Harvest Hollow is the new area alongside Journey into Imagination, running between World Celebration and Future World. It’s home to three of the best booths of the 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival, all of which are brand-new. Each bring something different to the table and are well worth your time and stomach space.
In fact, Harvest Hollow is our new go-to spot for an evening meal at EPCOT. We’re big fans of the 3 booths in this area, plus another 2-3 that are on the periphery in the former Future World. We’d highly recommend grabbing a seat in the Harvest Hollow area and sending a runner to grab the best food and drinks at this bundle of booths, enjoying it all from one centralized location.
This is our favorite cluster of marketplaces at the 2024 Epcot International Food & Wine Festival. Anyway, one of these new booths is Milled & Mulled, which is essentially the de facto dessert studio in the Harvest Hollow ‘region’ of World Celebration. This Walt Disney World dining review shares menu prices, food photos, and offers thoughts on what’s worth your money or Disney Dining Plan snack credits.
If Harvest Hollow sounds familiar, that might be because it isn’t completely new. This concept has existed before by other names–it was just redone for the third time since 2018, but it has been home to food booths or seating areas for previous festivals. This pathway between Journey into Imagination and World Showcase is known as the RoseWalk, and it was previously home to the Culinary Corridor that debuted in Future World back around 2017 with a small space devoted to the now-defunct ABC television series, The Chew.
In typical TV fashion, those booths inspired a series of spinoffs with two groups of booths in the former Future World: those with “Eats” in the name and those with “Studio” in the name. All of the studio booths are now gone, but Harvest Hollow is clearly their spiritual successors–both in terms of location and literally reusing the old food studio kiosks. Other EPCOT festivals also have used this area, although I’m not sure whether they ever gave it a proper name. Maybe it was just the Culinary Corridor regardless of the event.
The Next Eats and Culinary Corridor areas contained some of the best booths at the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival in the past. Despite not being countries (which some fans bemoaned), these booths were a mixture of inventive, fun, and delicious–exactly what the EPCOT Festivals are at their best. Guess what? What’s old is new again–Harvest Hollow revives everything we loved about the Culinary Corridor, and this is once again the highlight of the 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival.
Here’s the menu for the Milled & Mulled booth at the 2024 EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival:
- Freshly-baked Carrot Cake with walnuts and cream cheese icing
- 🧀 Boursin Fig & Balsamic Cheesecake with fig jam and pomegranate (New)
- Pear and Almond Frangipane Pâte Brisée (New)
- Blake’s Hard Cider Co. Cider Mill Donut Hard Cider (New)
- Coppertail Brewing Fallen Fruit Blueberry Pie Hard Cider (New)
- Chocolate Shop Chocolate Red Wine (New)
Here are our food reviews from the Milled & Mulled Global Studio Marketplace:
Freshly-baked Carrot Cake ($4.75) – You’ve probably had this carrot cake before. It was previously found at the Hops & Barley booth, then Flavors of America (same location, new name). For whatever reason, Ireland’s dessert moved to America and America’s relocated here.
Whatever the reason for this game of musical chairs, Walt Disney World fans will be relieved to see the Carrot Cake sticking around. As many of the best EPCOT Food & Wine Festival desserts have vanished in the past few years, this has been a reliable stalwart. Many WDW diehards view it as the best-of the event and it has a loyal following.
Honestly, we wouldn’t go nearly that far. The Carrot Cake we had this year was really good. It was competently-prepared, moist in the center, and flavorful. (In the past, we’ve gotten versions that were a bit dry.)
Our issue, and where others seem to disagree, is that it’s then slathered in cream cheese icing that contains, and I’m not exaggerating, a week’s worth of your recommended sugar intake. The icing makes my teeth tingle, and I feel like I need to immediately brush them.
Other fans seem to love this about the Carrot Cake, but we recommend sharing it to reduce the sugar overload. For us, this is a top 7 or so dessert of the festival, but we only order it once per year. The Carrot Cake is good, but there are plenty of other desserts that are more ambitious and delicious. Recommended, with reservations.
Boursin Fig & Balsamic Cheesecake ($5.25) – This is like a cross between two of the greatest EPCOT festival desserts of all-time: Local Wildflower Honey-Mascarpone Cheesecake from Honey Bee-stro at Flower & Garden, and the Maple Bourbon Cheesecake from Food & Wine.
Although it looks like the former, it’s actually more similar to the latter, which was formerly found at the Cheese Studio that was sponsored by Boursin (it later landed at Refreshment Port). That was my #1 dessert of the event for several years, and this is seemingly its spiritual successor.
I’m not prepared to say that the Fig & Balsamic Cheesecake is better than the Maple Bourbon Cheesecake. It’ll take several more rounds of taste-testing to confirm. (It’s very important research, Sarah, I swear!) What I am confident of at this moment is that the Fig & Balsamic Cheesecake is a top 3 dessert at the 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival.
The cheesecake is rich and savory, but with a somewhat light consistency that’s absolutely perfect. This contrasts nicely with the sweetness of the fig and piquant quality of the balsamic. It all has an earthy sharpness and complexity, while the crunch of the candied pecans offers a wonderful texture. Highly, highly recommended.
Pear and Almond Frangipane Pâte Brisée ($5.25) – I love the combination of pear and almond filling, which again has a nice fall flavor. The pastry itself is also high quality, perfectly-prepared with the right amount of flakiness and appropriate texture and consistency. And despite there being a lot of it, the pastry is not the least bit dry.
My only quibble, which is probably evident from the above cross-section, is that mine was light on filling and heavy on pastry. That would normally be a major complaint, as it tasted more like pastry and less like pear, but for the fact that the pastry itself was so tasty. This could be a ‘best of the fest’ dessert with better balance. For now, it’s recommended–and a dessert I’d be more inclined to revisit later in the festival than the Carrot Cake that everyone seems to love.
Ultimately, Milled & Mulled is basically the “dessert booth” at Harvest Hollow. It’s fantastic counterprogramming to the other booths in this area, and even though I didn’t completely love 2 of the 3 desserts at Milled & Mulled, I’m guessing you will. The cheesecake is easily top 3, everyone else seems to love the carrot cake, and pear & almond hand pie has a ton of potential–even in imperfect form, I really enjoyed it.
Spoiler alert: we’re going to recommend ordering almost every single dish at Harvest Hollow, plus a few on the outer bounds of this area. To conquer all of these food, we’d advise tourists to hit Harvest Hollow after a midday break from the snacking, ideally as the sun gets lower in the sky. For locals, this area is the perfect after-work stop on your way into the park before doing a lap of World Showcase and getting a spot for Luminous The Symphony of Us. Harvest Hollow has several heavy hitting booths with really strong dishes–we highly recommend grabbing at least a half-dozen items from this area!
Check out our Global Marketplace Booth Menus & Photos for the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival Booth Menus post if you want to see and read more about every menu this year! You’ll also want to read our full 2024 EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival Guide before you go to get an idea of what to do, strategy for the festival (yes, you will need a strategy), and much more!
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of the Milled & Mulled Studio Marketplace? Have you tried any of the food items at this booth? Any thoughts on these items? Portion-size or quality-wise, did you have better or worse luck than us with what you ordered? Questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
