Tuscany Italy EPCOT Festival of the Holidays Review

We continue from Bavaria.

Welcome to Italy, where even the beer has managed to form some kind of crust that probably shouldn’t be there. Or at least when you typically order a Peroni, you don’t expect to be asked if you want it served flat or well-done. Not everything has to be microwaved. The booth may be informed of this fact at some point.

Editor’s Note: This post is complete nonsense until you get to “Mezzelune Croccanti: Crispy Half-Moon Breaded Mozzarella-Filled Ravioli with Pomodoro Sauce – $12.” And even then, I’m not sure we’re completely out of the rabbit hole.

If I said “hope,” and you said, “The Italy Booth,” our chances of passing the first round of the Pyramid Game Show would be slim, but I’ll admit that there was a glimmer of something that felt vaguely wishful in my heart as I passed by the booth and it appeared shuttered. Could Italy actually opt out of the Festival, much like China? Several other booths were already open and happily serving, while Tuscany looked like someone had recently started foreclosure proceedings. Or the Health Department stopped by for the first time in ten years and the inspector started crying at what they saw while wailing, “Shut it down! Now! Yesterday! Terribile! Either way!”

I figured the delay may have been caused by a move to the more traditional microwave heated by charcoal, and we were waiting for the black carbon residue to warm up just enough so the “al dente” pasta would only chip two or three of each person’s teeth this year. I think the University of Central Florida actually teaches a dental course specifically about repairing tooth damage suffered at the hands of whatever frozen pasta-ish creation somebody from the booth blindly chooses out of this year’s food services catalogue. At least our new dentists are guaranteed enough work to be able to pay off their loans after just one or two Festivals.

But with the booth, sparsely decorated with two wreaths plucked from the 10-cent “Toxic, Not For Use Near Humans” bin from Disney’s own Cast Connection, and the vague outline of frozen food off to the left, I knew perfectly well that 2021 was not my year. And things had been going so well.

It’s also possible that the keys to the microwaves were locked away somewhere, since we can’t trust just anyone to reheat Chef Boyardee (Sorry Chef, that was a cheap shot). And whoever was in charge of the keys had left them on an IllumiNations barge that they assumed would return in time for the next Festival, which is always approximately 48 hours away. No such luck. But Italy is operated by Patina Group, a division of Delaware North. And to say that they are not particularly organized may be an understatement.

Why they elected to name themselves Delaware North, I am not real sure. You can be standing just about anywhere in Delaware and be in the western, southern, and eastern parts of the 49th largest state at the same time. I don’t think the number of people who have mistaken Delaware North for Delaware Southwest is particularly high. The state has the fewest number of counties of any in the country. Three. Heck, over 500,000 more people reside just in Hillsborough County here in Florida than in the entirety of their state. Granted, most of them are incarcerated. But it still counts.

Patina is actually a pretty genius operation, where almost all of their locations can be found in places where you’re basically stuck without any other options should you find yourself hungry – stadiums, airports, Madison Square Garden, my apartment. If you’re hungry, you have no choice but to choke down whatever overpriced slop they happen to be serving. There is no other choice.

Disney, a family-based company (unless we can call them money-based now), had been very vocal in their opposition against the construction of more casinos in the area. At least until they realized they now owned the rights to build them, along with the accumulation of hundreds of millions of dollars in gambling stock. Delaware North is very much in the casino business and I would be surprised if they’re not the company Disney chooses to partner with before entering the evil world of betting $2 that the coin is going to land on “Heads” to start the Super Bowl. I can already feel the delinquency setting in.

Of course, Disney never cared about the gambling part. Anyone who hires Bob Chapek as their CEO is obviously up for letting it ride. But they did care about hotels in the area being subsidized by gambling revenue artificially bringing nightly prices down. All-Star Sports, at $192 a night, with no restaurants, no entertainment, and rooms comparable in size to Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster’s pre-show waiting area (the narrow corridor before you may or may not receive backstage passes), is a tough sell when you’re going up against the Casino Hotel, where $50 buys you a luxury suite at a resort with eight restaurants, three live shows, and rooms larger than Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster’s show building. Wherever that’s located.

Patina also operates Morimoto Asia, a restaurant that you may have noticed has been mentioned in derogatory terms of some kind in each of the past Festival reviews. While the full story, which is hilarious, will have to wait for the next formal review, I actually received a call from Patina a couple of weeks ago. This is fortuitous because the contact phone number on their website has been disconnected for months. Maybe years. Always a good sign when you either can’t pay the phone bill or the person who has the password to the site and could change the phone number to the correct digits in about three seconds can’t be located. As I said, not terribly organized.

The gentleman calling, after identifying himself in a far-too-hurried cadence that he was some sort of regional manager for Patina, refused to give me his last name. There are not a lot of ways to come off as shadier than refusing to provide a last name. Worse, the guy’s name was Jeff, so all I could think about during the brief conversation was that scene from 22 Jump Street. If you know, you know.

