1997 Ad

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 8, 1997 | by Gayle M.B. Hanson

Gilroy, Calif., stinks. You can smell the town from the highway that snakes past the suburbs and outlet malls, golden hills and orchards. The scent seeps into your skin and leaves an acrid burning sensation at the back of your throat.

The culprit is garlic, and here in Gilroy, the self-proclaimed garlic capital of the world, some 120,000 pilgrims have journeyed to town for a summer weekend celebration of the fabled bulb.

"Let's just say we process hundreds of millions of pounds of garlic a year," announces Alan Viarengo, a professional garlic dryer, as he stands before a 4-foot-long plexiglass model of an actual 200-foot-long garlic dryer. The dryer, Viarengo explains, can process 5,000 pounds of garlic an hour. Millions of cloves roll along a conveyor belt above blowers that shoot up warm air that draws moisture from the bulbs -- and spews it into the surrounding atmosphere. "When you've got 12 of these running at one time, the town can really start to smell. It's great!"

The 19-year-old garlic festival got its start at a Rotary Club luncheon at the Christopher Ranch, which ships 60 million pounds of garlic annually (and whose salad dressings are staples in supermarkets across the nation). Don Christopher, who planted his first 10 acres of garlic on his family property in the 1950s, had invited food writers for a banquet of garlic-laden cuisine. The heady bouquet inspired annual devotion.

Today, Gilroy is the world's largest garlic purveyor, with sister cities in garlic-loving towns in Japan, Italy and France. And the festival's staff of 4,000 local volunteers has raised more than $5 million for charity -- a palpable bond of community typical of farming communities.

This year, Gilroy residents tipped their hats to Christopher by dedicating the festival to his work, but most visitors who lurched along in bumper-to-bumper traffic toward "Garlic Grove" were more interested in sampling the product. The heart of the festival, its very raison d'etre, is the consumption of tons of garlic-flavored foods prepared in the famous Gourmet Alley. Here charitable organizations vie with one another to proffer the most exotic garlic edibles.

An aficionado might start with classic escargot and garlic-marinated mushrooms, then sample flaming garlic calamari cooked in oversized iron pans. Letting out his belt loop a notch, he might taste a garlicky marinated pepper steak basted with brooms of rosemary, topping it all off with a bowl of chocolate-and-garlic ice cream. If that menu seems a little pedestrian, he can try garlic alligator tails or wild boar on a stick.

"I don't think I'd eat it again," said Venita Battu, wrinkling her nose as she swallowed a mouthful of the ice cream. She passed the dish to her husband who took a spoonful, turned down his lips, then generously handed the bowl to their son, Shekhar, who happily consumed the rest.

Pigging out is so integral to the festival that the art of the gourmand was put to song by this year's Garlic Festival Queen, the aptly named Michelle Madrigal. Madrigal, a charming young woman with garlic-clove earrings, knocked her friendly competition out of the box with a self-penned torch song, "Garlic's All I Think About":

My mind wanders where it will

When I smell those garlic fumes.

I just think of pepper steaks,

I just think of stuffed mushrooms.

The queen and her court then joined 75 members of the general public to learn the craft of garlic braiding, a skill that requires participants to weave upward of 16 heads of garlic into a 2-foot-long decorative braid. Farmer Bonnie Cillio coached the crowd through the intricate motions while an onlooker gently joshed her royal majesty. "Didn't you have to know how to do this before you were crowned?" he joked.

The crowd laughed. The queen waved and sent a blush of scent wafting over her subjects.