Thanks, Noel. I don't know about king......maybe an arch duke or something. Anyway, Noel is pretty much right on the money in describing the festival. It is a must for everyone on this forum that has any interest in mangoes to go....at least once. If you have not seen Fairchild Gardens, then this is the perfect excuse to go. Is it cheap? No. Is it hot? Exceedingly. Are there too many people? Absolutely. Will you get to taste a sampling of many types of mangoes that you would have never tasted? No doubt. Will some of those samples taste unremarkable and really not representative of the fruit it came from. Unfortunately. Will you want to go back again and again? Well....for the really dedicated, like Noel....maybe. I have been probably 5 times in the past couple of decades. I go mostly for the trees that are available to buy, the mango preparations made by local restaurants and chefs and the lectures. Its also nice to see lots of folks you don't get to see all of the time in the mango world. The tasting is usually a disappointment for me. Its so hard to do a tasting for a large group of people. The best thing is to sit down at a picnic table in my yard with a box full of mangoes and then cut them open one at a time, allowing whoever you are sharing the experience to each get to tast the fruit freshly cut. Even in my small tastings, allowing mangoes to sit in the open air for an hour can change the total flavor and even texture of the fruit. So what does that say about prepparing small squares of mango fruit cut days before, refrigerated or even sometimes frozen to have enough available for the throngs of people at the festival. Nothing good....unfortunately. But every once in a while, I have come across a taste of a particular mango (even though it had been cut up for a day or two) or a case of mangoes for sale or something that was sort of unexpected that was able to buy/encounter that made the whole visit worth all of the excessive sweating and crowding issues. So, for those who are going, please condsider a stop over to my place to see what I am talking about. Assuming I am in town, of course. The festival is always around my birthday and we have been know to travel during that time. Hope to see you this summer!
Harry