Disney Features Saucier in Behind-the-Scenes Look at EPCOT Festival Kitchens

Disney recently featured Warren Clarke, a saucier who has worked for Disney for almost 20 years, in a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of food dishes during the EPCOT festivals.

Warren Clarke – EPCOT Festival Kitchen Saucier

Warren Clarke, Disney World saucier, standing in front of the Canada pavilion at EPCOT with a dish.

Warren Clarke has worked at Walt Disney World for almost 20 years, starting out in food handling before working his way up to EPCOT festival kitchen saucier. His attention to detail and pride is part of why he earned the Walt Disney Legacy Award – the highest honor a cast member can receive – in recognition for the positive impact he makes every day.

Warren Clarke stirring a large container of food.

Before every festival, Clarke and other sauciers are busy doing real-world and trial-and-error testing. When they were developing a Miso Cola sauce, Clarke changed the order of the ingredients when he noticed the sauce kept coming out too sweet. The team also creates hundreds of gallons of sauce for the festival, sometimes upwards of 500 gallons of sauce a day.

Warren Clarke holding chopsticks above a food dish.

One of the dishes Clarke helped create is the pigeon pea rice, found at the La Isla Fresca festival booth between the France and Morocco pavilions. The dish, inspired by his Caribbean roots, is also paired with Jamaican jerk chicken. We tried the dish ourselves and thought the rice was “bangin’.”

The 2026 EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival runs through June 1. You can read our full guide here.

Will you be visiting EPCOT during the Flower & Garden Festival? Let us know on social media.

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