A Garlic Way to Spend the Day
The garlic festival began without a hitch this year, celebrating 25 years of success in the community, the event has grown to be one of the premiere garlic events in the nation. With thousands of people expected to show up for the two-day event on October 1 and 2, vendors and staff scrambled to get all their last minute details completed, as customers eagerly waited to get through the gates.
The event took place at the Cantine Field in Saugerties, NY where the entire field is completely transformed into hundreds of little tents offering their best variation of garlic. People traveled from near and far to get a little taste of all the different ways garlic could be incorporated into food. “Little” would be the biggest understatement to describe the selection of garlic in ways people probably did not know existed.
Although there was not enough time to stop at every tent at the event I had the opportunity to talk with some of the vendors selling interesting products. Beginning with the garlic ice cream tent, yes - garlic ice cream. According to the staff at Guido’s Frozen Desserts, many of the customers who return year after year to the event “bring dry ice with them and take the ice cream to go by the quart,” and that they frequently sell out of this unlikely but popular product.
Garlic ice cream is not the only variation of dessert and garlic combined, the next place that caught my eye was the Café Aurora tent, based out of Poughkeepsie, NY, which offered cannoli-garlic filled cream. Celebrating 75 years in business, owner Lou Strippoli said “this is the only off premise event I do and I’ve been doing it for 10 years now and look forward to the people and events every time.”
“I couldn’t have imagined so much garlic and so many different ways to present it and prepare it,” said Columbia County resident Megan O’Malley. First time goers, including myself seemed infatuated with the event as whole, to have what seems like such a small ingredient of food turned into the main display at this huge festival left quite an impression. Two other ladies, Jane and Karen from Ellenville and Albany have been coming here for years now and described their time as being “good fun.”
Many of the people attending the event seemed to be most taken in by the The Whole in The Wall restaurant based out of Binghamton, NY. They go around to many food festivals with their different variations of garlic pesto but said that “this particular event is the Superbowl of the year for them.” Singing and dancing in unison the staff of this tent sure seemed to know how to grab the attention of many garlic fans and get their pesto in their mouth.
Despite the tricky weather that began with the event, every other aspect seemed to be going according to plan. People were coming in by the dozens and filling up the Cantine Field quickly as the day progressed and the weather cleared up. Located in Saugerties, NY this annual festival has turned into one of the biggest food festivals around the Hudson Valley, and continues to expand and experiment with the different variations of garlic available.
