America's First Theme Park Fetes Its Berried Past I am not a food writer. But the invitation to preview Knott's Berry Farm's Boysenberry Festival came in around lunchtime; and I was hungry, so I agreed. While the impulse to attend rooted in my stomach, actually writing about it demanded a more salient reason, a cerebral germ that would somehow develop something worth reading. This realization dawned on me only after I had RSVP'd and eaten a sandwich, in that order.
I've never read much food writing, though I like the idea of it: the paradigm of creation and consumption of mental nourishment echoing that of bodily sustenance; comestibles, so ephemeral, providing raw material for belles lettres that should not only do them justice but also go beyond them in order to justify their own semi-permanence. Knott's culinary offerings are of storied excellence--how would I, with only a layman's knowledge of gastronomy, do them justice? It takes a degree of epicurean expertise to grasp and then articulate the significance of a particular meal, and a certain sort of sophistication to seek and appreciate vicarious culinary enjoyment through words. Such connoisseurship is something I don't possess; and arriving at the event, I was regretful of my deficiency and no closer to developing an idea of how to cover it.
Yet I had no problem re-creating the appetite that had led to accepting the invitation. My initial intention was to sample each dish for the purpose of describing it; but the unlikelihood of accomplishing this was evident upon entering the Wilderness Dance Hall, now transformed into an elegant banquet room so bountiful that the chasm between edible selection and abdominal capacity was overwhelming. Lining the walls were tables panoplied with neat rows of bottles of wine; gleaming silver vessels emitting savory aromas; artful arrangements of fruits, breads, and meats.
One of several dessert tables.
That a single berry had inspired such profusion was remarkable. The sheer number of different classes of boysenberry-related foods was astounding. Connected by the boysenberry thread, options were diverse enough to please nearly any inclination: myriad desserts, vegetables, sandwiches, hot dogs, ribs, even fried alligator.
Alligator seems improbable until one considers that until it closed in 1984, the California Alligator Farm used to be across the street from Knott's. I like alligators, so their meat presents me with an ethical dilemma. Someone once suggested, in the manner of Ben Franklin, that I justify consuming my favorite animal by reasoning that if it had the opportunity to eat me, it would. But as a frequent and careless traveler to southern swamplands, I know that is not true--plenty of gators have had ample opportunities to eat me, and none ever have. However, I also know how delicious they taste; and having recently returned from Florida, I was curious as to how this would compare with the gator I had partaken at a roadside stand in its natural habitat.
My pity for a slaughtered animal is inversely proportional to its palatability; and this one was so toothsome that I hardly felt sorry at all. Served with rich, garlicky boysenberry aioli, it was fried to succulent perfection. It tasted almost like poultry, only better.
Servings of fried alligator, ready for consumption.
At an interlude from the feast, Knott's Berry Farm Publicist Leidy Arevalo and Marketing Systems Representative Brad Jashinsky informed us of festival details and explained how Knott's history and that of the boysenberry are intertwined. Walter and Cordelia Knott first arrived on the site in December 1920, and bought the land in 1927.
"A few short years later, in the 1930s, Walter Knott brought back to life the few remaining boysenberry vines in the entire world, and began selling sweet, delicious boysenberries from his farm stand out on Beach Blvd," Jashinsky stated. "Every boysenberry in the world, including the over 19 million that our culinary team uses every year here, can trace their history back to Knott's Berry Farm, to this land where we are right now."
Arevalo described festival entertainment offerings, which will include pie eating contests, shows, dance parties, and attractions for children.
"We are asking guests to come for the food and stay for the amazing entertainment," she concluded.
Everything is baked and produced in-house; representatives from Knott's culinary team said a few words about their creative processes.
"Since the end of the Boysenberry Festival last year, we've had so much fun in our kitchens, just experimenting with boysenberries.," said John Chieu, Director of Food and Beverage. "Seeing how we can cook it, fuse it, in all the different kinds of fun ways."
"The fun part of our job is to start playing with all the food, playing around the kitchen," said Executive Sous Chef Eubaldo Ramirez. "...Different tastes, different items, different mentalities, this is what we come up with from a long time of trying."
Members of Knott's culinary team, from left: John Chieu, Director of Food and Beverage; Russ Knibbs, Vice President of Food and Beverage; Bobby Obezo, Executive Chef; Ruben Bugarin, Executive Sous Chef; Eubaldo Ramirez, Executive Sous Chef.
