Epcot Flower and Garden Festival Plant Based Biscuits and Gravy
This installment of Blogscuits and Gravy has been a long time coming, but is super special because this time I got to experience biscuits and gravy myself! One of my favorite things in the whole world is the International Flower and Garden Festival at Epcot, and this year's menus just happened to include a plant based biscuits and gravy dish just for me!
My best friend, A, has been coming to visit me for a Disney trip almost every single spring for many years. In 2020, quite by accident, we realized we would be in the parks on Leap Day and decided to do the improbable: All Four Parks in One Day. We managed to pull it off and decided to make it a Leap Year tradition. Little did we know that four years later we would be taking along her 8 month old baby! Luckily for me, I discovered that the 2024 Flower and Garden Festival started THE DAY BEFORE our park day and I was so excited. We started the morning at Animal Kingdom, hopped over to Hollywood Studios, and then made our way on the Skyliner to Epcot for lunch.
The place:
Epcot- Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
The Flower and Garden Festival is one of my favorite events at Walt Disney World. According to Wikipedia, the first year of the festival was 1994. Admittance to the festival is included with regular park admission but there are kiosks and booths with food, drinks, and special festival merchandise that you could easily spend hundreds of dollars on.
The first year I went to Flower and Garden was 2014 but I didn't really take advantage of the food because I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't know anything about it. The next year I moved to Orlando for the Disney College Program and fell in love with the spring rolls and Kung Fu punch from China in World Showcase. Since my park admission was free while I was working there, I seriously got these spring rolls at least ten times. Sadly, they no longer have these so now I just stare at my old photos longingly.
I miss you and I'll love you forever. RIP.
Since we took the Skyliner from Hollywood to Epcot, we entered through the International Gateway which is near England. The first spot we stopped at was the World Traveler shop so I could grab my festival passport and gift card bracelet, which are my Must-Dos.
No idea why I can't get this photo to be less blurry. You're welcome.
Every Epcot festival I go to (including Food and Wine in the fall), I grab a gift card bracelet and put $100 or so on it, so that way I don't have to pull out my wallet every time I want to pay for my goodies. Some years the gift cards have been scented and sometimes they even come with a little tag that allegedly turns into wildflowers when you plant it! (I still haven't tried it.)
A better pic from Chip & Company.
The passports are really fun because they have all the festival information like menus and entertainment, locations of the topiaries, plus scavenger hunts and challenges where you get a stamp for each country/land you visit. My favorite aspect of this is Garden Graze.
This is an awesome plant based challenge where you can choose 5 of the Garden Graze labeled items and after getting stamps for each one, you get a prize at the end! Usually, the prize is a special flavor of Dole Whip in a cute cup and a packet of seeds.
Obviously, this is right up my alley since all of the items I planned to get were plant based anyway and I LOVE Dole Whips!
One of my favorite topiaries near International Gateway.
The menu:
Since the menus were released several days earlier, naturally I already knew all the things I was going to get and had a list ready to go in my phone because I am Planny McPlanner. I actually hit most of the plant based offerings around the park before I even got near the biscuits and gravy dish at Brunchcot. I plan to write another post including the other dishes I got from Garden Graze in the near future for anyone who wants to read about the 2024 plant based options! (The festival ends May 27th this year so you still have time!!!)
Great pictures courtesy of the Disney Food Blog.
Unfortunately, as I've gotten older I get full much more quickly than I used to so I wasn't able to fit in everything I wanted and I was sad that I couldn't get the avocado toast at Brunchcot as well. Avocado toast is my *jam*. (Get it... jam? toast? brunch?)
By the time we made it over to Brunchcot it was almost the end of our time in Epcot and it had turned cloudy and blustery and I was freezing!
Brunchcot is located near Test Track so we finally made it there on our way out of the park.
The biscuits and gravy dish was made with Impossible Chicken Fried Steak and Impossible Sausage Gravy. Normally I don't eat Impossible meat because it's made of soy which makes my digestive system angry, but I had to do it! No regrets!
The verdict:
An important thing to note is something I realized as I was about to eat this... I have never had biscuits and gravy in my life. I had also stuffed myself pretty full of all the other delicious plant based treats I had eaten over the past few hours. Despite that, these biscuits and gravy were ~Delicious~.
The biscuit was the perfect consistency, possibly slightly grilled or toasted? It tasted good and was firm enough so that it didn't disintegrate underneath all the stuff on top but wasn't too hard. It wasn't fluffy but it was solid and in a nice star shape. It kind of resembled an English muffin.
The imitation meat was SO good; even though I don't eat the Impossible brand, I really do enjoy it and I think it's very close to the taste of real meat. The gravy was also savory and tasty and it was the perfect amount for the size of the dish. There was just a little bit extra left over at the end that I scooped up and ate by itself.
My one single grievance about this was the SALT! It wasn't really a surprise to me that it was very salty because the sodium levels of most prepared foods are usually too high for my preference, and I also just assume that biscuits and gravy tends to be kind of salty given what it's made of. It definitely would have helped me to enjoy it more if I had been hungry!
Overall, I rated my Brunchcot Impossible Biscuits and Gravy as a 7/10.
I would love to eat this again but I would make it one of my first stops next time and maybe get the avocado toast too!
I had gotten 5 of my Garden Graze items stamped so I went back over to get my prize from Pineapple Promenade which is near the main entrance to World Showcase. According to the Disney Food Blog, it was a Lime Dole Whip with Minute Maid lemonade and Mango smoothie mix. Even though I was crazy full at this point it was so good and refreshing. I would never say no to a Dole Whip.
My Dole Whip was dispensed into the cup in a non-aesthetically pleasing way. 🤷🏻♀️
The souvenir cup was similar to the one I got last time, it's very cute and made of plastic so it's easy to carry home. PRO TIP: Do not put this cup in the dishwasher! I tried it with my last one out of laziness and... it did not survive. It basically shrunk like a Shrinky Dink and I had to get rid of it. Resulting in more motivation for me to get another one!
The prize also included a packet of seeds. I now have several of these that we've collected from various Flower and Garden festivals over the past few years and I have yet to plant any of them because I have no idea how to grow things in Florida.
Conclusion:
I love Epcot's International Flower and Garden Festival. I love Walt Disney World. And I love Brunchcot.
We did make it to all four parks with an infant who was a total trooper. I ended up walking 22,250 steps and had so much fun and so much great food. I really hope T can make it to Flower and Garden with me next year since she had to work from the hotel and couldn't come this year. I can't wait for Leap Day 2028 when we will have a four year old with us!
Look out for another post where I will be attempting to recap our whole Disney trip and what I was able to eat throughout the week. Pool time, sunburn, and tater tots ahead!
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