With Val Filice’s new business venture
– Garlic Godfather Pasta Sauces – the community sees another of
the innumerable ripple-effect benefits of the Gilroy Garlic
Festival.
With Val Filice’s new business venture – Garlic Godfather Pasta Sauces – the community sees another of the innumerable ripple-effect benefits of the Gilroy Garlic Festival.
Filice, who, with Don Christopher and the late Rudy Melone, helped to found the Garlic Festival, has served as Master Chef at the festival’s world-famous Gourmet Alley since the stinking rose celebration’s inception. Hundreds of thousands of people have enjoyed Filice’s fabulous sauces each summer.
Other than the Garlic Festival, the only way the general public could get a taste of his sauce were at the many fundraisers where Filice cooked.
But now, with the help of Gilroy-based Blossom Valley Foods, the famous tomato, oregano and – of course – garlic sauce is available to the general public.
Filice and the festival’s cofounders persevered in the face of opposition and disinterest to the idea of a garlic festival. Now, 25 years later, he and the Gilroy economy will benefit with the sales of his famous pasta sauce.
With the move to bottle his pasta sauce, Filice, who is known for saying that the Garlic Festival “let garlic out of the closet,” is letting his pasta sauce out of the closet, too.
When you attend this year’s Garlic Festival, your taste buds will get their annual reminder of Filice’s delicious sauce. But now, when you crave a sample during the rest of the non-Garlic Festival year, it will be available.
It’s just another way Garlic Festival benefits ripple outward – and it is apropos that these ripples will benefit one of the festival’s founders.