Lest we forget that the Boysenberry Festival commemorates Knott's history as much as it celebrates fare, park historian Eric Lynxwiler took us away for short history tours. Leading us through Ghost Town, Lynxwiler, who wore a boysenberry patterned shirt for the occasion, exuded love for the park as he plied us with facts about the history of various attractions and explained the theme park's genesis.
"People came to buy the boysenberries, but they stayed because of the chicken dinners," he said. "The chicken dinner waits could be anywhere from one to three hours...and with all that wait time, people were wandering around Walter Knott's property, over his farmland, and just waiting. So he wound up building all these little tiny amusements for them in order to keep them occupied and distracted." Lynxwiler went on to describe some of these early amusements, including a replica of George Washington's fireplace and phosphorescent rocks that glowed under a black light.
"These little things wound up turning into one massive construction project," he continued. "Between 1940 and 1941, Walter Knott built Ghost Town." Knott was originally only going to build Main Street, which is the same today, but it became so popular that he kept adding more streets. One of the biggest myths is that the buildings were brought from the Calico ghost town. This is not true, though many of the old buildings were imported from other locations.
"This arbor is the connecting line," Lynxwiler said, gesturing above as we stood under a fragrant wisteria vine towards the end of our tour. "This trellis once went all the way down to the chicken dinner restaurant. All we have left is one gigantic vine from the mid 1940's and this is it...Oftentimes we can forget that this wisteria vine is here because it blooms only in spring and it just looks dead otherwise...This is the connecting piece of our history, this one plant that's connecting us to our boysenberry and chicken dinner roots as we grew into a theme park in the 1940's."
Whereas newer theme parks trade on branded casts of well-known cartoon characters, Hollywood ties, or super thrill rides, Knott's fantasy is based in a more genuine reality: the past. Its charm lies in preserving its connection to the past while integrating it into the present. It was built on nostalgia: early exhibits memorialized Walter Knott's family's pioneer history. California's frontier and mining days were already long gone by the time Knott began construction on his first attractions. With Ghost Town, the park began as a simulacrum of Western past. Now, the park itself is so old that its own history has become significant, while endemic legends have developed atop the somewhat shaky foundation of its nostalgic simulations. Die-hard fans are already eagerly anticipating the symbolic comeback of the defunct "Knott's Beary Tales" ride in the form of T-shirts and a children's attraction during the festival.
By and large, the Old West feels as palpable here as can be expected in our current era. At what other theme park can one still ride a real stagecoach and a historic train? Real artifacts and photos are displayed at the park's Western Trails museum. But throughout the park, certain facets of the history of Knott's and the West are highlighted, while others are buried.
A building now called the "Gun Shop," for instance, was one of Walter Knott's neighboring farmhouses. Its true history is covered by a fabricated one, more in line with the overall appearance of the phony Ghost Town that now surrounds it. This building's attachment to a generic idea of the Old West supersedes its own history which is newer but actually more relevant to the theme park's origin. On the other hand, the edifice now housing the Haunt Museum (so proclaimed with a large painted sign) was once Downey's first post office. In that instance, history specific to Knott's is exhibited even as it hides the fact that the building is actually linked to the more far-reaching past of a local city and the U.S. postal system. Both buildings are truly antiquated--but their past is all but lost on the average person, unless they are fortunate enough to have a historian like Lynxwiler there to inform them of it.
Park historian Eric Lynxwiler. In the background to the right is the "Gun Shop" that was once Walter Knott's neighboring farmhouse.
These facts are all very interesting, but they vanish amid legends; one's head begins to swim in the phantasmagoric emulsification of it all. That floating feeling is good until one earnestly tries to partition fact from façade and finds them inextricable. Truth ineluctably becomes shrouded in myth: real and replica are so thoroughly blended that they are inseparable. The history of the park itself begins to seem as fabricated as the animatronic dummies in the mine ride.
Going a step further, even thinking this way feels tired and old--these theories are nothing new; plenty of writers like Baudrillard, Umberto Eco, and Charles Moore have already expounded on them, exhausting the potential of those ideas as they relate to theme parks, California, and America. Invoking them feels like a pretense, an intellectual merry-go-round too hypnotic to disembark. Postmodern analysis of simulation has itself become jejune. Irony tires.
