Garlic Festival Enjoys the Sweet Smell of Success

Egyptian workers building the Great Pyramids ate garlic for stamina. Roman warriors ate it before battle. It was cultivated in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. This bulb of mighty and mythic proportion is no garden-variety vegetable.

But it also has everyday appeal. A former co-worker of mine had the habit of gnawing on a clove or two before lunch. I eventually got used to my eyes watering as he approached, but never lost the fear that he would cause the ficus to wither or the fire alarm to go off.

If you insist on eating lots of garlic, it’s best to do it in the company of like-minded souls. And there’s no better place to find them than at the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival.

The town of Gilroy, 70 miles south of San Francisco, grows or processes 90% of the garlic consumed in the United States. Will Rogers once called it “the only town in America where you can marinate a steak by hanging it on the clothesline.”

Even when you’re within a five-mile radius of town, you might feel like having your clothes dry cleaned. “When the cannery is going,” says resident J. Chris Dowell, “the whole town smells like spaghetti sauce.”

This year’s festival, July 27-29, will be Gilroy’s 12th. Attendance has soared from 20,000 in 1979 to last year’s 150,000 hungry souls, who consumed over a ton of the potent stuff.

A three-day fete just for a gnarly white herb? Hey, this is California. When was the last time you saw grown men dressed as bulbs of garlic? Or a Garlic Queen? Or a Tour de Garlique bike race, a 10-kilometer Garlic Gallop and a Garlic Squeeze Barn Dance?

Add one golf tournament, one tennis tournament and four stages that provide more traditional garlic entertainment such as a garlic cookoff.

The festival accepts garlic recipes for the cookoff weeks in advance, then whittles things down to eight finalists who compete to come up with the most delectable garlic-laced dish.

Garlic ice cream has become a perennial offering at the festival.

“When you’ve been eating garlic all day,” said Chris Perez of the city’s visitors bureau, “you can’t really taste it.” Or there’s garlic pie, with meat and potatoes. And garlic-chip cookies. Or chocolate-covered garlic.

Last year’s winner was Bob and Lee’s three-garlic pasta, which adds to an unsuspecting batch of shredded chicken, cream and white wine enough garlic to satisfy the entire 42nd Airborne. Not only is this recipe delicious, but fellow dinner companions can easily be located in the dark.

A few years ago, a woman from San Diego submitted a recipe for homemade dog biscuits. She promised that the doggie snacks “won’t hurt small children if they happen to eat one.”

Enough of the dedicated amateurs. The real reason those 150,000-plus attend each year is to feast on what the pros have to offer. This is a festival for people who like to eat. The repeat business proves that they’re not disappointed.

“It’s like the best barbeque you’ve ever been to,” says San Franciscan Sharon Black, a longtime festival-goer.

Gourmet Alley, the festival’s focal point on the fairgrounds, is lined with local chefs tending huge, bicycle wheel-sized skillets over open flames. It’s a sight to behold as calamari is tossed into the air, then doused with wine, causing huge flames to erupt.

The menu reads like this: calamari ($3.50), scampi in lobster sauce ($4.50), pepper steak sandwich ($3.00), pasta con pesto ($2.50), garlic bread ($.50) and tons, quite literally, of fried vegetables.

After munching on all that, it is the perfect time to visit Garlic Grove, still on the fairgrounds is where garlic worshippers can see exhibits showing the stages of garlic production, garlic crafts (such as 14-carat gold garlic charms, rings, earrings), photographs and paintings of garlic, ceramic garlic keepers, and get answers from garlic experts to any conceivable garlic-related question.

Or track down the Garlic Queen, 20-year-old Kimberly Yafai, a student at San Jose State. She was crowned three months ago in a pageant in which the traditional bathing suit competition is replaced by a less sexist “garlic speech.”

Gilroy in late July is hot--often in the low 90s--but humidity is low. Any shade makes all the difference and shade abounds at the festival--four large tents and plenty of trees. Also, it’s close to the ocean and afternoon breezes are plentiful. Still, shorts and T-shirts are the uniforms of the day.

Festival volunteers have put a lot of time into traffic control and parking, and it shows. Even at peak hours, garlic gluttons will wait in traffic backups for only brief periods.

The festival is non-profit, with the proceeds benefitting local charities, and run by area volunteers. Considering that on a typical festival day the town population triples, it is quite an undertaking. The ratio of volunteers to residents (1 in 7) is remarkable.

Gilroy residents have done such a fine job in running the festival through the years that their expertise has been sought by a town in France hoping to improve its own garlic and food festival.

Garlic Festival Tidbits

How to get there: Gilroy is 350 miles north of Los Angeles and is accessible via State Highway 152 off of Interstate 5, or directly on U.S. 101.

Admission and hours: The Gilroy Garlic Festival takes place July 27-29, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is $7 for adults, $2 for children and seniors. Friday’s admissions are $1 less.

Accommodations: There are no accommodations in Gilroy. Visitors are directed to the Monterey area, about a 45-minute drive south.

For more information: Contact the Gilroy Garlic Festival Assn. at P.O. Box 2311, Gilroy, Calif. 95021, (408) 842-1625.