Foodies flocked to Disney California Adventure for Food & Wine Fest 2025 to sample and share small plates highlighting California-grown ingredients while grazing from one booth to the next on an epicurean adventure.
The Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival kicked off on Friday, Feb. 28 and runs through April 21 with local, celebrity and Disney chefs offering cooking tips during culinary demonstrations, tasting seminars and signature events.
The focal points of the festival are the eight marketplace booths offering 13 new food and drink items during this year’s event. DCA eateries and food stands as well Downtown Disney restaurants also serve festival fare.
Disney trimmed three marketplace booths from the festival this year (D-Lish, Earth Eats and Nuts About Cheese) and added the new Mercado de Antojos to the mix.
ALSO SEE: Disneyland reveals tasting menus for 2025 Food & Wine Festival
Food & Wine Fest Sip and Savor passes are back again this year that allow visitors to purchase a prepaid card with eight or four digital coupons good for individual items at food and beverage stands throughout the event.
A Sip and Savor card with eight tabs good for individual items at food and beverage stands throughout the festival costs $63 for 8 items with a $5 discount for Magic Key annual passholders. This year there is also a $32 Sip & Savor pass for 4 items with no AP discount.
ALSO SEE: How Disneyland Paris uses airline-style dynamic pricing
Skip the long lines at the Sip and Savor sales booths and get your card and lanyard at one of the festival merchandise booths along the parade route that rarely have long queues.
You don’t have to buy your food at the booth where it’s served. The best bet is to figure out everything you want to eat and order it all at once from the register stand with the shortest line. Then you can pick up your food whenever you want.
The Uncorked California booth had the shortest line with the most open cashiers on opening day — in part because it was farthest from the front entrance and had the least festival traffic.
Here’s what I liked from best to worst at DCA’s 2025 Food & Wine Festival.
1) Birria Mac & Cheese
Mercado de Antojos
Served with onion-cilantro sauce and tortilla crunch ($9)
It’s always hard to beat the mac and cheese at Disney’s Food & Wine fest and this year is no exception.
The birria was moist, juicy and delicious with bits of tortilla chips tossed in for crunch. The mac and cheese had a bit of a tang to it.
The mash-up combined classic Southern-style mac and cheese with the Mexican flair of the trendy seasoned braised meat.
At this point, Disney California Adventure should host a mac and cheese festival and bring back all the old favorites mixed in with a few new experiments each year.
2) Western BBQ Burger Bao
LA Style
Served with sweet barbecue sauce, applewood smoked bacon and crispy onions ($9.50)
The award for the most daring food mash-up at this year’s festival goes to the bao burger. This is what Disney’s Food & Wine Festival is all about. A clash of cultures mixing one classic Californian food with another.
I come to the food festival every year to try something I’ve never had before. The bao burger perfectly fit the bill.
The deconstructed barbecue burger topped with bacon bits and a squirt of barbecue sauce paired perfectly with the ground beef boa that also doubled as the bun.
3) Corn Chip Chili Pie
Peppers Cali-Ente
Seasoned plant-based beef, spicy cheese sauce, tomatoes, sliced jalapeños and cream ($8)
The presentation in the Fritos snack-sized bag was traditional and cute, but you’re going to want to dump the chili and corn chips into a bowl if you want to get an even mix of both the savory and the crunch.
Otherwise you’ll finish all the chili and be left with nothing but chips.
The Disney chefs tossed in a few jalapeño slices for those who want to add a little extra kick.
I would not have known the “beef” in the chili was plant-based without reading the menu. And even then I would still call myself pleasantly fooled.
4) Cherry Cobbler Pot de Creme
Golden Dreams
Vanilla custard, cherry filling and oat crumble ($7.50)
The cherry-covered cobbler looked like it was going to be way too sweet before I took my first bite — but to my surprise the tasty dessert was not overly sugary.
The cherries were tart, the custard was smooth and the oat crumble on top offered a hint of a classic cobbler baked batter topping.
All the flavors were evenly balanced — especially when you got a scoop with all three layers.