That is why the Boysenberry Festival seems so refreshing. This is only its second year--its first as Knott's main spring event--but its provenance is clear and relatively un-convoluted. Knott's Berry Farm's name and logos intimate the obvious fact that it began as a berry farm--no research required, no questions necessary. Walter Knott originally developed attractions to bring people to his farm and amuse them while they waited for meals at his restaurant. The restaurant remains, but amusements have supplanted the farm that gave the park its name. Berries are largely irrelevant to the current land use; but they are no less important to the park's history; and for the festival's brief duration, they are back in the limelight.
Entertainment abounds in Southern California; whereas agriculture is scarce, so we crave the pastoral idea of it. With the Boysenberry Festival, the relationship between agriculture and amusement has come full circle at Knott's. Unique amusements once enticed people to stay for food; now, innovative food offerings are devised to attract people to the theme park that first developed around agriculture and food only to subsume them. Amusements originally entertained people while they waited for food; now, food diverts people from waiting in line for rides.
Insofar as it centers on food, which is timelessly relevant, the festival transcends irony. Because the fruit that it celebrates is intrinsic to Knott's past and inextricably linked to the site, it feels free from the usual theme park affectation. The Boysenberry Festival honors the past, in harmony with Knott's theme, while featuring something tangible and intemporal, unchanged from its predecessors. A boysenberry today is fundamentally the same as one in the 1930's.
It does seem ironic that the actual berries that originated here are now imported from other places; but even this is not incongruous. The land on which Knott's Berry Farm sits lays claim to their source, but time inevitably changes land use; the land is too valuable for agricultural use now, but the food is grown elsewhere because people here still need to eat.
By the time Lynxwiler returned us to the Wilderness Dance Hall (which we now understood to be formerly heavyweight boxing champion Jim Jefferies' barn, built in the 1800's, imported from Burbank), my temporarily sated hunger had returned. What to try first? Fried cheese curds were one of my favorite late-night snacks in college. Those I enjoyed at dining halls years ago pale in comparison to Knott's version. Enhanced by boysenberry dipping sauce, the cheese flavor was exquisite, fresh, and unadulterated by oil. The consistency was neither rubbery nor gooey. I was tempted to go back for a second helping, but there were too many other viands to try.
Cedar Fair, Knott's parent company, trades under the symbol FUN on the New York Stock Exchange. The Fun Bun is becoming a leitmotif of the Boysenberry Festival; its all-around laughableness has inspired internet memes. It's difficult to order the Fun Bun with a straight face. Its form is as comical as its name; but its flavor is seriously ambrosial. Slathered in boysenberry flavored cream cheese, it has the best attributes of both a cinnamon roll and a funnel cake; its taste is as gourmet as carnival food can be. Large enough for three or four people to share, the Fun Bun is so dense that in negligent hands, a plastic plate could easily collapse under its weight. There is something endearing about its blobby compactness. Were it not so appetizing and perishable, it would make a fine paperweight.
One of the best treats of all was hearing the chefs explain the efforts behind their creations. My conversations with chefs Bobby Obezo and Ruben Bugarin increased my appreciation not only for the food itself, but for the labor and ingenuity that went into it. Chef Obezo described in detail how members of the culinary team are constantly striving to invent unexpected uses for elemental ingredients like the boysenberry. Perfecting each new recipe is a challenge that requires the production of batch after batch sampled by many people. From a recipe's inception, chefs send their bakers back into the kitchen for successive improvements, making minor variations until the food item is finally ready to be served at Knott's. The culinary team is always working on new recipes for Knott's restaurants and events. It's a constant process, one that the chefs seem to relish almost as much as one might enjoy eating their products.
"My job is to put smiles on people's faces," Obezo concluded simply.
As the evening progressed and my stomach grew fuller, the futility of my initial intention to sample everything in order to write about it became apparent, especially in regard to libations. As a casual student of wine, I rarely pass up an opportunity to taste one. A plethora of vineyards, wines, and craft beers were represented; it seemed journalistically irresponsible not to sample every kind. However, it would have been more irresponsible to let my mind drown, which would have been inevitable had I tried even half of the offerings. So, I had to pass. All of those that I tasted were good; but mentioning names would be careless: doing so might give the impression of favor, and my selection was purely random--except for the delectable boysenberry flavored dessert wine.
All along, I had been taking notes on each item; but after awhile, my palate became insensible and I gave up. "By 7:15, I was experiencing sensory overload," I wrote in apology to my future self as I put away my notebook and continued eating. It was all so good. How was I going to write about it?
