By Charly SHELTON

Each year, Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park hosts several events to offer something new to their guests each time they visit. At Christmas, it has a holiday celebration. Over the summer, Ghost Town Alive! brings the Wild West to life. At Halloween, Knott’s Scary Farm is a must for fans of fright. But in the spring, it brings my favorite festival, quite possibly my favorite event of the year at any theme park.

Knott’s Boysenberry Festival is a food and drink fest that honors the lifeblood of the park, the berry that gave the Berry Farm its start. Rudolph Boysen created the boysenberry by cross pollinating red raspberries, blackberries and loganberries, but the berries kept dying on the vine and he abandoned them. Shortly thereafter, he brought the strain to family friend Walter Knott who nurtured the berries – and they ultimately grew. He named them boysenberry after his friend and put them into production on his farm. By 1934, he had a bumper crop and it turned out to be more popular than anything he had ever grown. Walter’s wife, Cordelia, used them in pies and preserves and, coupled with her famous fried chicken, the berries became the stars of the farm in Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant. The wait for a table grew to three hours and Walter built a ghost town to keep guests entertained.

The rest is history as the ghost town added rides, shows and more. Now, 77 years later, the festival honors this berry by using it in everything from coffee to sausages to pierogis.

Knott’s brought me down to try some of the festival foods using its tasting card. For $30, guests can pick up a card that offers eight taster-sized portions of eight different foods, including cheddar cheese pierogis with boysenberry sour cream, boysenberry glazed short ribs, boysenberry chicken wings, boysenberry hummus and more. Between the tasting card and the other offerings for purchase in the park, this year’s foods were full of highs and lows.

Usually all the food is great, but this year I was left unimpressed overall. That being said, there were a few things that did blow me away. The handmade boysenberry cream soda, dubbed Calico Soda, is a holdover from last year’s festival that is featured in the park year-round now and is just fantastic. The boysenberry elote – grilled corn on the cob smothered in boysenberry butter, boysenberry mayo and cojita cheese – was a unique take on the classic street food and a nice break from some of the other heavier foods. At the Starbucks just outside the front gate, there is offered a boysenberry frappuccino that tastes like a slice of pie in a cup. That is one definitely not to miss, though not advertised anywhere but inside the Starbucks. And the clear favorite of the day was the boysenberry grilled sausage with boysenberry mustard, boysenberry ketchup or boysenberry relish. The sausage itself is blended with boysenberries so even those who don’t use condiments still get some berries. And though everything else offered on the card is a taster size, this is a full sausage. Hands down, the favorite of the festival. I wish I had saved more tasting tickets for this booth.

Despite some underwhelming offerings – I’m looking at you, boysenberry cheese quesadilla that tastes like socks – it’s still worth heading down to the park. The good definitely outweighs the bad, and this is still my favorite event of their year.

For more information, visit Knotts.com.

  Charly Shelton