The 2021 EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival has begun and we’re eating SO. MUCH. FOOD.

Some booths are full of returning favorites while others are brand new. But, what you’ve got to do is find a booth that can give you both — and that’s exactly what we found at The Citrus Blossom! We’ve got a brand-new souvenir cup, a returning cake and drinks, and some ALL NEW items. Which ones are worth getting though? There’s only one way to find out.

The Citrus Blossom is truly the booth that never ends. This booth made an appearance at last year’s Flower and Garden Festival, Food and Wine Festival, Festival of the Holidays, AND even this year’s Festival of the Arts. That’s right folks — this will be our 5TH(!!) Festival in a ROW at The Citrus Blossom Booth. BUT this time the booth is changing things up!

Menu

In terms of the food, the menu this year has 1 returning item and 2 NEW ones! Plus, we’ve got a new smoothie and ale to try this year.

Food

The returning item is the Citrus Shortcake with orange chiffon cake, lemon curd, mandarins, whipped cream, and citrus crumble, which we saw at the Flower & Garden Festival last year. The Citrus Shortcake is priced at $4.50. Last year, we loved how the sweet and sour flavors blended well together!

But, new to the menu this year are the Meyer Lemon-Poached Lobster Salad and the Citrus-Braised Crispy Pork Belly. So, of course, we had to get them both.

We’ll start with the Lobster Salad. This dish is made with Grapefruit-Rosé Vinaigrette, Yuzu-marinated Hearts of Palm, and Avocado-Yuzu Panna Cotta. Wow! That’s quite the combination of ingredients that all just sound so flavorful, so fruitful, and so fresh.

So, how does it taste? Well… it was really tart — it made us pucker! We were super excited about the grapefruit in this, but it’s WAY too much.

Still, if you like tart savory dishes, you can get one yourself for $8.25.

Next, we grabbed the Citrus-Braised Crispy Pork Belly. This is served with Kumquat and Carrot.

So we kinda’ made a mistake here — we let the pork get too cold and it ended up making the meat a little tough. But hey, we liked the carrot!!! But even though the pork was cold and tough, we thought the flavors were good in this one. But don’t do what we did — eat that baby quickly!

You can try this Crispy Pork Belly for $6.00.

Beverages

But, of course, we can’t forget about the beverages here! In fact, one of the beverages may be the very reason why you’re at this booth. We’re talking, of course, about the beverage that comes with the NEW Orange Bird Sipper!

The old Orange Bird sipper has stuck around for QUITE some time in EPCOT. So, it’s pretty exciting to see something new appear. This year, the sipper is served with a new drink, too! Instead of the Orange Cream Shake from last year, we’ve got a non-alcoholic Orange-Lemon Smoothie.

This is literally like drinking an orange sherbet. We loved it! Plus it comes in that adorable new sipper — so how can you go wrong? You can get the drink in the souvenir cup for $15.00.

Aside from the new sipper and drink, we’ve also got a new beer at this booth — the Playalinda Brewing Company Hibiscus Lime Ale. 

We had just tried another Playalinda beer over at Refreshment Outpost, a Blue Raspberry Blonde Ale, so we couldn’t help but compare the two. We decided if we HAD to choose, we’d go for the Hisbsicus Lime Ale first, but both are good. You can get a 6 oz serving of the Hisbiscus Lime Ale for $4.50, and a 12 oz serving for $8.50.

The other drink items at this booth are all things we’ve seen in the past. Specifically, this booth is serving up the Islamorada Beer Company Coconut Key Lime Ale, the First Magnitude Brewing Co. Lemon Hefeweizen, and the Orange Sunshine Wine Slushy. You can also get a beer flight here for $9.50. 

Overall

Overall, we’re happy to see some things changing up at this booth considering it just keeps sticking around for festival after festival. However, the lobster dish wasn’t a hit with us, but we think the pork belly was pretty good despite eating it after it got cold. The drinks are top-notch, though, and if anything, you’ll want to come here if you want to get your hands on that new sipper.

We’re eating around all of the booths today so we can bring you our list of the VERY best of the Fest. So, stay tuned to DFB for more reviews and all kinds of updates!

What would you most like to try from The Citrus Blossom booth? Tell us in the comments!