GILROY (KRON) — Get your fill of garlic in this weekend at the 38th annual Gilroy Garlic Festival.
The festival starts on Friday and runs through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Christmas Hill Park in Gilroy.
KRON4’s Will Tran gives us a preview of the festival in the video above.
Thousands of people are expected to head to Gilroy throughout the weekend for the event. It’s one of the large food festivals in the United States.
The event is full of, you guessed it, garlic. Garlic ice cream, garlic bread, and their famous garlic french fries will be featured at the festival.
“It feels cool and creamy and sweet,” festival President David Reynolds said. “What lingers is the burn of garlic on the back of your tongue and that’s how you know its garlic ice cream.”
Only free samples of the ice cream are available but the ice cream can be bought at LJB Farms at 585 Fitzgerald Ave. in San Martin, a community just outside Gilroy, Gilroy Welcome Center visitors services associate Patty Shoop said.
Other items on the menu include garlic calamari, garlic bread, garlic scampi and the garlic fries that have inspired a version being tested at McDonald’s.
“Most everything has garlic in it so you have to be a garlic lover,” Reynolds said. “We have all of the things that everyone loves each year.”
The festival runs through Sunday. General admission tickets are $20. Parking is $10.
The festival ends at 7 p.m. each day but admission ends at 6 p.m. New this year is a Champions of Charity event where four teams of first responders compete for a $3,000 prize that the winning team can give to the charity of its choice.
Sunday is the last day of the Garlic-Que BBQ Challenge, which is sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbeque Society, the world’s largest group of barbeque and grilling enthusiasts. Saturday is the professional competition and the amateur cook-off is on Sunday.
The heart of the festival is in Gourmet Alley where chefs put on a fiery show while cooking up scampi and calamari in large iron skillets.
“That’s always a show in and of it itself,” Reynolds said. Volunteers will be cooking other favorites.
Of course, the festival includes music and a children’s area as well as an amateur Great Garlic Cook-Off on Saturday.
Professional chefs compete on Sunday in the Garlic Showdown.
Visitors consume more than two tons of garlic each year and since 1979 more than 4 million people have attended the festival.
More information can be found at gilroygarlicfestival.com or by
calling (408) 842-1625.
Live entertainment, arts & crafts and cooking competition will also be held at the event that was founded in 1979.Click here to get tickets for the event.