While we love Outside Lands, and the Folsom Street Fair, and maybe even the Ramen Festival for the sheer horror of watching famished people wait three hours for soup, the best fests are the more obscure ones with a small, but passionate focus.
The last weekend in May — which is not Memorial Day weekend, but the one after — Castroville throws its Artichoke Food & Wine Festival, which has been running for well over half a century to showcase the Pajaro Valley's signature crop. While familiar enough, artichokes aren't exactly the most common agricultural product grown in California (and the U.S. produces fewer of them than Peru or Morocco). What's up with that? They're really good.
To rectify this, this year's festival is bigger than ever. Beyond children dressed in artichoke costumes, and a music stage with country acts, there are wine tastings and microbrew pairings, "ARTY-tinis" made from something called ARTY Water, an artichoke eating contest, vendors, celebrity chefs doing demos, and more. Entrance is only $10 for adults.
Sadly, we don't live in a dairy-and-soybean region of the country where state fairs routinely feature life-size Michael Jacksons fashioned out of butter, but that doesn't mean we don't have, um, art o'choke. Among the many rules in the curiously named "Agro Art Contest" (sounds so angry!) is a stipulation that three-dimensional masterpieces must contain at least 60 percent produce and 10 percent artichokes. Sponsor Ocean Mist Farms provides the latter, as well as the cauliflowers and the broccoli. Entrants can also use brush or grasses in their sculptures, but not flowers.
If artichokes have always left you scratching your head, wondering why anybody would ever like these sharp-edged thistles that require more work to eat than crab, surely the Artichoke Festival will disabuse you of any preconceived notions. But in case you're not curious enough to click around for the etymology of this unusual word, it comes from the Arabic al-karsufa, which got mutilated into articiocco ("high stump") by the time it reached Italy, which made up for the error by creating the lovely artichoke liqueur, Cynar. Silly nomenclature aside, artichokes are delicious and you'll definitely come away with a deeper understanding of their culinary possibilities after attending this only-in-California festival.
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