Strawberry Festival

I have to say that this year was a tiny bit better than last years. More vendors, more strawberry items and more food items that weren’t strawberry. The rides are still ridiculously priced and it seemed as if there were 3 less rides than before. I only mention it because the rides my boys enjoyed weren’t there.
Still crowded as ever but was fun. My hope is that the city offers more places to sit next year. Please add some more seating!

The strawberry festival was fun but it has a lot of room for growth. I’m not sure that the people running it will grow the festival though. I’d like to see the festival return to the fairgrounds where it’s better suited. I’d like to see cookoffs and competitions where desert professionals compete in front of the crowds. I’d also like to see more hands on booths for the children. Overall, I had a good time. The food was good, and the beer garden was pretty nice too. Just just need to offer more beers. I’d attend again.

I’m from southern California and in our town we have an avocado festival. When I moved to Santa Cruz and heard Watsonville had a strawberry festival I was so excited. I LOVE strawberries and I love the Watsonville community. I am sadden however about the reviews it has received. I am more sadden that the reviews have been about people complaining that there are too many Mexican immigrants and Spanish speakers. I highly doubt these people know the history about Watsonville. Picking strawberries in the fields is no easy task and if these people want to speak their native language we shouldn’t care. Thanks to them you can find those «juicy» berries at your Safeway only here you get a behind the scene and see the community that works so hard in the fields. Because of people with ideas like the ones below the festival has not received the support it deserves. Last year they even try making another one at the fairgrounds that wasn’t so «mexican» that focused on the consumers and not the farmers and workers. I have enjoyed the recipes they offer and the entertainment. Saturday they have rock music and country. Sunday is when they have the Spanish entertainment. I plan to go again this year and it is expected that there will be more entertainment including a soccer tournament. I also hope there are more strawberry recipes because the possibilities are endless with such an amazing fruit. We need to keep an open mind and see that California is a rich agricultural state because of communities like this one. The strawberry festival is a celebration after a harvest! I’m excited it will be held on my birthday and this year our son will be going for the first time!

We came to the Strawberry Festival on Saturday morning. There was ample parking at CVS for $ 5.00 all day. There were hardly any people at this festival. This festival is seriously lacking. It needs more artsy crafty vendors. They have enough sub par food vendors. We tried some Asian bbqd chicken on a skewer and something they called called fire rice. It was pretty bad, both had no flavor. My friend had their big sausage with grilled onions, it was ok but the bun fell apart right away. For desert I had the funnel cake, it was good but needed alot more toppings for 7 bucks. My friend had the strawberry trifle which was alot better and a bargain at only 4 bucks! Their music was way too loud. It was hard to hear anybody talking to you if you were sitting in the beer garden or anywhere else for that matter, just way too loud. Plus they need to mix up the music some. We don’t all speak Spanish. I agree with Cathy P. They need a better beer and wine garden and support our local breweries. I didn’t see any wine at all, crazy I know. I think they could use some better food vendors as well.

Went here anticipating to purchase strawberries. But I couldn’t find a stand with strawberries. Went to strawberry lane and got the tri tip sandwich with a hint of strawberry bbq sauce, a strawberry drink (very watery), and the strawberry dessert pizza. There was also other food vendors that we ate at after strawberry lane. The hawaiian pork was very good and flavored really nice. Also got a smoothie of bananas, strawberry and peaches. They also had the best filled churros ever. Other than food stuff, they had a few booths to sell things but no arts and crafts for the kids or anything.
Make sure you park at the parking garage, it is $ 5.
Must try? one time thing unless it grows.
Try again? when it gets bigger.

Another year, another Strawberry Festival. Just as I wrote last year: huge lack of quality arts & crafts and the same ol, same ol mediocre food trucks selling the same subpar food. On «Strawberry Lane» the Red Cross took my vote again for the best strawberry shortcake and Cassidy’s strawberry pizza shouldn’t be missed. And BTW it’s shave ice, not «shaved» ice. The «Beer & Wine garden» showcased Coors & Bud again. With all the microbreweries and wineries in our immediate vicinity, you’d think someone would get the hint. Again, the music venue was pretty much split with mostly Banda & Mariachi music on Sunday – who hires these out of the area groups anyway?
At least the carnival area is still a big hit with the kids and it’s still $ 5 to park in the city garage and proceeds go to PAL and the Police Cadet Program.
Logistically, it was a nightmare trying to navigate through downtown Friday afternoon. Besides the Farmer’s Market, festival setup had begun. I could barely get to the Post Office! Nearby and downtown residents have been asking the city for years to move the festival to the SC Fairgrounds. If you’ve been to the County Fair (September) you’d have to agree that it suits a festival this large much better. There is plenty of parking, lots of space for non-​profits, food booths/​trucks, a stage for music, and lots of comfy places for people to sit. Those hay bales in the middle of Main Street just aren’t comfortable and there is nowhere else to sit.
2.0 stars and falling. Apparently, city leaders still don’t listen to residents.

