Food & Wine Festival 2010 Cuisine, Part 23: United States

Welcome to Part 23 in a series examining each of the national cuisines on display at the 2010 Epcot Food & Wine Festival. Today's port of culinary call: the United States.

The United States made its debut at the Food & Wine Festival in 1996, the same year that the Festival itself began. This year, you'll find the U.S. booth outside the Japan Pavilion next to the Hops and Barley booth.

Let's look at our menu:

Bison Chili with Wild Mushrooms, Cabernet, and Pepper Jack Cheese

An inspired choice, Bison Chili packs flavor as big as Texas itself, where chili was 'invented' by Spanish immigrants in the late 1800s and grew so popular that it's now the official dish of Texas and the source of much local pride, especially in the omission of beans: 'real' Texas chili traditionally contained no beans (because beef was cheap and plentiful) but lots of tomatoes and onions. Substituting bison for beef in some way makes the dish seem more authentically American, but more important, the lean bison will impart its rich, slightly sweet flavor to the chili, elevating a basic dish and hopefully putting you on the hunt for bison as a healthier, tastier substitute for ground beef.

Two of the other ingredients in the chili - Wild Mushrooms and Pepper Jack Cheese - also have the feel-good American vibe, but Cabernet is a puzzler: it's now grown everywhere but its soil of origin is French. I'm sure the grapes for this chili, however, were harvested in the United States, though I can't help but wish that instead of Cabernet they had used beer.

American is a tricky cuisine. It has a few home-grown staples, such as chili, but much of it comes from abroad, just as most of the people here came from abroad, making it easy to confuse local flavor with imported flavor. The bison chili avoids that problem. It's an absolutely perfect dish to represent the United States. As for the next dish...

Heirloom Tomatoes with Oregon Blue Cheese, Red Onions, and Basil

I got it, finally. This dish doesn't sound or even really taste American, but its colors replicate the red, white, and blue of the flag. Quite a stretch! (And, yeah, I made it up.)

Heirloom Tomatoes (with apologies to my late grandmother, not pronounced HAIR-loom) is a natural product, not a hybrid, extending back centuries in its pure form without anyone meddling with its genetics. A properly grown heirloom tomato looks and tastes the part. Imagine the best tomato you've ever had and imagine the most beautiful tomato you've ever seen in a seed catalog. That's an heirloom tomato. Or should be. You'll know with the first bite.

The inclusion of Oregon Blue Cheese, Red Onions, and Basil in this salad is just fine, though the result smacks more Italian than American. Still, given the best ingredients, the salad should be delicious, especially the heirloom tomatoes, and its juicy chill will cool the chili.

Beverages

Beer. Where's the beer? There's chili but no beer. Instead, there are two wines, both from a single winery, Sagelands Vineyard, located in Washington's Columbia Valley (a favorite source for Disney wine). The Merlot pairs well with the chili; the Riesling with the salad. If you want a wine for both dishes, take the Merlot.

Your other choice is a non-traditional bourbon, Red Stag, from Jim Beam. It's non-traditional because it's flavored with black cherry, the consumption of which would have led to your immediate eviction from any saloon in the Old West. Flavored or not, Jim Beam is the best-selling bourbon in the world, and its 'small batch' labels, especially Knob Creek, some of the best-tasting bourbon in the world. Most folks work their way up to small batch. For light drinkers who would never dream of guzzling bourbon, Red Stag is admirable as a gentle introduction and not too fiery on the throat.

Taste It or Waste It

I love the inclusion of bison chili; I'm tolerant of the tomato salad; but I'm flummoxed by the omission of apple pie or cherry pie or even a chocolate chip cookie for dessert. The menu doesn't engage fully with simple, hearty American fare.

But that doesn't make it a bad menu; in fact, it's a good menu, and the bison chili is near the top of my list for things not to miss. I'll withhold judgment on the salad until I'm able to see it. As a small batch bourbon drinker, I should want no truck with Red Stag, but given the crowds and my general anonymity whenever I'm at Epcot, it wouldn't hurt to swill a swig or two. I'll even admit that the black raspberry flavor might enhance the chili. And if anyone calls me a tenderfoot, I guess I'll just smile shyly and sidle away.

With my bowl of bison chili, of course.