Come with us to the China Pavilion at the 2025 EPCOT Festival of the Arts!

We’re here to pay a visit to The Painted Panda, one of the Festival’s 17 Food Studios (also known as Food Booths) which present the Culinary Arts for EPCOT’s very first Festival of the calendar year. As we continue to bring you our complete reviews of EVERY single Food Booth at the Festival, let’s explore what The Painted Panda is serving up this year!

Menu

It’s a mix of returning and brand-new items at The Painted Panda this year, with General Tso’s Chicken Shumai chosen as the returning dish. Both the Har Gow (Shrimp Dumplings) and the Egg Tart are making their debuts.

The new drink is the non-alcoholic Strawberry Bubble Milk Tea, while the Silk River Hard Lemonade and Butterfly Blue are returning cocktails. The Dragon Fruit Lager is available again, too.

Let’s dig in!

Eats

First up, the General Tso’s Chicken Shumai is back this year. This has been a delightful dish for us at previous Festivals, so we’re thrilled to see it return.

The dumplings are filled with chicken, potato, onion, and water chestnut, and topped off with General Tso’s sauce. The dish costs $10.75.

We seriously enjoyed this dish, finding it well-cooked without being too firm, but despite the sauce and toppings, they weren’t mushy or floppy, either. The sauce they are served with is sweet and adds a night nice contrast to the savory filling inside. The chicken filling inside the dumplings is slightly spicy, so keep that in mind if you try to avoid spices.

The Har Gow is new this year!

This dish features shrimp dumplings with pumpkin purée and a drizzle of chili oil for $10.75. 

We had an…interesting experience. We found it to have an abundantly fishy taste, to the point of being off-putting. On top of that, the earthy flavor of the oil clashed with the aforementioned fishy taste in our estimation. 

Also making its first appearance at the Festival is the new Egg Tart. 

As the menu shares, this is a Hong Kong-style egg custard tart, and it costs $5.50.

We found this tart to be another somewhat confusing blend of flavors. It had a consistency similar to flan but a taste that reminded us almost of eggs whipped into gelatin form.

Drinks

The Painted Panda typically serves Bubble Tea, but the fun thing is that it is ever-changing. This year’s version is Strawberry Bubble Milk Tea, and it is once again a non-alcoholic option for $8.75.

We enjoyed this sweet strawberry drink, especially its boba pearls

The Silk River Hard Lemonade returns from last year. (Well, technically speaking, it’s been available during other Festivals as well, just under different names.)

This pretty cocktail is comprised of vodka, lavender-coconut syrup, and lemonade and costs $14. This has a sugar rim and a pretty lemon garnish that makes for a gorgeous pink drink. The coconut and the lemonade are the most prominent flavors in this drink, though there is a subtle floral note in there, too. We identified that floral note as the lavender (though it’s pretty faint). The sugar rim obviously lends some sweetness, but otherwise, it is not an overly sweet cocktail.

And the popular Butterfly Blue is back for $13.75!

This is a Butterfly pea flower-infused cocktail with vodka, light rum, lychee syrup, and magic boba pearls.

While this drink certainly had lychee in its flavor profile, it was overall too dominated by the taste of alcohol for us to truly enjoy it.

Beer drinkers can also try the Dragon Fruit Lager. A 6-ounce pour costs $5.75, and a 12-ounce pour costs $10.

OVERALL

So, we wouldn’t call The Painted Panda a total disappointment, and we’d definitely recommend it to anyone with a taste for fish or drinks that taste strongly of alcohol, but it’s also definitely not something we’d revisit again in 2025.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this visit to The Painted Panda! Has it made your list of must-visit Booths during the Festival of the Arts?

Click here to see FULL reviews of EVERY. SINGLE. BOOTH. at the Festival of the Arts!

If you’re planning a trip of your own to enjoy everything the Festival has to offer, you can click any of links below for the information you need to know:

• Learn about the Disney on Broadway Concert Series and Dining Packages
• Check out ALL of the 2025 Festival of the Arts Food Booths and Menus
• Find ALL of our Festival of the Arts Food Booth REVIEWS here!

And don’t forget to pick up our 2025 Festival of the Arts e-book! See more details about our Guide below.

What items from this booth would you most like to try? Tell us in the comments!