By Charly SHELTON

Knott’s Berry Farm hosts its annual Boysenberry Festival each spring to pay tribute to the berry that made the Knott family their fortune. Last year, the park held a media event to showcase some of the food planned for the festival in early March. Eight days later, the park announced a temporary closure of two weeks due to the oncoming coronavirus pandemic. Since then, the park remained closed for full operations, opening only as a shopping and dining venue for food festivals on select weekends. With a full reopening in sight as early as next month, the time for the Boysenberry Festival has rolled around again. Knott’s Berry Farm, now old pros at the “pandemic food festival” format, is back at it with the best food festival yet, a festival even better than the ones when the park was open.

The Boysenberry Festival this year utilizes the same “taste of” moniker and format of the previous four food festivals from the last year – Taste of Calico, Taste of Knott’s, Taste of Fall-o-Ween, and Taste of Merry Farm. The Taste of Boysenberry Festival offers more than 80 food and drink items with a special boysenberry flare. Offerings range from the mundane to the adventurous, from the familiar to the brand-new creations of Knott’s culinary team. For the price of admission, guests get a tasting card loaded with five tasting redemptions to choose whatever suits their palate. Five tasters, and when they say tasters, they really mean five moderately-sized meals. Whereas other food festivals from other parks offer tiny portions, maybe three bites or so, to get the idea of a dish Knott’s has pulled out all the stops and offers nearly a full-sized entrée for each “tasting.” If a couple goes to the festival on empty stomachs, with 10 tasting tickets between them, it is very likely they will have leftovers to take home.

And the food! This year’s menu is incredible. These food festivals usually have some good food, hits-and-misses, but the last few festivals seem to get better and better overall. Taste of Fall-o-Ween seemed like the top-of-the-top for the time, but I think Taste of Boysenberry Fest might overtake it in sheer volume of delicious food. Best in show goes to the shrimp and boysenberry sausage etouffee. Etouffee is like gumbo served over rice, and the boysenberry sausage complements it well to be good for the festival, but is also a really delicious dish on its own regardless of the boysenberry theme. Honorable mention goes to the boysenberry cake with boysenberry cream cheese icing, the boysenberry key lime tart, the boysenberry brisket on tater tots with crispy jalapeno chips and boysenberry aioli, and the boysenberry iced Irish cream coffee.

A word to the wise – guests must wear their masks at all times unless seated and actively eating or drinking. This changes the strategy on what foods to choose and when. For example, don’t walk in and go straight for the pork bao buns with boysenberry kimchi and nam pla. You will be walking around in the sun with a mask while smelling your own fermented cabbage breath. It’s nice that at no point do you smell someone else’s fermented cabbage breath, so you are ultimately the architect of your own suffering, but it can be avoided by waiting until the end to get that one, if you so choose.

Tickets are on sale now for select weekend dates now through May 2. The tasting card, which acts as admission to the park as well as the tasting coupons, is $45 for adults with five tasters, and $20 for kids 3-11 with three tasters. For kids, be sure to take part in the Egg Sighting Easter Hunt, in which players cross the whole park in search of the Easter Bunny’s lost eggs before heading up to meet the Bunny himself for a thank you and a photo op. More information and ticket sales can be found at Knotts.com.