa

On our own my wife and I likely would have skipped this booth as there wasn’t anything we were absolutely dying for. Our friends wanted to try the food, though, so we stopped in and sampled a couple of items. We each got a set of Peri Peri Chicken, which were marinated, grilled chicken skewers served on a bed of coconut rice, and it was aggressively fine. The chicken clearly had been sitting for a while under heat lamps as it had a rubbery consistency that only made the fact that it was well done all the more pronounced. The flavor of the chicken was nice, but it was hard to get over the texture. The rice, meanwhile, was bad. It didn’t taste strongly of coconut, but the pieces of coconut that were in there were overly crisp and hard to chew. It made the rice taste like it wasn’t cooked well enough which, maybe it wasn’t. Overall, though, it wasn’t a very good plate of chicken.

Our friends also grabbed Kelewele, ginger and onion marinated and fried plantains and, yeah, I wanted nothing to do with them. I tried a small bite, just for the sake of science, but I was completely disgusted. The thing about plantains is that they are a lot like starchy bananas and, as we’ve established previously, I loathe bananas. I can’t get past the texture, nor the flavor, and every time I try plantains I hate them even more. These were a bad fit for me anyway but even the rest of the group agreed they weren’t crispy enough nor flavorful enough. Even if you liked plantains, these were bad.

• Peri Peri Chicken: C
• Kelewele: D-

Hawaii

It was a quick hop from here over to the Hawaii booth where a couple of items did catch my fancy. We grabbed the Spam Poke Bowl and then paired it with the Blue Hawaiian Cocktail, seeing as we were at the park all day and had time to get a little tipsy and then walk it off. And, of the two, I did enjoy the Blue Hawaiian more. It was a decently large cup, filled with frozen blue drink, and made up of vodka, blue curacao, pineapple, and coconut cream. I’m not a huge fan of coconut normally, but I can handle a little of its flavor mixed in with other stuff (like curries), and it worked here. The drink was tasty, sweet, and lightly alcoholic, while large enough that we could carry it around with us for a bit and sip for a while. Honestly, it was a pretty good value.

The poke bowl, though, sucked. It was composed of rice, carrots, pickled ginger, and sesame seeds, plus I think they also threw in edamame even though it wasn’t listed in the ingredients. Plus, of course, there were cubes of Spam. In fairness to the dish, when you had a bit of everything, Spam included, it wasn’t bad. Salty, mild, and kind of tasty. Unfortunately the ingredients were not well balanced and there wasn’t nearly enough Spam in the bowl to go with everything else. What the dish really needed was some sauce, like a pineapple drizzle or some sweet and tangy eel sauce, just to make everything taste better. Without Spam it was dry and bland, and it really just needed something more.

While we were eating on these items, our friends got the Kahaku Garlic Shrimp along with the Aloha Beaches drink. That drink was made of tequila, Malibu rum, and mojito mix, and it was okay. Strong, somewhat sweet, but served in a much smaller cup that went by very fast. And then shrimp were just okay. Technically there was nothing bad about them, but they didn’t taste very Hawaiian. They were basically Maryland buttered shrimp tossed with Old Bay, no matter what the menu said otherwise. For that kind of shrimp they weren’t bad, but when you get Hawaiian shrimp you expect something more.

• Spam Poke Bowl: C-
• Blue Hawaiian: A
• Kahaku Garlic Shrimp: C+
• Aloha Beaches: B-

Mexico

On around we went, over to Mexico where we grabbed just the Barbacoa Taco as one of our friends wanted to try it. I didn’t sample this, as it was just one taco and I didn’t want to eat all their food, but they said the taco – composed of shredded beef, pickled red onions, pico, and cotija cheese, was pretty good. Flavorful, savory, with just a bit of pickle and sharpness to cut through all the beefy flavor. Considering I’d had the shredded beef taco last year, and found it to be the highlight of the booth, I could believe it.

Instead of tacos we wandered off and grabbed a basic funnel cake so my wife could have something starchy in her stomach, as the alcohol was quickly getting to her. The cake was good, like any solid funnel cake you’ve had at a fair before. But I will say it was noticeably smaller than last year. Not sure if that was just what the guy that made the cake was used to doing, or if this was shrinkflation cutting in. We’ll have to see next year when we go back again.

• Babacoa Taco: A
• Funnel Cake: A-

Poland

After Mexico came Poland, which makes no sense on a map but Busch Gardens plays by its own rules. This was a booth we skipped last year, and likely we would have skipped it again except that our friends really wanted to sample a couple of the items here. This time we all did partake, so I have first hand tastes to go off of.

The two items they grabbed were the Pierogies and the Zapiekanka. The perogies were simple with potato and cheese, wrapped in dough and fried into a dumpling, and then drizzled with sour cream and onion jam. These were light and tasty, with the onion and sour cream adding some needed sweetness and bite. Unfortunately they, like so many items at the park, had been sitting under the lamps for too long and had developed a very hard crust around the outside edge. It was almost inedible and ruined an otherwise pretty solid dumpling.

