Things To Do In Los Angeles: Galco's Soda Tasting 6: Burps & More

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Galco's Soda Tasting 6: Burps & More

It was a time to drink soda! The heat of LA's summer mixed with a sunny day had people flocking to the beloved Galco's Soda Pop Stop for its annual Soda Tasting last Sunday evening, July 31st. With this soda tasting it had become six years of different sodas to be sampled by locals wanting to try only a small bit of the huge collection that Galco's had inside. With this year came change and gas with the addition of the first Kid's Burp-Off, which we were lucky enough to not be in the first row to smell.

You started by getting a shot-glass with Galco's logo on the side in red. You would see it many times in your hand as it went right up to your kisser or in your hand as soda after soda was poured into you.

Sodas came locally and from far off regions, Zedazeni from Europe's Georgia had a welcoming taste from its fruity drinks as the first stop of sodas to settle on your tongue. Their Superavi (grape) was an easy, not-so-sugary soda to start with. While, the flavor and look, neon green, for Taragon could have been missed.

Bickford's from Australia was next and they were best cut with liquor or another drink as the taste of Lemon Lime & Bitters was a bit too much on their own.

From France we had Rieme. The different fruit drinks including a pink Pomegranate and Blood Orange seemed a little week compared to the other sodas.

As you were drinking the sodas, you would joke with those station to pout them out or maybe consult with the person in line with you over the taste. You could make it a wine tasting experience like my group did go over the taste, the flavoring, region and smell.

We were back in the USA on Route 66; the name of a beverage company and had American favorites like Root Beer and Black Cherry.

A table away it was all Black Cherry sodas from different soda makers, alongside them just a splattering of some of the colas Galco's keeps in stock. We were a little drawn to Spiffy Cola with a bit of lemon in the taste. My favorite was the Americana Black Cherry, which is an easy to find brand, it made me feel so un-cultured when it came to soda, or maybe someone who just likes the classics.

Inside of Galco's our journey of tasting ended with Bedford's sodas and the German Club-Mate. Err, Club-Mate has twice the amount of caffeine than a regular soda. It's a taste...unique, that uh, my group just didn't have the taste buds for.

Then the Burp-Off commenced. Outside kids who wished to gain glory, to live out their fantasies, came to expel gas from their faces, luckily from that end. A bunch of cute contestants, little boys and girls came before us to be given a free soda and burp the loudest, longest and most creative.

We won't lie and say the contest followed any strict structure that really kept to those values. We saw children try and burp and some of them did and some of them did not. We only hope for a larger group of burpers with a little stricter guideline for winners next year. Maybe even an adult burp contest, downwind of others of course.

Martha Benedict Photography

You could hear the owner of Galco's, John Nese, laughing along with the audience as kids burped as best they could. Truly a community event that was a gas.

The only thing we might have changed was the lack of soda run-off buckets to pour in a soda you might not agree with. They had them last year and may have forgotten how useful they were.

Proceeds from the soda tasting benefit Friends of the Southwest Museum who are actively working to re-open Los Angeles’ first museum as well as the Casa de Adobe. So it's for a good cause along side getting a chance to sample sodas.