Gilroy Garlic Festival is back with new changes, but same community spirit

GILROY, Calif. (KGO) -- The sights and smells of the Gilroy Garlic Festival are returning this weekend.

In 1981, Steve Janisch started out washing dishes for the festival and worked his way to the line of Pyro Chefs.

"It's emotional, it's euphoric - kind of all wrapped into one," Janisch said.

Pyro Chef can cook calamari in two minutes, scampi in five.

"I've said for years - you know, we get to be rock and roll stars for three days out of the year. I mean it's a blast, you know, we've got a tight knit group of guys a lot of us have cooked together for many, many years," Janisch said.

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Festival Association President Paul Nadeau gave us a tour on Thursday, the night before gates open.

We talked about the garlic fries, garlic bread, pasta and all the other good food coming back.

New this year, an IPA with a hint of garlic. And there's lot of garlic around.

"We have about at least seven or 800 pounds that we'll cook with for sure," Nadeau said.

In the festival's peak days, the weekend would bring in an average of 80,000 to 100,000 people; this weekend is expected to draw 9,000.

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"We're about one seventh the size we used to be," Nadeau said.

For the first time since 1979, the three-day event will be held at the Gilroy Gardens, a theme park. The change comes after a gunman opened fire at the festival in 2019, killing three young people. For the past six years, organizers and city leaders have worked to reinvent it. Establish new safety procedures.

"This has been something that's been very cathartic, for us, for the community, everybody that's involved. We get stories every day, we talk to each other every day and we feel that we're healing," Nadeau said.

Walking around with Nadeau, you can see this is a community coming back together.

Whitney Pintello is an artist. She's been a vendor with the festival for 20 years.

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"I think there's an opportunity for all of us to cover over some tough memories with some really new special ones. And so we've had the last five years replaying an old tape, and this is such a great opportunity to make new memories for everybody," Pintello said.

She first attended the festival as a volunteer when she was 13.

"People don't know it, they probably feel it that behind the scenes the volunteer power really brings the strength to the festival," Pintello said.

The hope is, the festival can get bigger with each coming year.

"We would love to be about at least five times the size we are right now," Nadeau said.