Dining profile: Garlic fans get to taste-test two new demo dishes at this year’s festival
Gourmet Alley cooking Asian wrap, fish taco as future menu item dishes
Published in the July 27-August 10, 2016 issue of Gilroy Life
By Staff Report
Photo courtesy Gilroy Garlic Festival: The combo plates are a great way to sample Gourmet Alley favorites.
Visitors to the Gilroy Garlic Festival always expect to find something new in garlicky foods. This year’s celebration of the South Valley’s garlic heritage will not disappoint.
There will be no changes to the time-tested culinary offerings at Gourmet Alley, the “heart and soul” of the festival where volunteers cook up garlic-focused food. However, the festival will demonstrate two culinary items on its demonstration stage that, with audience feedback, might find a place in the alley one day, said Craig Miner, co-chair Gourmet Alley.
One of the demo items is an Asian chicken wrap made with fresh diced chicken cooked with garlicky Asian spices and served in a lettuce wrap. The other item is a fish taco made with Bassa Swai, a white fish that is breaded and fried and served on a corn tortilla with cabbage slaw and a sour cream aioli, a Mediterranean sauce made of garlic and olive oil. Garlic also spices the season of the breading.
“They are items that we’re considering putting into Gourmet Alley in the future but we want our audience to test it for culinary quality,” Miner said. “We want feedback from the audience to find out what they think of the two items and what they like about them and what they don’t like about them and what they might recommend that we do differently if we might serve them in Gourmet Alley.”
The demonstration stage is next to Gourmet Alley and, besides the two new items, chefs will also show visitors the techniques of cooking up garlicky-good meals such as the garlic Italian sausage sandwich, the pepper-steak sandwich, the garlic fries, the pasta con pesto, the calamari and the scampi.
Miner emphasized that the foods use locally-grown ingredients, much of which are donated by local farmers who want to support the festival and raise money for nonprofit organizations in the region.
He watches over an army of about 2,000 volunteers in Gourmet Alley who spend their hours under tents cooking for an estimated 100,000 visitors hungry for a garlic-infused meal. Depending on the turnout, Gourmet Alley makes about $600,000 each year.
“I got involved over 10 years ago as a volunteer preparing garlic bread,” Miner said. “And I just continued to help out within the alley to support the traditions of the garlic festival and take on a little more responsibility each time.”
Gourmet Alley helps make the annual festival the most famous food gatherings in the world, bringing people from many nations together to celebrate the greatness of garlic, he said.
“It’s a taste of Gilroy, it’s a taste of garlic, it’s a taste of who we are at the Gilroy Garlic Festival and the community of Gilroy,” he said. “You can’t go wrong with garlic.”