I went to the Watsonville Strawberry Festival this past Saturday and had a nice time. We spent a little more than three hours at the festival and it was actually better than I had expected.
There were 14 booths offering strawberry themed items, which I thought was a really good number. The booths were located in the area designated as «Strawberry Lane» and the strawberry items were being offered by various non-​profit organizations who I was very happy to support. I tried the following strawberry items: strawberry dessert pizza ($ 2.50 a slice), chocolate dipped strawberries ($ 1.00 each, but got 2 for $ 1.00 because the strawberries were smaller), strawberry agua fresca ($ 2.00), supreme strawberry nachos ($ 6.00), and a strawberry parfait ($ 5.00). I thought that the prices were very reasonable and the portions were generous. Almost all of the booths had sweet, dessert type items so I think that it would have been better if there was more diversity in the type of strawberry themed items offered. A lot of items were very similar such as strawberry shortcake vs. strawberry parfaits vs. strawberry cookies vs. strawberry crepes vs. strawberry waffles. Although they’re all good options, it’s hard to crave something sugary if you just finished eating something sugary.
The entertainment on Saturday was quite good. I really enjoyed Rap ‘n Blues who performed in the afternoon.
Besides the strawberry booths, there were carnival rides and games, vendors selling typical foods found at festivals (i.e. Mexican food, teriyaki, baked potatoes, kettle corn), and vendors selling random items (most were not original arts and crafts, but items that were bought elsewhere and were then being resold).
Parking was easy to find and was $ 5.00 at the Civic Plaza parking garage. After walking out of the garage, the festival was literally steps away.
All in all, good festival. I will come again in the future.

There were rides for kids, Musical band performances, stalls with games, stalls selling clothes & accessories, BBQ stalls. But where’s Strawberry !! Isn’t that was the name of festival? Except very *few* stalls serving strawberry related items (pizza, chocolate, Ice cream, cake & smoothie), nothing exceptional for strawberry lovers.
It was more of a general county fair.
Parking: 5 $ event parking, But if you don’t mind walking a little, there will be plenty of street parking available.
Food: We tried chocolate covered strawberry & strawberry Ice cream, former was okay & later was yummy ! But I just don’t want to drive 90 miles to have strawberry ice cream, which I can buy virtually from any store.
Ambiance: Nice, energetic & decently crowded.
Stalls: As happens in any event, prices were on higher side. Even strawberries were expensive than you would find in grocery stores.
It was nicely managed small scale county fair. If you are in vicinity, go check out. But don’t travel all the way for strawberry. You will be disappointed, like we were :(

This is a nice little festival. If you go knowing in advance there will NOT be a surplus of strawberries or strawberry theming, you won’t be disappointed and you can enjoy it! The strawberry theme isn’t well done, and there is a lot of potential for them to improve it, but as a festival, it’s entertaining. It is a medium size. There are carnival rides for children, the large food section, a retail section, and a concert/​stage area too.
Good news: it’s free! There is a parking garage that charges $ 5, but if you drive around, there is ample street parking for free, especially if you drive on Rodriguez Street. They have some booths with strawberry flavors such as strawberry kettle corn, strawberry shortcake, strawberry «nachos,» strawberry sundaes, funnel cake with strawberries on top, and freshly dipped chocolate covered strawberries, and I’m sure I left out a few too. The fruit slushes/​smoothies looks delicious, but I didn’t get one. They also have typical food booths such as tacos, corn on the cob, garlic fries, etc.
I strongly recommend the strawberry short cake! They seem to be the most popular/​busiest, and their proceeds also go to a good cause. My friend who grew up in Watsonville says she dreams of those strawberry shortcakes for the remainder of the year. They also have hand dipped chocolate strawberries on a skewer that they dip when you order it! If you go at the wrong time, you will be waiting in a slow moving line for a while! As a result, I saw the beautiful confections but wasn’t able to taste them. They look amazing though!
We had a group of 10 people, and we were there for about 1.5 or 2 hours. It was entertaining and tasty.

Loved the fruit slushies! The prices are definitely a huge bummer, though. I noticed stands that are usually at the farmer’s market that hiked up their prices by a $ 1 or 2 which is ridiculous but I understand they can get away with it when a festival is involved. Plus, these are tiny family business so let them make their money! My family came to visit just for the festival and my little brothers and sister had a blast riding all the rides! I’d probably return every year just for those slushies, though. That was my favorite part.
Ps: Of course, barely anyone speaks english at the festival, it’s in Watsonville. The population is 70% latino (a). JUST AN FYI.

