Review: The Painter’s Palate Odyssey Food Studio 2019 Epcot Festival of the Arts

We continue from Pop Eats.

The Painter’s Palate Food Studio is located inside the Odyssey building, which doubles as the Festival Showplace for this year’s Festival of the Arts.

The Smoked Salmon and Cream Gâteau is new, while both trios and the beer flight return along with the chocolate.

Smoked Salmon and Cream Gâteau with Egg Yolk Cream, Paddlefish Caviar, and Micro-herbs – $7

I’m not entirely sure where they were going with this one and it ended up being just about the saltiest couple of bites I’ve ever put in my mouth. Caviar, and particularly cheap caviar, is salty. Smoked Salmon, and particularly cheap Smoked Salmon, is salty. The biggest capers of all time, as it turns out, are also salty. While the plating is elegant, what we were served was inedible. I’m not sure if that will improve with time or not, but it’s a $7 gamble and at best, you’ve got a decent plate of Smoked Salmon that isn’t going to be much different than what you can buy in the store.

Taste: 1/10

Value: ?/10

Trio of Savory Croissant Doughnuts –  $9.50 – Whipped Boursin Garlic and Fine Herbs Cheese with Fresh Herbs, Chicken Salad with Shaved Fennel and Fresh Herbs, and Spicy Tuna with Wasabi and Seaweed Salad

“Fillings” might not be accurate since no attempt is made to slice the doughnuts and fill them with what we’ll have to refer to as toppings.

This is all of two or three small bites with your standard herb-heavy Boursin topped with some sort of greenery that isn’t going to have much effect on the flavor profile. I’d grab two or three of these over the course of a meal if they were on a buffet line, but we’re pretty far away from a gourmet, carefully constructed bite that costs the equivalent of $3.17.

The chicken salad is incredibly salty and the dark yellow color might be a little off-putting, but the croissant base is again a pleasant crispy pillow for the whole concoction. Still seems like a stretch for $3.17.

The tuna has a nice spice to it, but there’s an awful lot of flavors and textures going on in an extremely small package.

Overall, this is a good use of a snack credit given the $9.50 price and it’s a nice variety of flavors to try, but I’d probably share it evenly among two people. It’s not going to stretch much further than that and I think one person would be underwhelmed for the money.

Taste: 4/10

Value: 3/10

Gallery Bites: A Trio of Hors d’Oeuvres: Chilled Shrimp with Cucumber Cream Cheese on a Crostini; Traditional Deviled Egg with Candied Bacon; and Crispy Truffled Risotto Ball with Truffle Aïoli

This doesn’t reinvent the wheel by any means, but it’s three solid options. The Crostini in particular impressed with two decent-size shrimp on top of a flavorful, cool cream cheese and a pleasantly crispy cracker. The Deviled Egg “felt” like it had been sitting out too long – the egg was slimy and the bacon wilted inside of the mustard-heavy filling. The Risotto Ball held up well with a crispy exterior and the inside was appropriately cheese.

Overall, I feel like both of these trios get away from the fresh, vibrant flavors that we see at most other Food Studios. The Gallery Bites taste good, but aren’t far off from what you could make relatively easily at home. The Doughnuts would be an average buffet line item at something like 1900 Park Fare.

Taste: 5/10

Value: 5/10

White Chocolate Figment Puzzle on an Artist Palette – $6.50

This is a fun little activity as you have an opportunity to “paint” the chocolate with a variety of colored icings, sprinkles, and blue unbranded chocolate candies. On flavor, desserts available elsewhere should taste better.

Nailed it.

Taste: 3/10

Value: 4/10

Popcorn Pairing Flight – $11

We weren’t 100% sure what to expect from the Popcorn Pairing Flight.

It turned out to be three small bowls of the same popcorn flavors that you can pick up from the cart in Future World West placed into the tops of the cups where we’d probably all wish more beer was located instead.

I think you’re losing a solid ounce of beer in each cup, dropping the total amount to around nine ounces across the three cups. Worse, the popcorn was either popped sometime in the distant past or left out in the open for too long, resulting in really soft, disappointing pieces.

We first ran into the Scrimshaw Pilsner over at BaseLine Tap House, which I review at great length here. According to that post, “This German Pilsner is light and crisp with just a little lemon, biscuit, and grass to keep things interesting with a notably dry, clean finish. Very easy drinking again with more flavor than the Golden Road.” I’ll stick to it.

The M.I.A. Brewing Company Jazz IPA is less bitter than a lot of beers of this style, which many should appreciate. It’s worth trying. Finally, the Central 28 Beer Company Miss Mary Brown Oatmeal Brown Ale has a nice malty presence with pleasant, mildly sweet caramel and toffee flavors showing through at the conclusion of the sip. Another option worth trying.

Overall, the trios don’t seem to follow the vibe of the rest of the Festival, which may be part of why they’re hidden away inside. At nearly ten dollars, the doughnuts aren’t a lot of food and none of what turn out to be toppings impress. The finger food trio is the sort of thing that I’d expect to see at Hollywood & Vine. Pretty forgettable overall, even if they taste fine in the moment. The beers are good, but this is the one spot where I’d probably recommend forgoing the Flight and ordering separate 6-ounce, $4.50 servings of whatever sounds good.