VISITING THE ARTICHOKE HEARTLAND.
There is nothing on planet Earth quite like an artichoke. Even if you don’t like them, you respect them. No other thistle ever hit the big time. No other thistle ever came close.
Eating an artichoke is unlike eating anything else. You pull it apart leaf by leaf, you dip it in sauces that taste better than the artichoke itself, you scrape off what little there is to eat with your top teeth and you throw most of the thing away.
Doesn’t sound too promising.
And yet the artichoke is the state vegetable of California. Even if the part you eat isn’t a vegetable but a flower. The whole artichoke dynamic is plenty complicated.
People who like artichokes really like them. They’re particular about them, which is fitting, because the artichoke is particular, too. It grows in few places, and a tiny pocket of northern Monterey County is one of them. Castroville, 15 miles northeast of Monterey, has tied its fate to what its creative city fathers, or perhaps their PR mavens, have declared to be the Thistle of the Gods.
For decades, they’ve billed the town as the Artichoke Capital of the World. The claim is something of a stretch, as Italy produces half a billion metric tons of artichokes a year, 10 times as many artichokes as the entire United States — which ranks only ninth in world artichoke production. Perhaps that’s because the United States is not exactly located near the Mediterranean Sea, the ancestral home of the artichoke.
“An artichoke is fussy,” said Evan Oakes, who makes his living giving $135-a-day tours of the farmers’ fields of Monterey County. “It doesn’t like most places. It clashes with most wines.”
The greatest artichoke lover of all seems to be the humble garden snail, Oakes said. For eons, man has battled snail to see who will get to the artichoke first. Usually the snail wins.
So it goes in artichoke land, where a quick peek at a randomly selected roadside artichoke in the fields at Pezzini Farms southwest of Castroville revealed four tiny snails chomping away. This was not the fault of the Pezzini Family, Oakes said, which has done more for the artichoke in the United States than just about anybody. It’s just the nature of the relationship. Thank goodness for March, the best time to buy an artichoke. The big ones, normally $4 or so, can be had for $2 or less. The little ones — the ones plugged again and again on the roadside stands — go from 6 for a buck to 12 for a buck, or 15 for a buck, or sometimes 20 for a buck. Be forewarned, some of the little ones are no bigger than a pingpong ball. As for what you can do with them, the Pezzinis hand out a helpful flyer that explains the lengths an artichoke fan must take — rinsing, trimming, boiling, flavoring, steaming — before the mayonnaise can make its entrance. (“If there are purple or pink leaves, cut them out, those leaves will be tough.”)
Downtown Castroville is festooned with artichoke banners. There’s even a bar that named itself in honor of Norma Jean Baker, otherwise known as Marilyn Monroe, who in 1948 served as honorary queen of the Artichoke Festival before Hollywood summoned her to perform other chores.
On the bar’s marquee, 15 feet above the main drag, a neon Marilyn in a tight red swimsuit and crown emerges from the middle of a giant artichoke. And a couple of blocks south stands the famous Giant Artichoke of Castroville, which is not really all that giant compared to the giant doughnut in L.A. or the giant Paul Bunyan at Trees of Mystery in Klamath and other giant things designed to suck in tourists and separate them from their cash.
(Roadside America, a website that chronicles such things, rates the giant artichoke three stars out of five, declaring it to be a “solid attraction with extra payoff or unintentional comedy.”)
Artichoke fans, who stop at the Giant Artichoke and its restaurant for artichoke omelets and deep-fried artichokes hearts, say there is no unintentional comedy in an artichoke, especially a deep-fried
one, because anything deep fried tastes good, artichokes included.
At the Giant Artichoke, a customer’s main decision involves what to dip his deepfried artichoke heart into. The choices are ranch dressing, mayonnaise, blue cheese, mustard, ketchup, tartar sauce, cocktail sauce or chipotle aioli. Pick one. Any of them may very well outgun the taste of the artichoke.
Deep-fried artichoke in hand, a visitor may ponder such mysteries as how the artichoke, which is only the 17th most popular crop in Monterey County (lettuce is first, followed by strawberries and broccoli) managed to pull off the state vegetable coup.
“I like the artichoke’s rich texture,” said Lyle Cavin, an artichoke fan who stopped by Pezzini Farms to load up. “They’re wonderful. But mayonnaise helps.”