Bursting with flavor, a reddish lemonade floating with berries was nearly as appealing as anything alcoholic. A fish and chips sandwich, garnished with boysenberry tartar sauce, contained actual potato chips that augmented the crunchiness of the fried fish. A bevy of desserts included: boysenberry cheesecake, boysenberry mousse, chocolate-covered boysenberry ice cream bars, boysenberry gummi bears, boysenberry cotton candy...and by the time I had tried all of those, I couldn't try any more. My hunger was no match for the bounty.
I was just about to surrender when Chef Obezo brought me a boysenberry glazed chicken and sausage sandwich. My stomach was nearly full, but I couldn't refuse.
"You have to try this," he urged. I was glad I did. I normally avoid ground meat, but the boysenberry glazed sausage was mild and expertly spiced. I liked it so much that he brought me another, this time with a variation in glaze that slightly altered the taste--and as a bonus, he added boysenberry glazed chicken and pork wings.
Somehow, I eluded a stomachache. Traversing the appropriately deserted Ghost Town's darkened streets at the end of the night, I realized how much my perceptions had changed over the past several hours. Gourmandizing had actually taught me something. To borrow words from David Foster Wallace, an overarching theory finally bloomed inside my head.
Once farmland, things used to grow all over here; the land belonged to nurseries, alligators, and berries. Plants and animals once flourished on this property. Now, humans flourish; the environs have changed accordingly. Organic things have given way to high rises, pavement, and roller coasters. But that, too, is organic in its own way.
Like plants, humans need light, food, land, air, and water in order to survive. These essentials are the ingredients of life, the common denominators connecting us to plants. As a result of our actions, our relationship to these ingredients and their relationships to each other are in a constant state of flux. The ingredients perdure, but their configurations and locations are always changing as we transpose them to form new compositions better suiting our changing purposes and desires.
Species are hallmarked by morphological timelessness and a perpetual need for food. As a raw commodity, boysenberries are as relevant today as they ever were. Only their context has changed, along with ours. Chefs will keep innovating, incorporating them into fresh recipes, new configurations. Humans will keep demolishing, rebuilding, modifying land and history. Reconfiguration of elements makes food, and life, exciting.
A banner in Ghost Town.
The Boysenberry Festival runs from March 28-April 12, 2015. For more information, see knotts.com
I've never read much food writing, though I like the idea of it: the paradigm of creation and consumption of mental nourishment echoing that of bodily sustenance; comestibles, so ephemeral, providing raw material for belles lettres that should not only do them justice but also go beyond them in order to justify their own semi-permanence. Knott's culinary offerings are of storied excellence--how would I, with only a layman's knowledge of gastronomy, do them justice? It takes a degree of epicurean expertise to grasp and then articulate the significance of a particular meal, and a certain sort of sophistication to seek and appreciate vicarious culinary enjoyment through words. Such connoisseurship is something I don't possess; and arriving at the event, I was regretful of my deficiency and no closer to developing an idea of how to cover it.
Yet I had no problem re-creating the appetite that had led to accepting the invitation. My initial intention was to sample each dish for the purpose of describing it; but the unlikelihood of accomplishing this was evident upon entering the Wilderness Dance Hall, now transformed into an elegant banquet room so bountiful that the chasm between edible selection and abdominal capacity was overwhelming. Lining the walls were tables panoplied with neat rows of bottles of wine; gleaming silver vessels emitting savory aromas; artful arrangements of fruits, breads, and meats.
One of several dessert tables.
That a single berry had inspired such profusion was remarkable. The sheer number of different classes of boysenberry-related foods was astounding. Connected by the boysenberry thread, options were diverse enough to please nearly any inclination: myriad desserts, vegetables, sandwiches, hot dogs, ribs, even fried alligator.
Alligator seems improbable until one considers that until it closed in 1984, the California Alligator Farm used to be across the street from Knott's. I like alligators, so their meat presents me with an ethical dilemma. Someone once suggested, in the manner of Ben Franklin, that I justify consuming my favorite animal by reasoning that if it had the opportunity to eat me, it would. But as a frequent and careless traveler to southern swamplands, I know that is not true--plenty of gators have had ample opportunities to eat me, and none ever have. However, I also know how delicious they taste; and having recently returned from Florida, I was curious as to how this would compare with the gator I had partaken at a roadside stand in its natural habitat.
