Boysenberry Festival kicks off at Knott’s Berry Farm with plenty of purple tongues

The full-fledged Boysenberry Festival returned to Knott’s Berry Farm for the first time in three years after a pandemic pause that left foodies longing for the purple tongues and puckerlicious tastes associated with the seasonal event.

The 2022 Boysenberry Festival kicked off on Friday, March 18 and runs through April 24 at the Buena Park theme park.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced Knott’s to cancel the 2020 Boysenberry Festival and put on an abbreviated version with the Taste of Boysenberry Festival in 2021 as The Farm pivoted to food fests when state officials forced California theme parks to close for more than a year.

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I tried a few of the new boysenberry eats and treats at this year’s seasonal festival with a $50 tasting card ($45 for season passholders) that included tabs for six menu items.

Picking from the boysenberry-intense menu was easy for me — narrowing the more than three dozen choices down to seven selections I was eager to try.

My first stop was the Silver Bullet food booth under the inverted coaster for the Boysenberry Chili Mac & Cheese and a Boysenberry Rocky Road Brownie.

The cowboy-style chili mac mixed in a bit of tangy boysenberry to the savory stew. Fritos finished off each bite with a salty crunch. The bowl was more than enough for lunch. But this is a food fest — so I couldn’t stop there.

The eye-popping brownie portion reached the edges of the plate. Boysenberry streaks running like a river through the choco-chunk of a brownie added a bit of lip-smacking zing. The giant square of chocolate goodness was more than enough for a couple to share — or for a family to fight over.

Next up was the Fried Chicken-Boysenberry Donut combo along with a Deconstructed Lemonade at Wilderness Broiler next to the Pony Express moto-coaster.

The hammer-pounded fried chicken stacked on a boysenberry-filled donut and topped with bacon jam serves as the festival’s “Where Did You Get That?” stunt food crafted purely for the Instagram generation.

The best part: The fun and tasty Frankenfood tastes as good as it looks. The juicy and slightly greasy chicken breast pairs perfectly with the sweetness of the boysenberry. The powdered boysenberry-filled donut flattens with each fork and knife cut making for a triple stack of flavor that fits easily in your mouth. It does get harder with every bite to keep the whole concoction together — but that’s part of the fun of eating the fried chicken-donut-jam culinary combo.

It wasn’t immediately clear what was “deconstructed” about the lemonade. I suppose it was the blackberries, loganberries and raspberries floating in the lavender-colored lemonade. I wasn’t even sure if the menu item was going to be a drink or a bowl of fruit. The berries floated like fruity ice cubes and made for a juicy treat when I got to the bottom of the delicious drink.

Finally, I headed over to the Ghost Town Bakery for even more dessert. I wanted to get both the Boysenberry Mousse Chocolate Cake and Boysenberry Pie Bar — but decided to go with only one of the two. By this point, I was already full and starting to sweat purple. At least my skin matched my tongue.

I opted for the neon purple mousse cake — and it didn’t disappoint. Talk about a perfect finale to a boysenberry-filled day.

I was warned to eat the mousse cake right away because the icing starts melting immediately — like there was ever going to be chance that would happen. The top of the cake started sweating by the time I reached the table. Cutting the dense mousse with a plastic knife and fork took effort — with no way to eat the tin can-shaped mini cake tower by hand without making a colossal mess.

Inside, the lip-licking delicious mousse was almost ice cream-like with a frozen consistency prepared semifreddo style. A cake core hidden deep in the middle offered a bit of texture with each sweet and creamy bite.

The mousse cake wasn’t as easy to share — or should I say less likely to be shared. My advice: Get a mousse cake for each member of your party. You might be willing to share a bite, but less inclined to split the tasty tower halfsies. It’s that good.

That left me with one unused tab on my lanyard tasting card. The Boysenberry Pie Bar at the Ghost Town Bakery certainly looked tempting, but I was bursting at the seams after five hefty samples.

What else didn’t I get to try on this trip to the Knott’s Boysenberry Festival? My pre-arrival wish list also included the Boysenberry Smoothie at the Wagon Wheel Pizza booth and the Boysenberry Hard Seltzer from Anaheim’s Brewery X, which also makes Knott’s signature Boysenberry lager.

But that’s the genius of the festival — there’s always another dish for another day. Unused tasting tabs can be used throughout the festival. You don’t have to eat everything on the Boysenberry Fest menu in one day. And that’s the point — the food fest gives passholders and regulars a reason to return. There will always be one more purple thing to taste.

Not everything at the festival is on the tasting card menu — including some Colossal Creations in the $25 range designed to be eaten by a large crew. The Monster Boysenberry Pulled Pork sandwich looks like the Knott’s chefs sliced a basketball in half. The Grande Nachos with chili, cheese, avocado, sour cream, jalapenos and boysenberry salsa could feed the starting lineup of a basketball team. The Boy O Boy jumbo dessert dunks a deep fried chocolate cookie under a heaping pile of ice cream, whipped cream and boysenberry jam.

Knott’s Berry Farm was bustling on the first day of the Boysenberry Festival with Spring Break crowds and school groups in matching t-shirts filling the midways.

Knott’s has wisely left most of the picnic tables that were added to the park during the pandemic food fests. That means there are still plenty of places to eat during the Boysenberry Fest or just relax amid the sounds of bluegrass versions of classic rock tunes and the roaring whoosh of overhead coasters that provide the park’s soundtrack.

There are plenty of other things to do throughout the day once you’re done eating — or at least until your taste for even more boysenberry revives.

“Riverboat Revenge” lets you cheer the hero and boo the villain in the new musical-comedy stage show in the Bird Cage Theatre.

Daytime fun on the Calico Mine Stage included games like Who Knows Knott’s, Cordelia’s Chicken Challenge and Grandpa’s Pajamas. For daring foodies, there’s a daily boysenberry pie eating contest in the afternoon that’s guaranteed to be equal parts messy and funny.

The Tied Up in Knott’s berry-themed art gallery installation in the Factory Store next to the Wheeler Dealer bumper cars dove deep into the park’s history and lore. Art pieces paid tribute to the Galloping Goose railcar, the legendary Catawampus creature and Kingdom of the Dinosaurs dark ride. All of the artwork was for sale — with several pieces already sold — and prints available in the $10 to $30 range.

The KNOT radio DJ’s spun 1950’s dance tunes near the Xcelerator roller coaster with comedic banter between Barry Farmer and Shelly Jams-And-Jelly. In between songs, the DJ duo offered sports scores without mentioning the teams, traffic reports from the Sky Cabin hovering high above the park and a breaking news story about a jaguar spotted near the merry-go-round.

The festival continues each evening with music throughout the park. There’s blues at Boardwalk BBQ, bluegrass at Fireman’s BBQ, country and western in the Wagon Camp, Mariachi Angelitas in Fiesta Village and the Totally Tubular ‘80s Dance Party in the Boardwalk Ballroom.

Evenings conclude with “Snoopy’s Boysenberry Jamboree” on the Calico Mine Stage featuring Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang.

by
on March 19, 2022

Boysenberry Festival kicks off at Knott’s Berry Farm with plenty of purple tongues

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