Something special about the Food & Wine Festival in Disney California Adventure is that the festival eats are not limited to the food booths around the parks.

Some normal restaurants around the park get in on the festival fun as well! So while you can still snack around at the many temporary Festival Marketplaces, you also don’t want to miss the specialty offerings at certain participating restaurants. We’re heading to one of those restaurants now to try out some new (and returning) snacks and treats!

At the Paradise Gardens Park section of Disney California Adventure, you’ll find the quick-service restaurant Paradise Garden Grill. This spot sometimes serves fresh Mediterranean dishes, but most of the time it has specialty offerings for whichever festival is going on in the park!

Today, we can’t wait to try out some of the brand-new dishes on the menu!

Menu

There are several returning options on the menu here that we’re excited to see back at this festival. The Brisket Fries, Jerk Chicken, and Beer-Battered Fish Tacos are all back from previous festivals.

There are a couple of options that look familiar, but Disney has marked them as new. This could mean there was a change in the ingredients or some new flavors, so we’ll have to give them a try to find out!

Eats

We’ll start with the returning items. The Brisket Fries are french fries topped with shredded smoked BBQ brisket, cheddar cheese sauce, pico de gallo, chipotle crema, and green onions. You can get a serving for $13.49, and they are available with the Sip & Savor Pass.

These fries were delicious when we had them in 2020, and the portion size was HUGE! You could share this dish with a few friends if you’re just looking for a snack!

The Jerk Chicken is Caribbean-inspired half chicken with mango-pineapple salsa served with black beans, white rice, and fried plantains. A serving costs $15.99.

The Beer-battered Fish Tacos are Baja-style beer-battered fish on corn tortillas topped with slaw, pico de gallo, cilantro crema, and lime wedge with house-made tortilla chips and roasted red chile-tomato salsa. One serving is $13.49, or you can use a Sip & Savor Pass.

Back in 2020, we were impressed with the light and flakey fish on these tacos, and that crunchy slaw added some awesome flavor!

The Char Siu Ribs are Chinese-inspired grilled pork ribs with steamed rice and almond-cabbage salad. These cost $16.99 and are part of the Sip & Savor Pass as well.

Although the rice part of this dish didn’t do much for us flavor-wise, the salad here really impressed us — the noodles are like Ramen noodles and the flavor is very balanced — you get some savory, but the almond adds a bit of sweetness. The cabbage in the salad is not overwhelming. As far as the ribs go? Well, let’s just say these are a BBQ-lovers dream! The sauce has a combo of sweet, with a hint of Asian zing.

The last of the savory options is perfect for all the plant-based eaters out there! It’s the Impossible Gyro, which has seasoned plant-based meat served in pita bread with dairy-free tzatziki, seasoned tomatoes, cucumber, and onions. It costs $12.99.

Um…HELLO! The flavors in this baby are phenomenal. The Impossible meat has DONE the Impossible — it tastes like lamb. The tzatziki sauce is nice and savory, and inside the gyro are well-seasoned veggies that are balanced by the cucumber. There’s a bit of a peppery flavor that just brings it all together. Our biggest complaint is that the pita was kinda’ dry. Overall, though, if you like Mediterranean flavors, you’ll want to grab this.

And to finish off with something sweet, you can grab the Strawberry Shortcake. This is a pound cake with fresh strawberries and mascarpone crème. This dessert costs $5.79, and it is part of the Sip & Savor Pass as well.

Drinks

You can grab Mexican-style Lager at this restaurant for $13. This year’s lager comes from Golden Road Brewing. Or you can try out the NEW Bourbon-Strawberry Lemonade, which is garnished with fresh strawberry and mint. This drink is $14.

First, our reporter is not a big fan of whiskey or bourbon but still loved this drink. To us, it tasted like a strawberry lemonade with just a little bit of a boozy kick that wasn’t TOO much. So the drink here was a winner, too!

Paradise Garden Grill Special Event Cart

But wait, there’s more! Because there are also some festival goodies at the Paradise Garden Grill Seasonal Cart. So let’s head over there and give everything a taste!

Menu

The menu here is small, but we’ve got some Pretzel Bites to try out, as well as a unique Cotton Candy flavor.

So let’s dive in!

Eats

The Pretzel Bites are served with a Beer Cheese Sauce, and you already know where we’re going with this because we are ALL about some beer cheese sauce here at DFB. So we were SO excited to grab this. However, we were a little disappointed. Why? Well, you only get five tiny pretzel bites and a SUPER small side of cheese sauce for $6.50. We mean, these aren’t BAD, but we don’t think this is a very good value.

So let’s try the Berry Cotton Candy for $6. We did like this a little better — it’s cotton candy. The flavor is really good, too, and doesn’t taste artificial like a lot of berry-flavored things. We’re still not entirely sure what KIND of berry flavor it is, although if we had to guess, it’s probably just a mixed berry flavor.

If you love cotton candy, we’d recommend trying it.

Overall

Although we loved everything we tried from Paradise Garden Grill itself, the pretzel bites at the special events cart were a big miss for us (seriously, we’ll just head over to Avengers Campus where we can get a GIANT pretzel with beer cheese sauce for $13).

If we had to choose a favorite here, though, we might go with the Impossible Gyro just because of its delicious Mediterranean flavors and its Impossible “meat” that really did taste like meat. But you can’t go wrong with either of the dishes at the restaurant — and the cotton candy from the cart is a pretty delicious dessert to end your meal with here.

Head to Paradise Garden Grill in Disney California Adventure if you want to try out these eats at the 2022 Food & Wine Festival! And keep following DFB for more reviews of all the new eats at this year’s fest.

Click here to see all the menus for this year’s Food & Wine Festival in Disney California Adventure.

Which of these eats would you try first? Let us know in the comments.

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