It has been many many years since I have been to Garden Grill in Epcot. The last time I ate there my age was probably a third of what it is now. But Garden Grill is one of the coolest restaurants in Epcot and I feel like it is completely under-appreciated. If you’re like, ‘What/Where even is Garden Grill?’ you’re not alone.
Garden Grill is located inside The Land pavilion above Living with the Land and Soarin’. This is a character meal that is family style. Here you will meet Mickey, Pluto, Chip, and Dale. While dining and meeting characters you will be moving. Yes, you read that right, the restaurant rotates in a circle while you dine. This allows you to see in the various beginning scenes of Living with the Land. One second your eating in a rain forest, next thing you know it’s the desert. On top of that some of the food you are eating was grown in the pavilion! If you’ve ever been on Living with the Land you know it goes through various greenhouses, those plants are actually used in the restaurants in this pavilion!
Alright enough geeking out about this I’m sure you really only care about the food.
When we checked in I noted that we were vegan and my sons peanut allergy. They showed me a menu of the Vegetarian and Vegan offerings and asked if this would be okay. We didn’t have a reservation and waited about 5 minutes, at 12:30, in the middle of July.
Once seated we were greeted by our super friendly server and we told him we were all vegan. He then went through what options we would be getting (so happy to be having so many educated servers lately!) and then went off to get our first round. We had asked for some Silk for the kids and he ended up actually going downstairs to Sunshine Seasons for us to get them because they were out of it in their kitchen.
Right before he brought our food we were greeted by Farmer Mickey! He was super great with the kids and hung out for a while.
Our first round of food was vegan rolls with vegan butter and a salad. The salad was topped with a cucumber, tomato, and kalamata olive mix. It was a new salad they were offering and it’s not just for vegans because we saw other people eating it on our way out of the restaurant.
The rolls were super soft and warm and the butter was room temperature and not straight from a fridge which was nice. I had to stop myself from eating the whole basket before the rest of the food came.
The salad was honestly great. It seemed to be lightly dressed with an oil. The crunchy cucumber and salty olives were delicious. I could have eaten a bowl of that for lunch and been happy.
We then met Chip and Dale (separately of course) while eating our first course. They were also very great with the kids and gave lots of long hugs.
Our main course came out and it was huge. The massive skillet was filled with rice, corn, green beans, french fries, and a vegan loaf topped with a vegan cream sauce.
The loaf was pretty good. It was made with rice and beans and we believe also some carrot and other vegetables. The outside was nice and crispy but the inside as pretty mushy. The creamy sauce on it was super flavorful and really added to the loaf. Under the loaf was a tomato sauce which I didn’t get much of with my food.
The green beans were my favorite part of this skillet. They were super garlicky and just generally amazing. The rice was, rice. Nothing special. The corn was mixed with lima beans and was pretty good. The fries weren’t anything special. The skillet also came with ketchup and cranberry sauce.
After we finally ate all of that we saw Pluto. He was just as friendly as the others and spent lots of time with the kids.
For dessert our server asked us if we ate honey or not because there were to options for us but one contained honey (so there is actually one option). We asked what the dessert with honey was (even though we told him no) and it was just the Enjoy Life crunchy chocolate bars.
Our dessert looked better than it tasted. It was a shortcake like dessert covered in a berry sauce and fresh fruit. Once we started eating it we found there were blueberries inside of the dense shortcake-y muffin thing. It was very dense and dry. There was not enough sauce in the world to make it not. The kids were given some Enjoy Life double chocolate cookies.
During our meal we saw each character about 3 times. They would generally wave and walk by but occasionally stopped for a high five since they had already seen us.
The food here was awesome. I am so mad at myself for putting this off for so long. It isn’t cheap, but family style/buffet meals never are. We had more than enough food for the four of us and mostly everything was great. The option we had is also available at dinner. If you want to try breakfast here they have a skillet with vegan mickey waffles, tater tots, fruit, and will sometimes grab a vegan breakfast wrap from Sunshine Seasons.
Price $$$$
Review from July 2019.
Thanks for this wonderful review. We would be two adults dining with no children and I’m trying to decide if the price would be worth it to have some meh veggie loaf. Of course what I really want is the views of the Living with the Land boat ride! It’s a hard choice especially since such great veggie options can be found in Sunshine Seasons food court. Last time we had some Cauliflower Curry that was filling, fragrant, and delicious– and about twelve bucks a plate. Thanks for all the great pictures, and it looks like your kids had a fabulous time!
I would absolutely still go! The loaf was great and so was the salad, the dessert was not great. But that restaurant is just too cool to not try.
Hey! I ate here in August 2019 and when I asked why they didn’t give me the cranberry sauce I was told it was because it had gelatin. I even asked the chef and he confirmed the the cranberry sauce had gelatin 🙁
Well that’s incredibly unfortunate as our server seemed to know exactly what the vegan meal was. Hopefully since they switched over to the plant based options it has been updated. Thank you for this, well look into it!