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Crowd favorites Numbers weren’t available, but anecdotal evidence suggests the most popular items included:

Coconut shrimp cigars with mandarin orange salad

Pan-seared shrimp with roasted red pepper grits

Griddled cheese cake sandwich My favorites

Goat cheese fingerling potato tart with pistachio oil.

Braised lamb with roasted corn and merlot jus lié Pan-seared salmon cake Mango eclair than beer, people who are foodies.”

The new event replaces the Bands, Brew & BBQ festival with a more ambitious array of food and beverages. “We’ve got everything from grilled food, seafood, vegetarian to soul food,” Harrison said. “They all have some kind of a Southern or Florida twist.”

Guests stood recently at small tables sampling a little of this, a little of that.

“There isn’t anything we haven’t liked yet. The food’s been good, and there’s a good variety,” said Elizabeth Kara of Spring Hill, Fla. “It’s a little bit better than what I expected.”

“And there’s a good assortment of drinks,” added her husband, Christopher Kara.

Recently, Norman van Aken, a Miami/Key West chef celebrated for his contributions to South Florida cuisine, gave cooking demonstrations, handed out samples of his sauteed shrimp and answered questions from a small audience.

The festival is set up in the shadow of Gwazi, an old-fashioned wooden roller coaster that Busch Gardens shut down in February because it was no longer popular with guests. The park has not yet decided how it will replace the coaster, which is still standing.

The area is lined with midway games, but for the Food & Wine Festival, some of the games were themed for the event. In the ring toss, for example, the targets were the necks of wine bottles.

On the large field next to Gwazi, a stage was set up. Young guests grabbed seats as soon as the doors opened at noon for a 6 p.m. concert by Fifth Harmony, a popular girl group, then lined the road and shrieked as the singers were driven away after their performance.

Concerts are scheduled every Saturday and Sunday through April 26, the last day of the festival.

The park’s regular attractions were open, and some festivalgoers took their cups of beer or plates of dessert to watch cheetahs strolling through their habitat or fat alligators sunning themselves by a nearby pond. In the background, roller-coaster riders screamed and whooped.

The Busch festival is not on the scale of Disney’s annual Epcot Wine & Food Festival held each fall. The Busch festival doesn’t have the galas, winetasting seminars and food workshops that the Epcot festival does. But on a recent Sunday it sounded as if it might develop its own loyal following. Of half a dozen guests interviewed, all said they have annual passes, come to Busch Gardens regularly and would return for the festival.

The festival is included in regular park admission. Food and beverages cost extra. The small plates were mostly in the $4-$7 range.