Garlic Festival

It was HOT at the garlic festival. Like 90 degrees with little shade. But that wasn’t really their fault. Also, there was a lot of traffic, but that wasn’t their fault either. It actually was surprisingly well run. You park in a huge lot and get shuttled to the fair entrance. The line for the shuttle was long, but went quickly. And the shuttle was a full on charter bus with plush seats and A/C. Not some rinky dink school bus.  There were plenty of lines to buy tickets to get in, and I didn’t have to wait at all. The food lines looked long, but the booths were so well run that it didn’t take long at all. It was a miracle that such a well run fair could spring up in the middle of nowhere. But I guess they’ve had years of practice.

And the thing about the middle of nowhere is that people are friendly. Usually I’m suspicious of friendly, but since I had driven around enough to see just how isolated Gilroy is I could understand. They were all just happy not to have to look at the same 20 faces they see day in and day out. The guy who sold me the garlic shot glass seemed genuinely interested in where I was from and my trip to the bonfante gardens. I guess they get bored. Another thing to support this theory is that most people have super nice, new houses. But we passed this one run down shacky place that had 3 satellite dishes. They knew what was important tv, a connection to the outside world.

I tried the garlic ice cream, and surprisingly, it didn’t make me want to die. It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever tasted. It tasted like vanilla with a garlic after taste. Actually it wasn’t ice cream at all, it was soft serve. This seems like false advertising. Maybe I’ll get my own ice cream maker and try to make actual garlic ice cream.  The garlic jelly bellys however, were quite awful.  I was trying to figure out who I could buy a full bag of the garlic belly flops for. But I don’t hate anyone that much.

I ate a combination plate containing a garlic sausage, garlic mushrooms, garlic chicken pasta stir fry, garlic bread and garlic shrimp. I also tasted the calamari (surprisingly unbreaded and unfried), and pesto garlic pasta.  Later we passed by the fried garlic bologna sandwich booth, I wasn’t hungry, but since I read about it in the paper I had to try it. I can’t tell if it was a disappointment because I didn’t like the bread, because I expected the bread to be grilled along with the bologna, because I wasn’t hungry or if I just didn’t like it.  I have to say the most disappointing thing was the bun for the sandwich and my sausage. I don’t know why, I just didn’t like it. But that’s an awfully good sign that I didn’t like the pre-packaged food, and I liked everything they cooked there.

I saw the garlic bobblehead doll. I wanted to buy it because I read about it, but it was just so ugly that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Poor ugly garlic man.

The biggest disappointment was that the garlic man was no where to be found. This was probably good for him, because he might have died from heatstroke, but sad for me. (meli if you have a picture with the garlic man, send it my way, I may just photoshop myself in)

We stayed shorter than I would have liked, but just about as long as we could because of the heat. Maybe if it was an ice festival we could have stayed longer.

Conclusion: fun, but I’m glad the whole trip wasn’t just for the garlic festival, that would have just been a freaking long drive.