Laura's Disney Lines

Yikes...it was a scorcher of a day today. We headed home a little after noon, and it was 96 degrees at that point.

So, since I really don't have much in the way of events to report on from today, guess what, I'm going to go back to Friday and give you more of a report of what we did that day. Aren't you excited? (Unless it's in the affirmative, please don't answer that.)

We arrived at the hotel (Grand Californian) about 10:00 Friday morning and checked in - our room wasn't ready yet, so we headed into Disney's California Adventure (DCA). Since the park had only opened at 10:00, and it was about 10:30 by then, they were actually asking to see a room key before letting people use the "private" Grand Californian entrance. I've never seen that before - but when I've used that entrance it's always been afternoon or evening.

Our first stop was the Festival Welcome Center at Sunshine Plaza to pick up a Festival Guide. Since the daily schedule has been on-line for a couple of weeks I already knew we wanted to head to the demonstration kitchen at Bountiful Farm (that's a new venue for the Festival this year) for the very first demo of this year's Festival - Delicious Desserts. Although the new venue has about twice the capacity (72 people) as the former area they were using on the patio of the Vineyard Room the chairs and tables are still crammed pretty close together - if you're seated in the middle you won't be moving anywhere until everyone else gets up and moves!

The featured dessert was Berry Crisp, which we actually saw last year, made by the pastry chef at the Grand Californian, Jorge Sotelo, and his assistant, Mario Ramirez. It was the Jorge and Mario show - in addition to Jorge having a microphone, Mario did also - the first time I've seen that. They were very personable and played off each other and were great fun to watch. Last year we got a very large serving of the Berry Crisp - this year it was a lot smaller, which was fine. Still tasty, though. It was served with a scoop of strawberry sorbet and was very attractively presented - one of the things Chef Jorge told us was that people start eating with their eyes.

After the demo we went to check out some of the food offerings. As I mentioned in Part 1, many of the DCA restaurants have special menu items during the Festival, and we split the California Wrap, which I also talked about.

We wandered around for a while after that, checking out all the restaurants that are offering special menus items, to see what we wanted to come back and try. I thought the Chilled Shrimp Pasta Salad at Pizza Oom Mow Mow looked especially good, but we didn't get chance to try it this weekend. We also checked out the Sparkling Bar located on the Upper Terrace of the winery - it looked like a great place to kick back and relax for a while, and maybe enjoy an appetizer. I thought the wine flight prices were a little high - or more than I'd want to pay, at least. Especially when you can go downstairs to one of the wine tasting sessions and drink for free.

We attended the "Rosenthal - The Malibu Estate" wine tasting session, which was conducted by their Director of Sales, Neil McNally. He was really an interesting speaker, and gave a fair bit of information on how to taste wine (including slurping it!), which is always helpful for those of us who don't know much about it. (I guess Lee and I don't have very educated palates, because we rarely pick up on those hints of "raspberry, vanilla, tobacco, apples", etc. that people talk about in wine.)

These grapes really ARE grown in Malibu, in the hills about 4 miles from the ocean, and about 1500 feet about sea level. All of the grapes used in their wines are grown on the estate. We tasted a chardonnay, their Surfrider Red (a blend of several kinds of grapes), and their cabernet sauvignon. Nice wines, but none of them really to my taste.

We needed some more food by then, so we went back over to the Festival Marketplace. The menu for the Marketplace is included in the Festival Guide this year, which is nice. We shared the White Cheddar Cheese Soup, which has been on the menu all three years (we later found out that it's their most popular item), and the Hummus with Pita Chips, which is served with veggies in a martini glass. I really liked the presentation of that. We took those with us when we went to wait in line for the Flora Springs wine tasting session.

Flora Springs is owned by a couple of families, and the session was led by family member Matt Komes. The winery got its name from Flora, the mother of the founders, and from the natural springs on the estate that are used to water the grapes. We tried a chardonnay (the only white anyone seems to bring to these things!), followed by two red blends: Poggio del Papa and Trilogy. The chardonnay was pretty good, but I didn't care much for the other two...Lee really liked the Trilogy, though.

