The 2019 Busch Gardens Food and Wine Festival Stroll Around Photos

Looking down the main causeway, just past the main entrance to the Busch Gardens, Tampa, Food and Wine Festival event area.

Hummm... what great looking grass! So just a word of warning, it's a little tricky to walk around the food and beverage booths in this part of the Gwazi Park area. If you're not accustomed to walking on artificial turf... you will be by the time you leave this area. :)

This is Libation Station #2 featuring wines from Terraza de los Andrs Reserva and Lobetia — but really, THE thing to try here is the Cream & Sugar Please Hazelnut Porter from Cycle Brewing.

This large covered area offers a couple of tables and chairs, and is located about as deep into the Gwai Park Festival Area as you can get. It's also home to the Tex-Mex Cantina and Peacock Bar.

Most of the food booths have large double-sided signs nearby, so you can see what's being offered and what the cost of everything is. You can then order and pay at the register (on the right in this photo) and then take your recipe to the front of the booth to pick up your order.

Here's a couple of the menu board signs close-up. These are pretty typical of the item pricing at the food booths... so you can see where a 12 Sample Lanyard is a really good deal. At $55 for 12 samples... that works out to just over $4.60 per sample, regardless of the posted price!

Here's a menu board from the Peacock Bar. The Libation Stations generally have smaller signage posted (or attached directly to) their kiosks.

This Chicken Gumbo was really great, but for a true Nola foodie, a little mild on the Creole Flavoring. There was a good amount of chicken and andouille sausage in this portion though, and under all of that saucy goodness was a tasty bed of rice.

The Hurricane is a combination of white and dark rum with lime juice, orange juice, and passion fruit juice.

Mmmmm… more and more, I'm finding the desserts at theme park festivals to be some of the best takeaways! This Bananas Foster Cheesecake was no exception. This was a moderately dense cheesecake smothered in a banana and rum glaze.

This Grilled Elote features grilled corn (which really should be a little more chargrilled) with Cotija Cheese and some Chili-Lime Crema.

Mmmmm… this Short Rib and Cheddar Quesadilla featured braised short ribs with peppers, onions, fresh pico and sour cream. All of the elements here were more "fresh" than "spicy".

This unusual Pepper Melon Margarita features Watermelon juice, tequila and a hint of jalapeño (but just a hint, I actually found the balance to be pretty good on this one).

This Hot Beef Sandwich featuring Chi Town's Slow Roasted Shaved Roast Beef with traditional Giardiniera was one of my favorite savory items of the day!

These St. Louis Ribs featured a good dipping of Kansas City Style BBQ sauce. The sauce was really good, and while I like seeing a stack of ribs on a plate… they can be a bit hit or miss at a festival… depending on which two rib you get.

This Mac and Cheese is bound to be a guest favorite… there's macaroni, there's cheese, and there's ham (which looks a  lot like thick cut and diced juicy bacon)… you can't go wrong with this one! This really is more of a "beer" pairing mac and cheese than a "wine pairing" mac and cheese though… "what kind of cheese is that"… "it's yellow cheese"… "thanks!" :)

Another must-get at the festival is this Griddled Cheesecake… it's basically a grilled pound cake, with cream cheese filling, and topped with a raspberry sauce… served warm, it's just oooooo so good!