My pity for a slaughtered animal is inversely proportional to its palatability; and this one was so toothsome that I hardly felt sorry at all. Served with rich, garlicky boysenberry aioli, it was fried to succulent perfection. It tasted almost like poultry, only better.
Servings of fried alligator, ready for consumption.
At an interlude from the feast, Knott's Berry Farm Publicist Leidy Arevalo and Marketing Systems Representative Brad Jashinsky informed us of festival details and explained how Knott's history and that of the boysenberry are intertwined. Walter and Cordelia Knott first arrived on the site in December 1920, and bought the land in 1927.
"A few short years later, in the 1930s, Walter Knott brought back to life the few remaining boysenberry vines in the entire world, and began selling sweet, delicious boysenberries from his farm stand out on Beach Blvd," Jashinsky stated. "Every boysenberry in the world, including the over 19 million that our culinary team uses every year here, can trace their history back to Knott's Berry Farm, to this land where we are right now."
Arevalo described festival entertainment offerings, which will include pie eating contests, shows, dance parties, and attractions for children.
"We are asking guests to come for the food and stay for the amazing entertainment," she concluded.
Everything is baked and produced in-house; representatives from Knott's culinary team said a few words about their creative processes.
"Since the end of the Boysenberry Festival last year, we've had so much fun in our kitchens, just experimenting with boysenberries.," said John Chieu, Director of Food and Beverage. "Seeing how we can cook it, fuse it, in all the different kinds of fun ways."
"The fun part of our job is to start playing with all the food, playing around the kitchen," said Executive Sous Chef Eubaldo Ramirez. "...Different tastes, different items, different mentalities, this is what we come up with from a long time of trying."
Members of Knott's culinary team, from left: John Chieu, Director of Food and Beverage; Russ Knibbs, Vice President of Food and Beverage; Bobby Obezo, Executive Chef; Ruben Bugarin, Executive Sous Chef; Eubaldo Ramirez, Executive Sous Chef.
Lest we forget that the Boysenberry Festival commemorates Knott's history as much as it celebrates fare, park historian Eric Lynxwiler took us away for short history tours. Leading us through Ghost Town, Lynxwiler, who wore a boysenberry patterned shirt for the occasion, exuded love for the park as he plied us with facts about the history of various attractions and explained the theme park's genesis.
"People came to buy the boysenberries, but they stayed because of the chicken dinners," he said. "The chicken dinner waits could be anywhere from one to three hours...and with all that wait time, people were wandering around Walter Knott's property, over his farmland, and just waiting. So he wound up building all these little tiny amusements for them in order to keep them occupied and distracted." Lynxwiler went on to describe some of these early amusements, including a replica of George Washington's fireplace and phosphorescent rocks that glowed under a black light.
"These little things wound up turning into one massive construction project," he continued. "Between 1940 and 1941, Walter Knott built Ghost Town." Knott was originally only going to build Main Street, which is the same today, but it became so popular that he kept adding more streets. One of the biggest myths is that the buildings were brought from the Calico ghost town. This is not true, though many of the old buildings were imported from other locations.
"This arbor is the connecting line," Lynxwiler said, gesturing above as we stood under a fragrant wisteria vine towards the end of our tour. "This trellis once went all the way down to the chicken dinner restaurant. All we have left is one gigantic vine from the mid 1940's and this is it...Oftentimes we can forget that this wisteria vine is here because it blooms only in spring and it just looks dead otherwise...This is the connecting piece of our history, this one plant that's connecting us to our boysenberry and chicken dinner roots as we grew into a theme park in the 1940's."
Whereas newer theme parks trade on branded casts of well-known cartoon characters, Hollywood ties, or super thrill rides, Knott's fantasy is based in a more genuine reality: the past. Its charm lies in preserving its connection to the past while integrating it into the present. It was built on nostalgia: early exhibits memorialized Walter Knott's family's pioneer history. California's frontier and mining days were already long gone by the time Knott began construction on his first attractions. With Ghost Town, the park began as a simulacrum of Western past. Now, the park itself is so old that its own history has become significant, while endemic legends have developed atop the somewhat shaky foundation of its nostalgic simulations. Die-hard fans are already eagerly anticipating the symbolic comeback of the defunct "Knott's Beary Tales" ride in the form of T-shirts and a children's attraction during the festival.