The mushroom sandwich, meanwhile, was missing something. The sandwich was served open face with sauteed mushrooms, swiss cheese, and garlic butter, and while not bad, it really needed a little more bite to it. The swiss was likely supposed to add that bite, but the swiss cheese used was underwhelming. It tasted much better when it was dipped in the leftover sauce from the pierogies, so if you get them as a pair this sandwich is actually pretty good. On it’s own, though, it was underwhelming at best.

• Pierogies: C+
• Zapiekanka: C-

Brazil

We moved over to Brazil (which, if I were planning this world tour out I’d have Mexico lead into Brazil, and not have Poland in the middle, but no one was asking me). Here we sampled two items: the Cordeiro and the Tempero Baiano. The Cordeiro was lamb cooked with mint, garlic, and lemon, served with a mint chutney and was pretty good. It was tender, flavorful, and well cooked, which was aided by the fact that it came out fresh as the line at Brazil was long and food was quickly getting turned over as fast as it could be made.

The issue I had with the item wasn’t its quality, which was solid, but that it didn’t really taste all that special. This tasted like holiday lamb, the kind of lamb you’d get as Easter or Passover (depending on your faith). The seasonings, the flavor, and even the fact that it was served with a mint sauce, all made it taste like religious lamb you could get at just about any family’s table over a holiday. It wasn’t bad, and in fact was pretty good, but it didn’t taste very Brazilian at all. I expected a bit more.

I got that, though, from the Tempero Baiano. This was two chicken legs, spiced Brazilian style, served with a garlic sauce, and they were great. The chicken was moist and flavorful, and not dry or rubbery at all. The marinade and rub they used gave the chicken a nice kick and just a little heat. It all combined together into a pair of drumsticks that were hard to put down. I liked these a lot, and absolutely would go back for them again.

• Cordeiro: A-
• Tempero Baiano: S

Barkastle

We headed into the beer row where we saw Barkastle, serving bar food. I picked up Virginia Pimento Beer Cheese Dip and a Bourbon Chocolate Tart for the table, and we chilled while we contemplated other drinks to grab (which ended up just being water, amusingly enough). Of the two items, the chocolate tart was the better item. It had a smooth, dark chocolate ganache served on a pecan and graham cracker crust, and while the crust was a little thick, the ganache was really good. Unfortunately while it did have whipped cream on it, there wasn’t enough to cover the whole tart. It needed that cream to cut through the dark chocolate flavor, which did steadily become overpowering. More whipped cream would have made this scrumptious all the way through because, without friends, I would have struggled to finish this in its normal configuration on my own.

The beer cheese dip, though, was utterly awful. It wasn’t a dip, it was a dollop of cheese log, served ice cold in a cup with crackers. The flavor wasn’t bad, with a nice mix of cheddar, pimento, and salami mixed in, but this needed to be served warm so it could be smooth and dippable. Served cold it was honestly pretty gross.

• Virginia Pimento Beer Cheese Dip: F
• Bourbon Chocolate Tart: C+

Turkiye

We neared the end of the food tour’s loop, and that finished us out in Turkiye where I was the only person to grab an item. I bought the Chicken Doner Kebab which was, functionally, a chicken pita. At first I thought it was actually going to be a decently sized item as the guy making it rolled a small but healthy pita up… and then sliced it in half and gave me only one half of the whole thing. At ten bucks, half of a small pita roll was a pretty awful value.

And it was even worse when I bit into it and discovered there was barely any chicken in it. The pita should be loaded with chicken shawarma, tomato, feta, olive, cucumber, chili sauce, and yogurt sauce. Mostly what I got was a little bit of spring mix, an olive, and yogurt. I couldn’t identify anything else in there, nor was there much flavor. Mostly it tasted of thick, stale pita. I was disgusted. Even comparing it to the beer cheese dip above, it was still somehow worse.

• Chicken Doner Kebab: F-

Final Thoughts

And that was the tour. It was fun, and we sampled a lot of decent dishes. This was the second year we’ve gone, and we did it a la carte, buying items as we went along. I think next year we’re likely going to get a food pass, as it would save us a bit of money as we get a little something at every single booth around the park. It’s still a learning experience for us so we had to figure out how much we wanted to spend up front for the experience.

Of note, we did skip two booths. One was in Italy, where the menu remained unchanged and we honestly weren’t impressed by the food last time. The other was in China where the menu also remained unchanged and, as with last year, we didn’t feel like spending money on items that were clearly bought in bulk and microwaved when we could get the same experience for dumplings and potstickers if we bought them at the grocery store and warmed them up at home.

We do like this tour and we have fun with it. So long as there are enough menu changes for next year we’ll go again. Even if it’s just for Virginia and Brazil and then to ride some rides afterwards. The experience is part of the fun.