Garden Grill is a restaurant we talk about often.

This restaurant located inside the Land Pavilion in EPCOT is one of our go-to’s. While there are many great places to eat in EPCOT, we have always really enjoyed this spot. It features a fun atmosphere and delicious food. It’s been a while since we’ve been here, so we decided to go back to check on it to see if the quality still lives up to the hype!

Atmosphere

Garden Grill is a special restaurant for a couple of different reasons. First, it’s a character meal location. You’re hosted by Chip ‘n Dale for their Harvest Feast!

And they’ve invited Mickey and Pluto! The four characters make this dining location a real treat. The bubbly personalities of these guys make it fun to eat and dine!

Not only is this a character meal location, but it is the only restaurant in Disney World that spins — so you get views of the Living with the Land ride below! Some of the food in your meal is actually grown inside the ride.

Menu

The premise of this restaurant is that you’re there for Chip ‘n Dale’s Harvest Feast which is a family-style meal so you get all the options with plenty to share! They have a regular menu and a plant-based menu (which is appropriate for a location named Garden Grill).

You’ll get a Garden Salad, Barbecue-roasted Chicken, Grilled Beef with Chimichurri, Mashed Potatoes, Macaroni & Cheese, Southern-style Spoon Bread, Seasonal Vegetables, and Berry Short Cake for dessert!

They also have allergy-friendly options! Rice pilaf and Veggie Loaf with Chunky Tomato Sauce come with the plant-based menu. They also offer non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverage menus.

The restaurant also serves a breakfast feast which is $47 for adults and $30 for kids. For both lunch and dinner, prices were just raised for adults to $62 and kids are now $40.

Let’s Eat

Now for the important part of this review, the food! The day we went, we had their lunch menu. We got both the regular menu items and the plant-based menu items! The food here is traditional American food that you might consider comfort food. But while it is filling, lots of it is actually quite light and fresh.

The Harvest Garden Salad was the same for both menus and it was delicious! This is one of the items made with the ingredients from Living with the Land. We thought the salad was crisp and light with just the perfect amount of dressing. It was a great way to start our meal.

Before we jump into the main course of our meal, we have to talk about the biscuits. We LOVED these rolls. They smelled like Heaven and were light and fluffy. The plant-based menu gets them served with Earth balance butter while the regular menu gets typical butter. The saltiness of the butters mixed with the doughy-ness of the rolls was so addictive. They were gone before we even realized it!

Okay, now for the main part of this meal! The Barbecue Chicken was nice and moist with a great savory flavor. It was pleasantly surprising and we did enjoy it. But the Grilled Beef with Chimichurri was our favorite of the two meats. It was well cooked which kept it moist and not tough at all. The chimichurri was definitely garlicky so if you’re not a fan of garlic, you may want to be aware of that. However, it was a great balance of flavors overall with the beef.

For the plant-based main course, the Veggie Loaf really hit the mark for us. We would make it one of our top three plant-based options in Disney World, so that’s definitely saying something! The inside is rice and vegetables while the outside is fried. There is both a chunky tomato sauce on the bottom and also a white sort of gravy sauce drizzled on top. All of the textures and flavors come together and really give your taste buds a workout in the best way.

While we really enjoyed the meats and Veggie Loaf, the sides cannot be counted out here! First, the Mac & Cheese is a side we will continue to rave about! The traditional American pasta is so creamy and cheesy. We loved every bite (and we had A LOT of it).

The mashed potatoes were good, but nothing to write home about. They were garlicky as well, so that was a nice touch. We also really enjoyed the beans and corn succotash. The beans were crispy, buttery, and garlicky; we ate them like they were chips, we couldn’t have just one. 

Another side of the feast is the Spoon Bread. This was delicious! It was semi-sweet with lots of corn and it was pretty moist which certainly helped us enjoy it that much more.

The Rice Pilaf, while just an ordinary rice option for the plant-based feast, was surprisingly buttery for not being made with real butter. We couldn’t stop ourselves from diving into this dish and not stopping until it was gone. It even included many of the fresh vegetables from the ride which were nice additions to the rice.

That brings us to the dessert. The dessert option on both the regular menu and the plant-based menu is a Berry Shortcake with whipped cream. This is also meant to be an allergy-friendly option if needed. However, our plant-based plate of the shortcake was without any plant-based whipped cream which was a bit of a disappointment.

However, the one from the regular menu had the fluffy, cloud-like whipped cream which reminded us of Cool Whip. The shortcake itself was moist, light, and fruity with the berries on top adding flavor and sweetness.

Final Thoughts

This family-style meal is sure to fill you up. If you like garlic and butter, we’re sure you will enjoy this meal. It incorporates many other flavors, but those are the stand-outs for us. You might also enjoy this dining location if you like the Living with the Land ride or character meals.  You can get lots of fun interactions here!

Don’t forget to have the characters sign your Garden Grill card!

We really love the food here and will continue to rave about it until they stop living up to the hype. But until then, we highly recommend this location even if it does have to compete with the MANY other locations around EPCOT.

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Have you been to Garden Grill? Let us know what you thought in the comments!

The post REVIEW: Is This STILL the Best Character Meal in Disney World? first appeared on the disney food blog.