After much anticipation, zesty garlic fried calamari made its debut at this year’s Garlic Festival. At $8 a pop, the calamari dish proved to be popular with many festival attendees.
“I really like this calamari dish. The batter has a bit of a kick to it, and the lemon juice gives it a nice fresh taste,” said Amy Renton, who was exploring the festival with her husband Ron. The two are Canadians who recently moved to Santa Cruz. Having first heard about the Garlic Festival while watching the Food Network a couple of years ago, the foodie pair had the event on their “must see” list for the summer.
The Rentons had also tried the sautéed calamari from Gourmet Alley, and picked the fried calamari as their favorite of the two.
Another attendee, Lyndsie Odle, proclaimed the dish to be, “the best calamari I’ve ever had,” noting that she has tried it all over the world. Lyndsie drove up with her family from their home in Los Angeles to spend the day at the festival.
The dish’s creator, Majid Bahriny, is the owner of the four Bay Area Mama Mia’s restaurants and a longtime Garlic Festival volunteer.
“Production of the deep fried calamari is going great – even smoother than I anticipated,” said Majid. “Between the Gourmet Alley’s sautéed calamari and the deep fried garlic calamari, we brought about 7,000 pounds of calamari to the festival. Four thousand pounds were brought in anticipation for the sautéed calamari, and 3,000 extra pounds of calamari were brought this year for the deep fried calamari dish.”
With the constant lines for the deep fried calamari quickly moving and customers only waiting four to five minutes for their dishes to be made, Majid anticipates the Garlic Festival is right on target to use as much calamari as they had planned.
While the amount of calamari on hand seemed to be matching production expectations, the cocktail sauce that is served with it ran out after the first day of the festival. Garlic Festival President Dennis Harrigan said Gourmet Alley burned through approximately 15 gallons of cocktail sauce on Friday alone.
Majid came to the festival in the early morning hours on Saturday to make more cocktail sauce, which he whips up from scratch.
“We don’t use pre-made ingredients, and everything is high quality. We prepped the ingredients for the calamari dish at Mama Mia’s in Morgan Hill,” he explains. “We brought 500 pounds of flour to the festival, and I think we may need to make a couple hundred more pounds for tomorrow.”
The calamari is prepared by volunteer staff from South Valley Young Life, a group Majid describes as a “great, easy group to work with.”
It was important that the dish was simple to prepare: volunteers are shown how to make the deep fried calamari, and then they’re responsible for quickly getting the process down pat. Majid has been overseeing calamari production during the festival. Between running the calamari show, judging the Great Garlic Cook-off Saturday and doing calamari demonstrations for crowds of festival attendees, to say that he has been a busy man this weekend is an understatement.
Tasting Majid’s deep fried calamari was a family affair for some, including Melyssa Hernandez and her family. Melyssa describes the dish as having “a nice little kick at the end and not too garlicky,” while Chris Hernandez was digging the spicy seasoning, calling the dish “chewy, flavorful and pretty good.” Marie Flowers, another taster in the group, said the calamari blended well with the stand’s garlic fries.
Lexin and Semma Gitler, two young children sharing the fried calamari with their mom, shyly described the dish as simply “awesome.”
“This is a great, fresh product, and I definitely plan to bring deep fried garlic calamari back to the festival next year,” Majid enthusiastically proclaimed.