Our final event of the day in the park was the BBQ cooking demonstration, done by Jesse Tiscareno, sous chef at Rancho del Zocalo. He really enjoys cooking with an Asian flair...which I don't think is something he gets to do at Rancho del Zocalo! (It serves Mexican food.) He made a marinated pork dish of thin-sliced pork that was pan-seared, then roasted in the oven, and then served on a round "cake" of rice, which was encircled by a thin slice of cucumber, to resemble sushi. He also suggested serving it in a lettuce wrap. It was very good. He was another speaker who obviously really enjoys being in front of an audience and answering questions.

Did I mention it was warm that day? Though compared to Saturday and Sunday, when it was in the high 90s, mid-80s now seems comfortable. Just goes to show that even Disney doesn't control the weather. :-)

We spent the evening at the Chappellet Winemaker Dinner at Steakhouse 55. I'll have a review of that up on AllEars Real Soon Now.

Today (Sunday) we slept in. Those "blackout curtains" in our room really work...I got up at 8:00 and opened the curtains a bit and discovered that it was blindingly bright outside.

See? Even the camera couldn't handle that much light.

We packed and took our bags to the car, then walked over to Downtown Disney to have breakfast at La Brea Bakery Cafe. It was about 8:45 by then but people were just streaming past us into the parks. It was also already very warm - over 80 by 9:00 in the morning! Since we were willing to sit inside (though there's only a few tables in there) we were seated immediately. Lee actually ordered coffee - I had their passion fruit iced tea instead. After our huge dinner last night I wasn't real hungry, but I ordered the Open Faced Egg Sandwich - scrambled eggs and sauteed spinach on toasted sourdough bread, topped with feta cheese and served with roasted potatoes and a small salad. It was pretty good, though it needed more feta and less spinach. :-) Lee ordered their special, which was a thick slice of French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon (sausage was another choice) and roasted potatoes. I had a bite of his French toast, and it was pretty good.

We walked off breakfast by walking almost all the way around Disneyland (hit everything but Toontown) afterwards. Have I mentioned it was warm? Whew. And there were lots of people in the park.

After DCA opened we went back to the Bountiful Valley farm area and got in line for the Sweet Sundays w/Ghirardelli demo. At least that's what it says in the program - the chef actually used Scharffenberger chocolate. :-) It was still almost 40 minutes until the start of the event, and we were #27 and 28 in line. This one also filled up long before show time - 20 minutes or so. Fortunately we were able to wait in the shade of the building!

When we walked in we were given the recipe for Chocolate Souffle, which is what Chef Jorge Sotelo (remember him?) was making. That was really nice to have. He was assisted this time by Sergio, who wasn't miked - he was more the silent type, I guess. It was another excellent presentation, and Chef Jorge gave lots of good tips. The souffle was not served warm, which was actually ok today. It was a nice way for us to end our Festival weekend - we walked back out through the Grand Californian and back to our car, where my temperature gauge read 92...it was up to 96 by the time I got to the freeway. Lee says I kept myself amused on the drive home by watching the temperature change - it got all the way up to 99 at one point, and then briefly down to 79. It was back up to 95 by the time we got home - and that's VERY hot for us.

So that was our weekend...we will be back at the Food and Wine Festival at least once, to attend the Taste event on May 3. You can be sure I will have a few things to say about that. :-) And here is the Menu for Taste.

From what I've heard it sounds like this may be a "make or break" year for the Festival and determine whether or not it will continue in the future. They are certainly soliciting a lot of guest input and there were CMs handing out guest surveys at the end of most of the sessions we attended. I will be interested in hearing what the attendance is like during the week...I have some friends going this week, so I hope to hear from them, or if you are there, please let me know your experiences! And if you want to submit comments on the Festival, there's a Rate and Review section for it on AllEars HERE.

Coming next...Tips on Surviving the Food and Wine Festival