Hello people! seriously you are complaining because people at the festival only spoke spanish? its like me complaining of going to a CHINESE Festival and no one spoke English. Come on the festival is GREAT!

A friend from out of town was visiting during this time, so we went to the Strawberry Festival. If it wasn’t for our friend, I would have skipped this, but there isn’t a lot of things that Watsonville is known for, so I figured we’d show him the festival. We went on a Saturday this time, and I was pleasantly surprised that it had improved. Someone must have read my suggestions in my review, or maybe someone has some mad mind-​reading skills, but other than the alcoholic suggestions that I made (strawberry beer and wine), I saw strawberry empanadas, strawberrie pies, strawberry tamales, and strawberry-​mango salsa. I tried the empanada with chocolate drizzled over it, and it was pretty good. The strawberry tamal was OK, too. There was a guy selling sandwiches with a strawberry-​mango salsa, but I asked if I could just try the salsa instead of the sandwich. So he sold me the salsa and some pieces of pita bread to scoop up the salsa. I recommended that he sell chips and the salsa next time. It could be a big hit, provided that he put more strawberries in. It was a sweet salsa, but it was very good.
There were several Safeway-​sponsored game booths where you could throw basketballs and spin wheels in order to win a prize. Some of the freebies given out were bars of Caress soap, sample boxes of raisins, and anti-​persirant sticks. They also gave out lots of food samples. The strangest incident was when I wanted to spin the wheel at one booth, the woman insisted that I consume the sample of chocolate milk in order to spin. Since I am lactose intolerant, I refused. She denied me my chance at the wheel. Really? Does she know how many Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans are lactose intolerant? The woman right before me in line was allergic to dairy products, so she was turned away, too. I guess there won’t be many people trying that wheel if the ability to drink milk is the entry requirement!
There was the usual strawberry pizza, agua de fresa, chocolate dipped strawberries, strawberry smoothies, strawberry-​topped funnel cakes, strawberry popcorn, strawberry ice cream, etc. I’m glad they added more strawberry items. After all, why would you come to a strawberry-​themed festival if there were hardly any strawberry food items to eat? In addition to the food booths and the crafts booths, they expanded the kiddie rides and added a bicycle race. I didn’t bother to watch since I’m not a fan of that sort of thing, but a decent crowd gathered to watch the bike race.
They included cover bands this year. We watched Santana and Tower of Power cover bands before I left because I was getting cold. My husband stayed to watch the Beatles cover band, so I picked him up an hour later. The following day, the music was all in Spanish. Given that the town is full of farm workers, and the only day off for them is Sunday, the festival is geared towards the farm worker community on Sundays. Expect it to be almost completely in Spanish. If you want to check it out in English, it looks like Saturday is the day for you.

I wished I had looked up the Strawberry Festival on Unilocal before deciding to make the drive to Watsonville. Even though there’s only one review, it definitely would’ve saved me the time and disappointment because everything Johannah wrote below was 100% accurate.
We were actually pretty psyched on going because we LOVE strawberries and we were hoping to find the ones that were extremely huge and juicy! You know the ones that you’d find at the farmer’s market… so sweet and LARGE that they look like they were on steroids? Yes, those.
So did we find them at the Strawberry Festival? Nope. Did we even find any juicy looking strawberries period? Sadly, no. We paid $ 5 to park and we stayed for 10 minutes. Their was only one booth that even sold strawberries but you could find some 10x better at your local Safeway or Luckys. We walked around for a bit, had a PUNY chocolate covered strawberry each, looked at each other, and called it a day. No one spoke English there so it was even hard to ask someone to take a picture for us.
I am all about festivals, but this one was a complete waste of time. Never again.

EEK! I can’t believe we drove 2 hours to stay for 16 minutes and drove back home. I seriously was not impressed with the Strawberry Festival. I wished I went to the Aloha Festival in SF. So we drove 2 hours from Mill Valley to seriously pay for $ 5 parking, walked through a crowd full of people that barely spoke English, ate 2 chocolate covered strawberries, a strawberry slushie, BBQ tri-​tip, chicken kabobs, mango that wasn’t even riped, and a strawberry fruit bar. I looked at the bf and said, «I’m over it. Are you?» He laughed and said, «Serious?» Me: «Yup. Let’s try to make it to the Aloha Festival.» LOL We ended up staying for over an hour at a local Target store in Watsonville. Everything strawberry we had we could’ve made it better or bought it at Safeway. I would not go back next year. Sorry.