By and large, the Old West feels as palpable here as can be expected in our current era. At what other theme park can one still ride a real stagecoach and a historic train? Real artifacts and photos are displayed at the park's Western Trails museum. But throughout the park, certain facets of the history of Knott's and the West are highlighted, while others are buried.
A building now called the "Gun Shop," for instance, was one of Walter Knott's neighboring farmhouses. Its true history is covered by a fabricated one, more in line with the overall appearance of the phony Ghost Town that now surrounds it. This building's attachment to a generic idea of the Old West supersedes its own history which is newer but actually more relevant to the theme park's origin. On the other hand, the edifice now housing the Haunt Museum (so proclaimed with a large painted sign) was once Downey's first post office. In that instance, history specific to Knott's is exhibited even as it hides the fact that the building is actually linked to the more far-reaching past of a local city and the U.S. postal system. Both buildings are truly antiquated--but their past is all but lost on the average person, unless they are fortunate enough to have a historian like Lynxwiler there to inform them of it.
Park historian Eric Lynxwiler. In the background to the right is the "Gun Shop" that was once Walter Knott's neighboring farmhouse.
These facts are all very interesting, but they vanish amid legends; one's head begins to swim in the phantasmagoric emulsification of it all. That floating feeling is good until one earnestly tries to partition fact from façade and finds them inextricable. Truth ineluctably becomes shrouded in myth: real and replica are so thoroughly blended that they are inseparable. The history of the park itself begins to seem as fabricated as the animatronic dummies in the mine ride.
Going a step further, even thinking this way feels tired and old--these theories are nothing new; plenty of writers like Baudrillard, Umberto Eco, and Charles Moore have already expounded on them, exhausting the potential of those ideas as they relate to theme parks, California, and America. Invoking them feels like a pretense, an intellectual merry-go-round too hypnotic to disembark. Postmodern analysis of simulation has itself become jejune. Irony tires.
That is why the Boysenberry Festival seems so refreshing. This is only its second year--its first as Knott's main spring event--but its provenance is clear and relatively un-convoluted. Knott's Berry Farm's name and logos intimate the obvious fact that it began as a berry farm--no research required, no questions necessary. Walter Knott originally developed attractions to bring people to his farm and amuse them while they waited for meals at his restaurant. The restaurant remains, but amusements have supplanted the farm that gave the park its name. Berries are largely irrelevant to the current land use; but they are no less important to the park's history; and for the festival's brief duration, they are back in the limelight.
Entertainment abounds in Southern California; whereas agriculture is scarce, so we crave the pastoral idea of it. With the Boysenberry Festival, the relationship between agriculture and amusement has come full circle at Knott's. Unique amusements once enticed people to stay for food; now, innovative food offerings are devised to attract people to the theme park that first developed around agriculture and food only to subsume them. Amusements originally entertained people while they waited for food; now, food diverts people from waiting in line for rides.
Insofar as it centers on food, which is timelessly relevant, the festival transcends irony. Because the fruit that it celebrates is intrinsic to Knott's past and inextricably linked to the site, it feels free from the usual theme park affectation. The Boysenberry Festival honors the past, in harmony with Knott's theme, while featuring something tangible and intemporal, unchanged from its predecessors. A boysenberry today is fundamentally the same as one in the 1930's.
It does seem ironic that the actual berries that originated here are now imported from other places; but even this is not incongruous. The land on which Knott's Berry Farm sits lays claim to their source, but time inevitably changes land use; the land is too valuable for agricultural use now, but the food is grown elsewhere because people here still need to eat.
By the time Lynxwiler returned us to the Wilderness Dance Hall (which we now understood to be formerly heavyweight boxing champion Jim Jefferies' barn, built in the 1800's, imported from Burbank), my temporarily sated hunger had returned. What to try first? Fried cheese curds were one of my favorite late-night snacks in college. Those I enjoyed at dining halls years ago pale in comparison to Knott's version. Enhanced by boysenberry dipping sauce, the cheese flavor was exquisite, fresh, and unadulterated by oil. The consistency was neither rubbery nor gooey. I was tempted to go back for a second helping, but there were too many other viands to try.
