RV devotees ready, food and stages set
… it’s time to garlic party
The gates of the 27th annual Gilroy Garlic Festival are set to
open at 10 this morning, the payoff of a year spent planning and a
hectic week spent transforming Christmas Hill Park into the
festival grounds.
Thousands of hometown garlic lovers will join the out-of-town
crowds during the weekend to enjoy countless cloves under sunny
skies. Morning clouds gave way to sunshine Thursday, but the
temperatures weren’t too hot, reaching 87 degrees by
mid-afternoon.
Gilroy – The gates of the 27th annual Gilroy Garlic Festival are set to open at 10 this morning, the payoff of a year spent planning and a hectic week spent transforming Christmas Hill Park into the festival grounds.
Thousands of hometown garlic lovers will join the out-of-town crowds during the weekend to enjoy countless cloves under sunny skies. Morning clouds gave way to sunshine Thursday, but the temperatures weren’t too hot, reaching 87 degrees by mid-afternoon.
Outside the gates, the party was already starting Thursday afternoon. Recreational vehicles dotted a parking lot off Miller Avenue, on the west side of the park. Inside a semi-circle of five RVs, 11 friends shared snacks, beers and laughs in the shade.
“It’s fun, and we all love garlic dearly,” said Gloria Wilson, of Arroyo Grande. “We’re looking forward to testing out all the different foods and the entertainment is great.”
“You don’t want to be around us tomorrow,” said her husband, Fred.
The Wilsons and four other couples trek to Gilroy each Garlic Festival Thursday, about a three-hour trip. They visit the festival on Friday and leave town Saturday, to escape the crowds.
Earlier this week, Garlic Festival Association chairs and volunteers began doling out the elbow grease to lay out the grounds, set up tents and prepare Gourmet Alley for the pyro chefs’ arrival.
“I’m afraid to say, everyone says things are going really well,” Festival President Jennifer Speno said.
Many of the seasoned volunteers estimated they were actually about a day ahead of schedule. The Gourmet Alley tents were raised, along with shade tents, beer and wine gardens, and entertainment stages. Portable toilets were set up around the park, signs pointing to parking lots were set up around town, and a tent atop a hill was ready for the California Highway Patrol sergeant who will watch traffic.
The set-up schedule hit a four-hour bump Wednesday morning, when volunteers at Gourmet Alley and the new cooking demonstration tent had to create a flat, “washable” surface under one of the preparation areas and the demonstration stage itself, a new requirement imposed by the health department.
“They decided last year they want us on a washable space, and grass doesn’t count as washable,” said Greg Bozzo, Gourmet Alley chair.
Volunteers, including some from Home Depot, put durable interior/exterior carpet over large pieces of wood and laid them down below the area for preparing and serving garlic sausage sandwiches and mushrooms on the north side of the alley, and below the demo stage.
Association Director Hugh Davis was prepping the stage area, which is situated near the alley on the ranch side. This is the first time festival guests will be able to watch, up close and personal, festival veterans prepare their favorite alley dishes, including calamari, mushrooms and garlic chicken stir fry. The stage will host demonstrations from 11am to 5pm today, Saturday and Sunday, Davis said.
“We hope to kind of keep it going all day, have someone in here cooking and talking to people. We want as much interaction as we can get with the people here,” he said.
As various chefs – including Bozzo, last year’s President John Zekanoski, Gene Sakahara, Judy Filice, and Jim Baggese – prepare a different dish each hour, they will share a little garlic lore with their audience, Davis said. Besides the history and recipe of the dish itself, the demonstration chefs will provide trivia, from Christopher Ranch, on the medical uses of garlic.
The finishing touches were put on Gourmet Alley Thursday. The pyro chefs’ stoves, which were donated last year, and sinks arrived Wednesday and some of the ingredients were being prepped off-site. The noodles for the penne were pre-cooked in the school kitchen at Alisal High in Salinas. Over at Rod Kelley Elementary School, volunteers with the Gilroy High School choir defrosted and apportioned the calamari and scampi. Other ingredients – mostly ready-to-go – arrived throughout the week, including 12,000 pounds of beef for the peppersteak and 150 gallons of donated Colavita extra virgin olive oil.
Bozzo said he is one of many keeping a close eye on the weather forecast, which is calling for temperatures between 85 and 90 degrees all three days of the festival.
“I’m excited about the weather,” Bozo said. “I think as temperatures go down, people eat more. So they’ll eat seconds and thirds.”
Last year, visitors to Gourmet Alley consumed 11,512 peppersteak sandwiches, 8,395 orders of garlic mushrooms, 12,286 combination plates, and 21,920 servings of garlic bread.
Other food vendors – including locals Happy Dog Pizza, It’s A Grind coffee, Maui Tacos and Gordon Biersch – were setting up Thursday, along with the arts and crafts vendors.
Ever-popular Herbie bobbleheads will go on sale as soon as the gates open today. The two Garlic City Mercantile booths will have Herbie-only express lanes set up, where people can purchase the bobbleheads by cash or check. If the dolls are selling like hot-cakes, some will be set aside for Saturday, Speno said.
