Garlic Festival organizers have a new crop of extras planned for
this year’s extravaganza de pungent
– some new, some old and some with a celebrity flavor.
Garlic Festival organizers have a new crop of extras planned for this year’s extravaganza de pungent – some new, some old and some with a celebrity flavor.
We tip our hats to a remarkable off-season of planning and innovation by the Gilroy Garlic Festival organization. Perhaps the biggest coup is taking the always popular garlic fries into Gourmet Alley, where of course they belong. When Gordon Biersch failed to submit a vendor application, co-chairs of the Gourmet Alley committee, Alan Heinzen and Ken Fry, began developing a recipe of their own. They researched recipes and solicited opinions from people who had eaten garlic fries at past festivals or during baseball games at AT&T Park or McAfee Coliseum.
“One of the biggest things they complained about (was) that they were so soggy,” Fry recently told Dispatch reporter Christopher Quirk. “And of course they don’t use enough garlic.”
It’s a chicken-and-egg debate: Is the garlic an herb for the fries, or are the fries a handy vehicle to transport the garlic? We think you know the answer to that.
Potatoes and garlic are a magical combination, and some, like festival spokesman Peter Ciccarelli, might even say bringing the fries into Gourmet Alley is a spiritual experience.
“We would consider this the equivalent of taking communion at the Vatican,” Ciccarelli quipped.
Amen to that.
This year also marks the introduction of an Iron Chef-style battle of the pros. Raley’s and Nob Hill Foods are sponsoring the inaugural Garlic Showdown, a must-see cook-off among a quartet of top Bay Area chefs representing four area radio stations. Confirmed are Devon Boisen, executive chef of Spengers Fresh Fish Grotto & Restaurant in Berkeley, who will represent KGO Radio; and Tony Baker, executive chef of Montrio Bistro in Monterey, representing KWAV/Magic 63.
KBAY and KRTY will be naming their chefs by the end of the week or early next week.
Some of the early buzz generating from the festival office is the return of the Got Milk? Gravity Tour, considered by many daredevils to be the premier BMX, inline skating and skateboarding demonstration tour in America. Got Helmets?
The garlic fries, pro chefs and aerial BMXers are just a few of new additions and changes this year. The city of Gilroy will be showing us how recycling and composting is done, sending in a full dumpster-diving team to divert plastic, glass and metals away from our landfills and back for a repeat performance. But there’s one diversion that won’t happen this year. Gone is the Hospitality Tent, where volunteers were herded for their complimentary meals. This year volunteers will grub in Gourmet Alley with other festival-goers.
“We’re trying to get the flavor of garlic to hit you in the face,” Heinzen told the Dispatch. “When you leave the festival, you want to know you’ve been there.”
