The Atascadero Tamale Festival promised to be my warm beacon of light in the middle of a very bleak and wet San Luis Obispo County winter.
But this winter was wetter and bleaker thanks to flooding postponing the seventh annual tamale contest that attracts people from all over California. In fact, Atascadero's Deputy City Manager Terrie Banish was worried the festival would be canceled altogether this year.
"When we had that river of rain this year that came in January this year, there was no way to really do this," she said. "From an event planner perspective, one of the most challenging things is to decide a new date in our county that has many amazing events, and also reconfirm every single vendor, all the entertainment, and sound techs, everything."
But Banish and the city were determined to continue growing the tradition of the tamale festival. Eighty-five percent of the original vendors, stage crew, and other techs committed to coming out to the rescheduled May 6 event in front of City Hall. Twenty-seven of the 100 vendors showed up to dole out food and drinks to a seemingly never-ending crowd. All were vying for coveted tamale contest trophies and bragging rights for making some of the best tamales this year.
One was Garcia's Restaurant in Atascadero. The 26-year-old family-run staple has won a tamale award almost every year since the festival began in 2016. This year, their banana leaf tamale with chicken and mole sauce earned them second place in the gourmet category.
"It took us a whole week to prepare, like preparing the masa and cooking the sauce," restaurant co-manager Carlos Garcia said. "A day or two before the event, we cook all the tamales."
The proof was in their tamale. The line leading up to the restaurant's red-tented booth snaked all the way across the garden facing City Hall.
"We steamed our tamales in banana leaves; the masa is more moist that way," he said. "It's very different from steaming in corn husks."
Garcia added that they completely sold out by 5 p.m. on May 6, but hungry festival-attendees got to pick from other options, too, like their chicken or pork verde and jalapeño and cheese tamales.
"We sell them like pancakes all year round!" Garcia said with a laugh.
La Luz del Mundo's Santa Barbara and Oxnard restaurants won first and third place, respectively, in the gourmet section. Santa Maria-based Savina's Home Made Tamales Co.; Award Winning Tamales in Van Nuys; and La Luz del Mundo of Paso Robles won first, second, and third place in the traditional category. Award Winning Tamales of Van Nuys won the best overall tamale award.
Judging those tamales was delicious but difficult. I arrived at City Hall with an empty stomach and my ears ringing from the advice of many well-wishers to not fill up on entire samples. My co-judges and I had to critique roughly 15 thick slices of tamales—a lighter load from previous years, according to Banish, due to the postponement.
We had to evaluate aroma, appearance, masa texture, salt and sweet balance, filling to masa balance, and the level of spiciness.
For me, the rubric was a little confusing. As a judge for the gourmet category, I enjoyed a playful medley of savory and sweet tamales. But the sweet ones automatically fell short of points thanks to the requirement to score the spice level.
Still, the gourmet tamales flaunted each respective maker's creativity. One was colored green, white, and red to resemble the Mexican flag; a savory one came with a side of crema and cheese crumbles; there were several tamales with pineapple chunks; and another was a blueberry masa tinted purple and filled with cream cheese to mimic a blueberry cheesecake.
I was relatively disciplined and restricted myself to a bite or two from each slice. It helped that the festival organizers were kind enough to allow a friend to sit with me who could happily finish my leftovers.
The Atascadero Tamale Festival came to be because the City Council wanted to the town to host more local events that would draw people in.
"The tamale festival was born out of a lot of brainstorming," Banish said. "We wanted to create an event that would incorporate the restaurants in our town, and we have a lot of great Mexican restaurants."
Banish added that her office zeroed in on tamales after then City Manager Rochelle Rickard suggested the Indio International Tamale Festival as an inspiration. The festival debuted in 2016 with eight tamale vendors, a last-minute location change from Sunken Gardens to the Pavilion on the Lake because of rain, and roughly 7,000 attendees.
"We ended up selling out tamales within the first hour," Banish said. "It was amazing. The chatter on social media was off the hook. You can't just find any tamale anywhere; it really takes a lot of preparation and coordination."
Banish got busy exploring and soliciting different tamale festivals across California to find vendors. Some of them are loyal to the Atascadero event to this day, and new vendors joined over the years. At the last big event in January 2020, they sold 40,000 tamales. After a pandemic-induced break in 2021, vendors returned last year and doled out 37,000 tamales.
Now, Banish and fellow tamale festival organizers are regrouping to figure out a good time of year for future iterations. While this year's festival fell on the weekend of Cinco De Mayo, event coordinators are still favoring the original January date.
"I've always wanted to try Cinco de Mayo to see how it would be," Banish said. "We want to keep the tamale festival mid-January because people usually eat tamales during the holidays. There's a lot going on in December in our county. We didn't want to compete with that, and we wanted to bring something off-season." Δ
Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal will be lining up for tamales year-round at Garcia's Restaurant until she queues up again at the next tamale festival. Help her kill time at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.