We tried the Churrasco Steak at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay Food & Wine Festival—here’s our take on its taste, quality, and value for your sampler lanyard.
Our theme park adventures have taken us to Busch Gardens Tampa Bay on many occasions this year. A theme park food festival always makes us visit. Earlier this year, we enjoyed Mardi Gras at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay.
We received an invitation to the media night at the Food & Wine Festival at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, which started on March 7. Since then, we have visited four additional times. After our second weekend, we constructed a Best and Worst Food Dishes article to help guests during the Festival, which runs on select days (Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays) through May 18.
Food & Wine Festival
Of course, theme park food festival dishes change in preparation during the event. We have seen this often at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay. This demands follow-up visits. In recent days, we have been releasing a food review daily at MSM News. This will be the last one in the series. You can also check out our other Food & Wine reviews that include:
This review focuses on the Churrasco-inspired grilled beef, which has been popular previously. Busch Gardens even advertises it as a “Fan Favorite.” During the opening night of the Food & Wine Festival, this dish from the Chile Cabin drew long queues.
According to the online menu, the Churrasco food option consists of Herb-marinated grilled flank steak, mashed yucca tossed with garlic and fresh cilantro. When we had this earlier in the festival, we enjoyed it. However, we heard from a family during our most recent visit that they did not enjoy it. They ordered the Churrasco dish and said it was served cold. We know they used a sampler lanyard, so they did not spend the $14 for this item.
This conversation caused us to change our plans and make the Churrasco from the Chile Cabin our final stop of the day. In fairness, we enjoyed the steak festival food items as much this time.
Churrasco Steak at Food & Wine Festival at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay
When trying this meat and potatoes-style dish, our concern has been that guests do not recognize the difference between classic United States of America-style mashed potatoes and mashed yucca. However, our less favorable opinion of the festival item was related more to the quality.
The flank steak was more challenging to cut during our most recent visit than in previous visits. We ate this, and while guests typically need a plastic knife for this entrée, this time, the steak was more complicated to cut.
Photo by Jon Self
We also noticed a different sauce placed on our steak this time. It failed to provide the quality of the previous visits. In addition, the steak and mashed yucca could have been warmer.
Nevertheless, this steak dish was not as bad as we were told. Sure, it was not as good. However, guests purchasing a sampler lanyard pay less than $6 per item. A steak and potatoes serving for less than six dollars sounds like a good deal, even if it is lower quality this time.
For more theme park reviews and information, visit MSM News. As always, eat like you mean it!
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