Being 2021, or really just this century in general, having the guy’s phone number, first name, and at least a rough idea of his position in the company, it took approximately three seconds to pull up his entire life story. But it was a short conversation. After being lectured, in the sincerest of tones, about how important the enjoyment and satisfaction of every guest who visits one of their venues is to Delaware West, I was hung up on after desperately trying to get a question past the endless, meaningless script. I’ve eaten at the equivalent of Tony’s Town Square Training School of Microwavable Italianesque “Food” here at the Italy booth over 40 times. If this is Patina caring about our satisfaction and enjoyment, we’re probably going to have to call in the National Guard should they decide that they just don’t care anymore. Not even our legion of new dentists could protect us from that.

Two years ago, this was Tuscany’s menu:

Italy had added a fifth food item, I’m guessing specifically to spite me. No other booth offered that many. Ever. But even then, I noted that the price points were higher than any other booth. Eight dollars for a cheese sandwich might sound like a lot, but at least they picked something that could reasonably be microwaved. And the portion could be substantial.

Here’s a look at what $34-worth looked like back then. Yep, a tray of pasta served in a Lean Cuisine tray, bread that looks like it’s been toasted since Morimoto was actually good sometime in late 2016, deep-fried globs of unknown origin that look like they’re trying to drown themselves, and a mound of cake.

Here’s this year’s menu. If you take heart medication or anything, make sure you’re not missing a dose before looking it over, or ignore any numbers that follow the names of the dishes:

While we’ve dropped from five food items to three, the cumulative cost of two fewer dishes has still gone up. But I doubt I needed to point that out. On one hand, it may be Italy doing us a favor. On the other, if you’re paying more than TGI Friday’s charged for unlimited appetizers for the equivalent of about four mozzarella sticks, you may have spent too much time banging your head against concrete outside a Firehouse Subs. But since I have, and we don’t have a choice anyway, we might as well get to it.

Mezzelune Croccanti: Crispy Half-Moon Breaded Mozzarella-Filled Ravioli with Pomodoro Sauce – $12

It’s rare that I get to call someone senza cervello. Part of that is because I don’t usually write in Italian, unless it’s a love letter. But brainless you would have to be to pick up an order. Hence why I did.

It’s not necessarily that they’re bad. If you were grabbing a couple of fried ravioli from the family buffet line after your blacked-out cousin pulled them out of the oven during halftime at the Super Bowl, they’d probably taste delightful. But I don’t think your cousin would ask for $12.

The main problem is that six-pound boxes of frozen food sit piled high on a cart, broken down boxes of Rana pasta from the grocery store lay on the ground, and oversize jugs that I do not want to know what they were used for are sitting out in plain sight of guests. You could at least take the pasta out of the boxes and wheel them over in some kind of discreet container. But when you charge $11 for three ounces of wine out of a bottle that costs 79 cents, it may not be in the budget this year.

At least we know where to get six more pounds of these things in time for the Super Bowl. Hopefully they’re kept more frozen than these.

But if for some reason you still want to hear more about the petrified half-ravioli, they’ve basically mozzarella cheese blended with parsley and wrapped in wonton dough for easy half-moon creation, before being sprinkled with breadcrumbs and whatever the cheapest Italian spices at the time happen to be. Then they’re fried to death and tossed on top of sauce from a jar.

Taste: 5/10

Value: 1/10

Ravioli: Shrimp Ravioli in Scampi Sauce with White Wine, Garlic, Lemon Zest, and Parsley – $13

Not only are we talking about generic six-pound boxes of food service ravioli here, but Italy even opted to purchase the version with the sauce already frozen on top. So they wouldn’t even need to make that fresh. And that meager portion of shrimp enveloped inside each thin layer of frozen dough probably isn’t getting any less fishy sitting in a warehouse for who knows how long, before sitting outside in the sun in Florida, in full view of guests, for longer than any of us would like. That murky mixture of what looks to be thawed sauce pooling in the right corner immediately slid off the unfortunate seafood lumps. It tasted largely of tap water, expired butter, and somebody thinking about white wine that day. Since you’re not going to pick up the flavors of a fine chardonnay. Lemon Zest? Garlic? Scampi Sauce? Only if Joseph’s Frozen Food operation has improved since the last catalogue came out.

Taste: 3/10

Value: 1/10

Bomboloni alla Cioccolato-Nocciola: Chocolate-filled Italian Doughnut with Chocolate-Hazelnut Spread and Powdered Sugar – $11

I didn’t think it was possible for Italy to disappoint me. I’ve been through a lot over the course of 40+ Festivals and hundreds of items. But our cart of frozen food being wheeled over included boxes of these frozen doughnuts, too. To their credit, they are delicious. But they’re a frozen food services product that merely need to be thawed and served. They don’t even require the microwave, though I’m sure somebody put them in anyway. And you get three for $11. You can get about 12 times more doughnut for less money at The Donut Box. And it’s somewhat unlikely those have spent as much time in the freezer. And you don’t even really have to go that far into Epcot to order them, which is always a good thing these days. Ciao for now, my lovely Bomboloni. I will be buying a six-pound box of you to put in my freezer. And probably eating the whole container as I write the next Italy review with tears in my eyes and a case of Rosa Regale bottles that I intermittently break with a hammer.

Taste: 8/10

Value: 2/10

Wine and Beer

Don’t even think about it.

I think a Funnel Cake is up next.