2013 Epcot International Food & Wine Festival – Africa Marketplace – Berbere Style Beef & Wolftrap Red

On one of our recent tours of the 2013 Epcot International Food & Wine Festival, we stopped at the Africa Marketplace for the second time… today we went for the Berbere Style Beef… (sorry about the lighting, we found a place inside to stop and eat and take photos, the lighting wasn’t the best for those purposes but it got us out of the crush on the promenade).

Berbere Style Beef including featured wine pairing at Africa booth - 2013 Epcot Food and Wine Festival - 1

Berbere Style Beef with onions, jalapeños, tomato, okra, and pap (the white stuff that looks like a ball of grits) paired with Wolftrap Red

Again, we went with the featured pairing… Wolftrap Red and Berbere Beef.. The Wolftrap Red was better than the Pinot we’d had earlier with the Artisan Cheese Sampler… but we weren’t really grooving it… with or without food, just not that tasty (we ended up tossing some of it).

Berbere Style Beef including featured wine pairing at Africa booth - 2013 Epcot Food and Wine Festival - 2

there was a strong scent of green peppers (which we don’t like) but we later discovered that the green peppers were chiles

The beef pieces varied from downright nasty to tender and tasty (huh?). There were TWO bits of okra in our serving (that was confusing because okra is a pretty cheap vegetable with some great health properties). And the pap was pretty thick, well, it was actually like a scoop of ice cream in Alaska (I thought it was supposed to be more fluid and less solid)… the pap tasted okay. In fact, it’s bland carbiness was needed to balance out the spiciness of the dish overall.

Berbere Style Beef including featured wine pairing at Africa booth - 2013 Epcot Food and Wine Festival - 3

behold, the spiciest thing we’ve ever had at Epcot Food & Wine (since 2002)

Overall, we enjoyed this (and it was a bit of a slow start)… we aren’t typical beef eaters (we rarely order it out and I never cook it)… I’d love to see how this dish would be if purely vegetarian… substitute roasted eggplant for the beef and add more okra (I guess you could substitute chicken or pork for the beef)…

I don’t think we’re likely to order this again. We only have 2 1/2 weeks (at the time I’m writing this) left in the Festival and we have lots more things on our “must have” lists 🙂

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