A VERY DEEP QUESTION: When does a food festival go beyond the bounds of doing everything you expect it to do? We suppose we should briefly outline what a major food fest should do, at least according to regular attendees. 1) Offer delicious food. 2) Offer delicious drinks. 3) Be bustling enough to be fun but not overly crowded or annoying. 4) Sell t-shirts or something in case we want to show our friends we went. 5) Stage a chef demo or two. Done? Done. But sometimes one gets a strange side perk, as with the Gilroy Garlic Festival. It's probably one of our state's most widely known eat-it-up parties -- thank the friendly guy who walks around in the bulb suit, shirtless, in part for that -- and people who go want to brag about going. Sure, you can snack on most foods without it being noteworthy, but if you're eating deep-fried garlic cloves or garlic ice cream, you're telling people about it ASAP.
WHICH MEANS... A general uptick in social media-type, Instagrammy bragging. Yep, it is just an observation, but if you don't see a bunch of people on their phones, possibly posting to Facebook or Twitter, about their garlic festival escapades, you're not looking hard enough. (And if we're wrong about that we'd voluntarily don the bulb costume and parade around the grounds for an hour. Heck, we'd do that willingly.)
TICKETS ARE ON SALE: The when? If you know the 35-year-old clove consortium, then you know the month we're about to type: July. The days? The 26th through 28th. The cost? Tickets start at $15. You? Packing the sunscreen and your phone, so you can post from there about all of the strange and savory garlicky goodness you're consuming. It's just about the braggable foodie fest in all the land, is all.