Cedar Fair, Knott's parent company, trades under the symbol FUN on the New York Stock Exchange. The Fun Bun is becoming a leitmotif of the Boysenberry Festival; its all-around laughableness has inspired internet memes. It's difficult to order the Fun Bun with a straight face. Its form is as comical as its name; but its flavor is seriously ambrosial. Slathered in boysenberry flavored cream cheese, it has the best attributes of both a cinnamon roll and a funnel cake; its taste is as gourmet as carnival food can be. Large enough for three or four people to share, the Fun Bun is so dense that in negligent hands, a plastic plate could easily collapse under its weight. There is something endearing about its blobby compactness. Were it not so appetizing and perishable, it would make a fine paperweight.
One of the best treats of all was hearing the chefs explain the efforts behind their creations. My conversations with chefs Bobby Obezo and Ruben Bugarin increased my appreciation not only for the food itself, but for the labor and ingenuity that went into it. Chef Obezo described in detail how members of the culinary team are constantly striving to invent unexpected uses for elemental ingredients like the boysenberry. Perfecting each new recipe is a challenge that requires the production of batch after batch sampled by many people. From a recipe's inception, chefs send their bakers back into the kitchen for successive improvements, making minor variations until the food item is finally ready to be served at Knott's. The culinary team is always working on new recipes for Knott's restaurants and events. It's a constant process, one that the chefs seem to relish almost as much as one might enjoy eating their products.
"My job is to put smiles on people's faces," Obezo concluded simply.
As the evening progressed and my stomach grew fuller, the futility of my initial intention to sample everything in order to write about it became apparent, especially in regard to libations. As a casual student of wine, I rarely pass up an opportunity to taste one. A plethora of vineyards, wines, and craft beers were represented; it seemed journalistically irresponsible not to sample every kind. However, it would have been more irresponsible to let my mind drown, which would have been inevitable had I tried even half of the offerings. So, I had to pass. All of those that I tasted were good; but mentioning names would be careless: doing so might give the impression of favor, and my selection was purely random--except for the delectable boysenberry flavored dessert wine.
All along, I had been taking notes on each item; but after awhile, my palate became insensible and I gave up. "By 7:15, I was experiencing sensory overload," I wrote in apology to my future self as I put away my notebook and continued eating. It was all so good. How was I going to write about it?
Bursting with flavor, a reddish lemonade floating with berries was nearly as appealing as anything alcoholic. A fish and chips sandwich, garnished with boysenberry tartar sauce, contained actual potato chips that augmented the crunchiness of the fried fish. A bevy of desserts included: boysenberry cheesecake, boysenberry mousse, chocolate-covered boysenberry ice cream bars, boysenberry gummi bears, boysenberry cotton candy...and by the time I had tried all of those, I couldn't try any more. My hunger was no match for the bounty.
I was just about to surrender when Chef Obezo brought me a boysenberry glazed chicken and sausage sandwich. My stomach was nearly full, but I couldn't refuse.
"You have to try this," he urged. I was glad I did. I normally avoid ground meat, but the boysenberry glazed sausage was mild and expertly spiced. I liked it so much that he brought me another, this time with a variation in glaze that slightly altered the taste--and as a bonus, he added boysenberry glazed chicken and pork wings.
Somehow, I eluded a stomachache. Traversing the appropriately deserted Ghost Town's darkened streets at the end of the night, I realized how much my perceptions had changed over the past several hours. Gourmandizing had actually taught me something. To borrow words from David Foster Wallace, an overarching theory finally bloomed inside my head.
Once farmland, things used to grow all over here; the land belonged to nurseries, alligators, and berries. Plants and animals once flourished on this property. Now, humans flourish; the environs have changed accordingly. Organic things have given way to high rises, pavement, and roller coasters. But that, too, is organic in its own way.
Like plants, humans need light, food, land, air, and water in order to survive. These essentials are the ingredients of life, the common denominators connecting us to plants. As a result of our actions, our relationship to these ingredients and their relationships to each other are in a constant state of flux. The ingredients perdure, but their configurations and locations are always changing as we transpose them to form new compositions better suiting our changing purposes and desires.
Species are hallmarked by morphological timelessness and a perpetual need for food. As a raw commodity, boysenberries are as relevant today as they ever were. Only their context has changed, along with ours. Chefs will keep innovating, incorporating them into fresh recipes, new configurations. Humans will keep demolishing, rebuilding, modifying land and history. Reconfiguration of elements makes food, and life, exciting.
A banner in Ghost Town.
The Boysenberry Festival runs from March 28-April 12, 2015. For more information, see knotts.com
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