The Seven Seas Food Festival is back once again at SeaWorld in San Diego and was recently extended by popular demand through the end of the month. Visitors to the sea park during the celebration will find more than 55 tasting plates, 70 brews, and a dozen wines! Although it was our first time being invited to check out the event, the foodie-focused festival is now in its fourth year.

We were treated to several of the new offerings this year and are ready to share with you a small taste of what the full festival has to offer.

Festival Tastes

We were so pleasantly surprised overall by the offerings of the Seven Seas Food Festival. After enjoying the Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival and the Knott’s Boysenberry Festival earlier this year we were left quite happy but found the overall experiences to be lacking in any big wow moments or surprises. SeaWorld surprisingly enough brought some really interesting entries into this year’s festival run with more daring options that included Frog Legs, Escargot, Octopus, and even Crickets!

Below is some of what we tried…

Potato Ravioli with pancetta in a fresh sage butter sauce was probably one of our favorite dishes of the festival. The salty panchetta with the rich sauce were a delightful combination. $5

Warm Brie and Duck Confit served on a toasted baguette with strawberries was a surprisingly delightful dish. Rich and hearty. Definitely recommend this one. $5.

Sustainable Tuna Poke Stack was served on an edible corn lime spoon and was fresh and delicious. $5. It’s so nice to have actual sushi options in a food and wine festival.

Spicy Tuna mini handroll included seawad wrapping with sushi rice, pickles, daikon radish. $5.5.

Pork Belly Pizza by far had to be one of the most unique offerings. This is as far from a actual pizza as you can get. A slice of pork belly is served over a bed of mashed potatoes smeared on a toasted piece of bred then topped with pickled cucumber. $5.5.

Kalua Pig is a soild safe choice. Great kalua pork served on a Kings Hawaiian roll with a pineapple truffle sauce coleslaw. Very good. $5.5.

Chipotle Chimichurri Shrimp with fresh cilantro, grilled lime, and olive oil was super great. Wonderful flavors here! $5.5.

Fire Cracker Coconut Shrimp drizzled with a citrus coconut sauce was another fantastic option. So many other festivals shy away from sea food so it’s great to have so many options. $5.5.

Chili Lime Chapulines Tostada is probably the most memorably unique offering of the festival. Fried crickets served on a black tortilla with avocado spread, queso fresco and fresh pico.

Escargot Maison in a puff bastry with garlic herb aioli are obviously one of the more exotic tastes. We’ve had snails before but these were not our favorite. They were a little overcooked and not nearly enough rich gralic flavor from the aioli. $5.

Lamb Chop Lollypop is a great option. You know what you’re getting here and it’s a solid little piece of meat. Served with a pearl onion salad, watercress and a balsamic reduction. $6.

Angus Beef Tacos are solid choice for less daring epicureans. $5.5.

Sustainable Salmon Rilettes with creme fraiche and flabread crostini was not our favorite. It was about what you’d expect so if you’re a fan of rilettes then you should be perfectly content with this one. $5.

Nitrogen Fromage was one of the most interesting sounding options but turned out to be one of the least interesting. Cheddar cheese balls served at minus 320 degrees. It’s literally frozen cheesy poofs. Skip! $5.

Pure Snow Pop with mango bursting bobas are so wonderfully refreshing. You get your choice of Coke or Fanta Orange and it’s magical. I wish the portion was bigger. $5.5.

Cherry Coke Experience is a “different kind of sundae” with cherries jubilee and Coke snowpop combined together. The proportions were a little off, we wanted a lot more snow pop to the ratio but it was also tasty. $6.

Crisp Pineapple Beignet was less of a beignet and more like a really unique pineapple dessert and its drizzled with caramel vanilla sauce. Definitely worth trying. $5.

Candied Bacon Cheesecake was an unusual combination of flavors. It was salty, sweet, and spicy with a chocolate mixture that included poprocks. Perhaps a little too earnest. Worth a shot but probably not for everyone. $5.

Thin Nutella Banana Crepe with chantilly whip cream, what could there possibly be to not love?! $5.5.

Creamy Flan was creamy but not super strong on the caramel flavoring. Good but not great. $5.

Shaken Bacon Mojito shown here features a topping of Cuban garlic bread, pickles and fresh mint. $6.

Refillable Beer Mugs are also available at the beer stations. It’s $14 on first purchase (with beer) and you can refill it the rest of the year for $9.

Mostly Made to Order

A lot of the booths make most of the items essentially to order. This is certainly a change over how we were used to seeing the dishes at Disney California Adventure. Credit where due, the Disney event is certainly much much more popular so made-to-order dishes would be impractical.

Festival Savings

If you know you want to try more than a few of the offerings for the Seven Seas Food Festival then you’ll want to consider the sampler options.

Food & Drink Samplers

Lanyards are available offering options for every appetite level:

  • 15 Options: $65
  • 10 Options: $45
  • 5 Options: $25

Wine Sampler

Includes your choice of 5 (2 oz.) wine tastings from around the festival wine locations and includes a souvenir wine glass!

  • 5 Options: $20

Festival Entertainment

There’s a TON of entertainment included as part of the festival rounding out a really fun experience bringing unique sounds and entertainment to each of the dining areas. Musicians and entertainers were found in five different festival stages: So Cal Flavors, Latin American Falvors, Poynesian Flavors, Caribbean Flavors, and French Flavors.

More to Explore

Of course, SeaWorld has a lot more to explore and although we didn’t get a chance to really dive into everything the park had to offer since we were muching our way around the festival, we were still able to take in some of the wonderful sights and sounds.

Electric Eel

This new coaster is confirmed to be opening May 12, 2018!

Attractions

See it for Yourself

SeaWorld Seven Seas Food Festival continues on April 14–15, 21–22 and 28–29.