This weekend's Gilroy Garlic Festival will be the 38th time the event has been held, and through it's history the festival has highlighted local produce. Now known throughout the country, the event, which is expected to welcome 100,000 people over the course of three days, has risen in prominence as garlic consumption has increased in the United States.
Credit: Bill Strange Photography
“Garlic consumption has grown from one pound per person per year to three pounds per capita since the inception of the Gilroy Garlic Festival,” noted Holly Baker with the Gilroy Garlic Festival. “Other factors have definitely contributed to this increase, like the Mediterranean diet, low salt diets and cooking with fresh foods. Some people say garlic put Gilroy on the map, and Christopher Ranch is in Gilroy.”
Christopher Ranch's President, Don Christopher, is a co-founder of the event, and Christopher Ranch's garlic is the official garlic of the Festival. The company donates all of the garlic used at the event's cooking competitions and Gourmet Alley.
Though garlic is the main commodity highlighted at the festival, the event is also a showcase for local produce. Garlic can be found in abundance in the dishes prepared in the famous Gourmet Alley, where pyro chefs put on impressive displays of cooking prowess that incorporate giant flames, but the chefs also use ingredients found throughout the area.
Credit: Bill Strange Photography
“Most everything we cook there is sourced locally,” said Mark Badour, a longtime chef at Gourmet Alley and director of production for Coastline Family Farms in Salinas. “There's olive oil from a local distributor on the Central Coast, and there are peppers, onions, lots of basil and parsley that all come from local distributors, so it's all local produce.”
This will be the 31st time Badour volunteers as a pyro chef at the festival, and, with a day job in the produce industry, he has seen the impact the festival has had on the produce industry and the food culture in this country.
“Growing up, we had dinner as a family, and there's been less of that going around, I've noticed. But people are once again recognizing the role that food has and how it helps with the family structure,” noted Badour. Specific to garlic, he said his Italian household was very familiar with the ingredient and incorporated it into many dishes. The festival is a way to share some of the knowledge that not all segments of the country may be aware of.
Credit: Bill Strange Photography
“It gets the younger generations into this type of cooking,” said Badour. “And that's part of what the festival is about.”
The 38th annual Gilroy Garlic Festival will take place from July 29 through 31 from 10 am to 7 pm at the Christmas Hill Park in Gilroy, California. It's estimated visitors will consume more than two tons of fresh garlic at the event.
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