The cobbler was theoretically shareable, but I’d tell your friend or loved one to get their own. You’re going to want to eat the whole thing.
5) Sirloin Gruyere Mac & Cheese
Garlic Kissed
Served with black garlic chimichurri and garlic butter crunch ($9)
The second mac and cheese offered in the festival marketplace booth this year basically borrowed the chimichurri sirloin topping from last year’s baked potato and put it on top of gruyere-soaked elbow noodles.
The first thing I noticed was the giant chunks of sirloin that hid any hint of the mac and cheese in the bowl below.
You’re going to need a knife to quarter those blocks of beef if you don’t want to spend all day chewing on your cud like a cow. It didn’t help that the beef was tough.
My guess is the Disney chefs chose not to chop the chunks into smaller bite sizes to preserve the moisture in the meats that sit in a warming box before being served.
The best part was the pile of gruyere mac and cheese sitting at the bottom of the bowl. Hopefully next year the festival chefs come up with a more adventurous topping than sirloin chunks.
6) Lemon Pepper Wings
California Craft Brews
Served with garlic ranch ($9)
The juicy and zesty wings had a lot of flavor with the garlic ranch dressing on the side adding a tang.
The flavors kind of tingled on my tongue whenever I took a bite.
Wings have become a standby at Disney’s Food & Wine Fest. This year’s version felt like a safe bet rather than a “tasting ground” for bold experimentation.
7) Cafe de Olla Tres Leches Cake
Mercado de Antojos
Tres leches topped with piloncillo chantilly, cinnamon and a Mickey-shaped cookie ($7.75)
There were at least three things promised with this dessert and the Disney bakery team only delivered on two of them.
Cafe de Olla is a Mexican coffee with hints of cinnamon and caramel. Tres leches is a sponge cake soaked in three types of milk.
The delicate chantilly topping certainly had hints of coffee and cinnamon flavors, but the cake base was dry and definitely not milky or spongey.
Disneylanders felt differently on the opening day of the festival. The Tres Leches Cake was briefly sold out just after lunch until the stockpile at the new Mercado de Antojos marketplace booth could be replenished from the park’s central bakery.
8) Asa’Dos
Cluck-A-Doodle-Moo
Grilled skirt steak and chipotle chicken with Spanish rice and salsa verde ($9.75)
The Asa’Dos was certainly the most meal-sized dish of the sample-sized plates at the festival marketplace booths.
From a value stand-point, the Asa’Dos offered the best bang for the buck.
But that’s not really the point of the Sip & Savor pass and the festival booths. The idea is to snack on a variety of different flavors from across the spectrum of California cultures and cuisines.
The steak was tough and hard to chew. The chipotle seasoned chicken was hearty and plentiful. The salsa verde was “theme park spicy” — just enough kick to not offend anyone. I could have used another corn tortilla or two to scoop up everything on the plate.
9) Chicken Taquito Ahogado
Paradise Garden Grill
Served in salsa verde with Spanish rice, avocado crema, sour cream, pickled onion, cotija and cilantro ($8)
It’s always a little weird to order one of the Sip & Savor sample-sized dishes from the restaurants during the Disney Food & Wine Fest.
You become acutely aware that you’ve just ordered one taquito for $8.
Despite the cost, the taquito was thick, hefty and stuffed with a lot of chicken. And then topped to almost tipping over with crema, cotija, sour cream and all the other garnishes.
But at the end of the day it was just a taquito. With no festival twist and no mash-up of cultures or cuisines. Just your ordinary, everyday crispy rolled taco.
10) Sloppy Joe Slider
California Craft Brews
Plant-based beef with cheese ($8)
Every year the Disney chefs try a few Impossible “meats” and most of the time they taste exactly like the real thing — but there’s often one protein substitute that just tastes off.
This year’s plant-based “miss” goes to the Sloppy Joe Slider.
The texture and taste of the meat was just off. Maybe it was the flavor that tasted a bit like a Nashville hot chicken sauce. Or maybe it was the “ground beef” that looked more like a thin spread than a hefty meat filling.
The Texas toast-style bun was tasty, but it’s never a good sign when the bread is the best part of a sandwich.