We keep telling ya, Disney Springs is the place to be.
Yeah, yeah — the parks are filled with rides, festivals, and parties. But Disney Springs holds its own unique offerings. You can grab some wild Ice Cream flavors, partake in a cocktail experience that changes weekly, or attend a Tequila tasting. And there are also limited-time offerings, like Raglan Road’s annual Labor Day Weekend celebration! We attended a media event for The Great Irish Hooley — take a look!
From September 2nd through the 5th, you can celebrate Raglan Road Irish Pub & Restaurant’s 10th Annual Great Irish Hooley Music Fest! The fest is filled with singing, dancing, entertainment, food, and drinks.
But of course, we’re going to focus on the food and drinks! The Great Irish Hooley has 2 featured drinks and 5 featured dishes.
Of course, we couldn’t just choose a few, so we tried every single featured item!
We tried the It’s A Hell Of A Hooley! Cocktail, which has Minke Irish Vodka, muddled Raspberries, Lemon sour, Rosemary syrup, Fees Brothers Foam, and Wycliffe Champagne.
This was super light and refreshing — the muddled raspberries and lemon sour gave the drink a tangy flavor. The raspberry flavor was also very natural and didn’t taste artificial at all. The Rosemary garnish was like the cherry on top. We could smell it as we drank the cocktail, which really boosted the flavor.
We also sipped on the De Fesht — Oktoberfest, which is a signature traditional style Marzen brewed exclusively for Raglan Road by The Tank Brewing in Miami. It’s a Medium-bodied amber lager, full-flavored and malty, with a dry finish and underlying notes of hazelnut and honey.
This was a very light drink with a full, malty flavor. It definitely tasted like October to us, courtesy of the underlying hazelnut and honey. With all of that said, the beer is sold out and will remain sold out until October.
We started our meal off with the Dalkey Duo, which are Dalkey Mustard Beer Battered Cheshire Heritage Pork Sausages, with Dalkey Mustard Mayonnaise, and Buffalo Applesauce. The sausages are a pretty good size, and are slightly spicy.
Our reporter was worried that the mustard would be overpowering, but it only really had mustard seeds in the beer batter. The new addition of the Buffalo Applesauce was perfection! It was spicy and fruity, with a punch of apple.
This has been on the menu before, so the only “new” thing about it is the Buffalo Applesauce.
We also got the Board of Beauty, which comes with an Irish Egg, Bacon & Cabbage Roll, Bang Bang’s Chicken, and Beef in Bed, all on one beautiful board to share. The Irish Egg is a hard-boiled egg that’s deep-fried with cranberries. It was sweet and salty, with a nice texture. The Bacon and Cabbage Egg Roll was delicious, and the star of the dish was the cabbage! It’s crunchy and salty, with a nice kick of meat from the Bacon.
The Bang Bang Chicken was a fun addition. We got a great kick of spice, so make sure you have your water ready! We could feel the spice lingering for quite some time after. Beef in Bed was our least favorite of the entire board. The beef had a pot roast flavor, so it didn’t taste like it belonged on the cornbread. But, with that being said, the bread was very tasty, and we would’ve happily eaten it by itself, too.
Next up was the Salmon Run. The dish comes with Roasted Atlantic Salmon filet on a Raglan signature Potato cake, roasted Broccolini, Spinach White Wine butter sauce & Confit Tomato.
The Potato Cake was very crunchy, salty, and well-made. The Salmon was nicely-cooked and paired well with the White Wine butter sauce. And the Broccolini also had a great kick of salt.
For dessert, we started with the It’s OK To Drool which is a Bread & Butter Pudding, French Toast Style, with vanilla Mascarpone, mixed berries, Macadamia Nut Crunch, and Crispy Maple Glazed Bacon. De-lic-ous.
The Bread Pudding was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, just like you expect from French Toast! The berries are super fresh and glazed in a berry sauce. The macadamia nuts provided a nice crunch, while the vanilla Mascarpone was sweet and fluffy. This was a winner!
The I Crumble Inside dessert is an Apple and Blackberry Crumble with hidden custard inside. It’s served warm, topped with a hard crumble, and absolutely tasty!
It was oaty and the apple and blackberry mixed well together. Oh — and the custard? Soooo good! When we visited, this item was not yet on the menu, but servers confirmed it will be shortly!
Overall, we really enjoyed this experience! The food was delicious and it’s different from your typically burgers or chicken fingers. On top of all that, we were able to listen to live music and watch Irish dancers perform!
If you want to dig into these featured dishes and drinks, or take part in the festivities, the Great Irish Hooley will last through September 5th! And while you’re in Disney Springs, check out the new dish over at Homecomin’. Or take a look at the Tequila Tasting you can partake in.
And, as always, stay tuned to DFB for the latest Disney news!
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Have you ever attended the Great Hooley Fest? Let us know in the comments!
Disclosure: In nearly all circumstances, Disney Food Blog writers and photographers pay full price for their own travel, hotel, food, beverage, and event tickets. We do this because it’s important to us as journalists to ensure not only that we give you unbiased opinions, but also that you can trust us to do so since we’re paying our own way. On rare occasions, when we are invited by a company to attend a preview as media, and when we choose to accept that invitation, we will always make you, our readers, aware of that situation. Today, we were invited by Disney World to attend their media preview of The Great Hooley Fest at Raglan Road. Note that when we attend events as media we are 1) Not required to review that event/food on any of our channels, and 2) Not required to review that event/food favorably. You can always count on DFB to give you a 100% unbiased and honest review of any event that we attend, food that we eat, or beverage that we drink. You can see more in our Disclosure Policy. Thank you for reading. — AJ
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