It’s my agency perception that each small city in America ought to have a lighthearted regional pageant themed round a selected native meals. Gilroy has its garlic pageant. Monterey County has one dedicated to artichokes. Mendocino County has an annual Apple Present (whereas Sebastopol, simply down Freeway 101, has a whole pageant celebrating apple blossoms). The Seattle suburb the place I used to be born and raised is thought for its salmon pageant, which is especially near my coronary heart.
It’s also my perception that the perfect case state of affairs for stated themed pageant (sorry to the Yale Bologna Competition, the West Virginia Roadkill Cook dinner-off and the Texas Testicle Competition) is in your metropolis’s crowning achievement to be one thing as cheery and candy because the strawberry. And Watsonville, California, is that lucky place. Strawberries are one of many space’s main crops, and berry large Driscoll’s firm headquarters are inside metropolis limits. The agricultural hub, one and a half hours south of San Francisco, is the self-declared (however doubtful) “Strawberry Capital of the World.”
This 12 months’s Watsonville Strawberry Competition, full with strawberry-themed snacks and stay music, came about Aug. 8, 2021.
Madeline Wells/SFGATEFinal weekend, the beloved Watsonville Strawberry Competition returned for the primary time since 2019. Usually a three-day occasion drawing 30,000 to 40,000 individuals, this 12 months’s iteration was scaled all the way down to someday and dropped the carnival part due to COVID-19. However with an abundance of strawberry-themed snacks, artwork and music, the smaller pageant was nonetheless a joyful return for the sweetest place on Earth.
As a lifelong strawberry obsessive (I’ve the strawberry tattoo to show it), I thought-about the drive to Watsonville from my Oakland dwelling as a little bit of a pilgrimage. For the primary time, I didn’t really feel ridiculous pairing my strawberry earrings with my strawberry-patterned shirt. I had a sense I wouldn’t be the one one dressing up.
Sonora Santanera La Nueva Sangre performs on the primary stage on the Watsonville Strawberry Competition on Aug. 8, 2021.
Madeline Wells/SFGATEAnd I used to be right. Instantly upon entering into the pageant’s busy grounds, I used to be upstaged by a younger lady in a full-body strawberry mascot costume, full with a tiara. She smiled winningly and waved her elegantly gloved arms for a photograph. I later discovered she held the illustrious title of Watsonville Strawberry Princess.
I additionally glimpsed somebody carrying the TikTok-famous sequined strawberry costume — a uncommon real-life encounter with a viral social media phenomenon. The dress-wearer paired it with a curly vivid pink wig and a chunky strawberry necklace. On the Strawberry Competition, it’s go massive or massive dwelling.
A vendor at this 12 months’s Watsonville Strawberry Competition on Aug. 8, 2021.
Madeline Wells/SFGATEWhat makes these quirkily themed regional festivals such a delight is that they’re a chance to get artistic with themed meals. The place else on the planet, I ask you, would you discover strawberry tacos on pink tortillas, strawberry pizza, strawberry waffles and strawberry paletas all on a single metropolis block?
Out of this abundance of strawberry-centric choices, I made a decision on a slice of strawberry pizza. Its sudden pink topping nestled amongst bits of sausage on a mattress of garlicky cheese. Biting into it, my senses have been initially confused about whether or not I used to be consuming one thing candy or savory. But it surely was good — surprisingly so. The strawberries broke up the saltiness of the cheese and sausage just like the chunks of pineapple on a Hawaiian pizza.
Strawberry pizza is a must-try on the Watsonville Strawberry Competition.
Madeline Wells/SFGATEFor dessert, I went with a much less adventurous selection: fresas con crema. The mixture of recent, tart strawberries topped with a mountain of sweetened cream by no means fails, particularly whereas mendacity within the solar listening to the boisterous orchestra of Sonora Santanera La Nueva Sangre.
Sweeter nonetheless, the proceeds from the meals bought on the Strawberry Competition benefited native nonprofit teams just like the Pajaro Valley Schooling Basis and Households in Transition, whereas the occasion acknowledged the native agricultural employees choosing the starring fruit with the “Watsonville Campesino Appreciation Caravan.”
You’ll be able to’t go flawed with fresas con crema.
Madeline Wells/SFGATE“They’re all the time on the market. They’re all the time on the market choosing the strawberries and this pageant is due to them,” Ruby Vasquez, a part of the appreciation caravan, instructed KION Information.
Whereas the Watsonville Strawberry Competition was extra low-key than normal this 12 months — I’d’ve beloved to go on a strawberry-themed teacup trip or attempt the 35 totally different strawberry meals objects in 2019’s pageant — the temper was certainly one of outsized pleasure.
Right here’s hoping that in 2022, Watsonville can honor its ruby pink crown jewel in full, over-the-top type.
This 12 months’s Watsonville Strawberry Competition, full with strawberry-themed snacks and stay music, came about on Aug. 8, 2021.
Madeline Wells/SFGATE