Sunshine Seasons
Our favorite part of Epcot is The Land. In Brad's words "The moment I walk into The Land, I really feel like I have arrived at Disney World!" I am not 100% sure why it feels that way for us, but it does. We do love Soarin', but we REALLY love Living with the Land. We also love the Garden Grill. And we love to just sit and relax in Sunshine Seasons. Of all the times we have just relaxed here, we have never actually had a meal here. Typically we eat all Table Service restaurants when we are at Epcot. They just have so many, it is hard not to. But on our recent trip to Disney World, we had both lunch and dinner here.
Our first visit here was for lunch on our first park day. We had already planned to try and eat here for lunch if we were still on that side of Epcot. We started out here, but we had breakfast at Garden Grill. Luckily, we were able to time it out perfectly and come back to The Land for lunch. It was semi-crowded, so I decided to find a seat with Melody while Brad went to order. I already knew what I wanted because I had researched the menu prior to arriving. The food area is broken out into sections. Each sections serves a little something different. Similar to other quick service restaurants around Disney. Since it was so crowded, Brad decided to just find something to eat at the section where my food was found. We ate from the "Sandwich Shop" this day.
Brad ordered the turkey and monterey jack on ciabatta bread. He substituted chips for the potato salad. He ordinarily doesn't like potato salad, so he wanted a side item he knew he would eat. I didn't get a picture of his sandwich (again!).
I ordered the Spicy Fish Tacos. It came with a side of potato salad (which I wanted). I have never tried fish tacos before. I absolutely love Mexican (ask Brad who had to endure Taco Bell countless times while I was pregnant with Melody!). But in all my visits to numerous Mexican restaurants, I have always been too scared to try fish tacos. I guess it just never seemed like the two should go together. Well I wanted to be different this trip (but not TOO different), so I opted to give these a try. I am so glad I did. They were delicious. There is a lot of slaw on the tacos and not quite enough of the aioli sauce, but it was still really good the way they served it. I would definitely ask for more sauce next time! I cannot promise I will try these at any of our local Mexican restaurants, but that is mainly because I doubt they will taste as good as these. I thought the potato salad was an odd side dish. It wasn't southern potato salad like I am used to, but it was decent. I actually ate more of Brad's chips while he ate more of my potato salad!
On our third park day, we decided to skip going to Animal Kingdom, and we opted to visit Epcot one last time. We thought Epcot would be a nice ending to our trip. We debated for quite a while on what to do for dinner. We had Soarin' fastpasses that we used, so we were already at The Land. We contemplated eating at The Garden Grill because there were plenty of reservations, but Melody wasn't far from going to sleep and that would be hard to handle there. I also didn't want to walk around the World Showcase at that point. So we opted just to stay where we were and eat at Sunshine Seasons again!
This time, I went through the lines with Brad while he held Melody. I loved the fish tacos, but I wanted to try something else to be different. We visited the "Asian Noodles Shop" this visit. This was what Brad really wanted on our first visit, so he was happy. We also visited the "Bakery Shop" too!
So Brad went a different route than I expected, and he tried the Spicy Shrimp Stir-Fry. He substituted the lo mein for vegetable fried rice. The shrimp wasn't bad, but it wasn't amazing either. If I had to guess, he would get beef next time. There was a lot more vegetables than he truly expected there to be. The fried rice was good. It tasted like fried rice you would get just about anywhere else though.
I ordered the Sweet and Sour Chicken. It came with a side of Jasmine Rice. So I have to be honest. I was a little disappointed in the quality of chicken here. It contained a LOT of dark meat, and I am not a fan of dark meat at all. I know other people may enjoy it, but there was little white meat at all. It was all very chunky and fatty for me. It just wasn't at all what I expected. The sauce itself was really good. I mixed it throughout the rice to give it some flavor along with some soy sauce. The pieces of chicken that I did eat were really good. It just wasn't quite what I had hoped for.
Thankfully there was dessert! Brad had the creme brûlée (no pictures-surprise, surprise!). It was just your standard creme brûlée. Nothing spectacular. It was actually odd because it was served cold. It is usually warm. I ordered the Mickey oreo cheesecake. It was pretty good too. It wasn't anything amazing, but it tasted like oreo cheesecake. It was a nice follow up to the sweet and sour chicken, however. And it was too cute!
I am really glad we finally tried the food here. I would not hesitate to eat here again, but I would not eat from the Asian Noodles shop again. Next time, I will stick with what I loved, and that was the fish tacos!!
