Castroville Artichoke Festival

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Castroville Artichoke Festival is a food festival held annually in Castroville, a town in Monterey County of the US State of California. The city itself is called the "Artichoke Center of the World". Castroville Artichoke Festival has been an annual event for 48 years.

Since 1920s, Castroville has produced artichokes. California artichoke industry was started here by Swiss Italians, who also grew the first wine vineyards in Salinas Valley. It is now a $50 million crop for Pajaro Valley - where Castroville and Moss Landing host nearly all the artichoke fields.

Castroville Artichoke Festival is held every year in May and features large and colorful parades, two days of live music, agro art competition where three-dimensional fruit and vegetable artwork is presented by participants, farmers markets, and field tours. Other activities include arts and crafts, artichoke souvenirs sales, wine tasting and cooking demos. At Castroville Artichoke Festival, children are offered games, face painting, clowns, stilt walkers, puppets, and more.

With the main theme of this food festival being artichoke, foods offered during the festival are nevertheless various. Apart from artichokes, fried, sauteed, grilled, marinated, pickled, fresh, and creamed as soup, visitors are offered foods from many ethnic groups that give Monterey County its character.

Marilyn Monroe, Norma Jean at the time, was crowned Castroville's first Artichoke Queen in 1948. The first Artichoke King was Andrew O'Desky in 1974. William Hung was crowned the Artichoke King on May 21, 2006.