If you drive east from Santa Cruz on the California coast you run into garlic country, and Gilroy is the capital of garlic country. Every year they have the Gilroy Garlic Festival where you can have all sorts of wonderful foods with garlic in them. In my close to forty years living in the Bay Area I never got down to the festival and I dont necessarily regret it.
The one thing that has fascinated me is the garlic ice cream. It sounds awful, and maybe it is, but it sounds interesting. There's an ice cream store downtown, Salt And Straw, that does all sorts of interesting flavors, but I'm not sure if they ever have done garlic.
