For the past nine years, gingerbread master Isaac Salgado has crafted massive gingerbread villages for display at local businesses—and this year is no different.
“It’s all about supporting small businesses,” Salgado said. “I know that it helps bring new people into the neighborhood.”
This year’s gingerbread village, on display at Modica’s Deli for its second year, is 12 feet high, 10 feet long and four feet wide, weighing in at a whopping 1,000 pounds.
From the front window of the deli, passersby can see gingerbread houses tiled with a variety of candy bricks climb the ridges of two icing mountains that tower over a smaller village below.
Salgado begins the gingerbread village at the end of September and bakes, decorates and constructs the village all the way until the week before Thanksgiving.
Nearly every portion of the village is created from scratch—from the icing to the walls of the gingerbread houses. (Though he does receive donations of leftover Halloween candy to embellish the village.)
It takes 350 pounds of powdered sugar to create enough royal icing for the mountains alone.
“Everything is baked in my home,” Salgado said. Once the homes are completed, the village’s structure comes to life in his garage before it’s disassembled and reassembled at the hosting business.
“They couldn’t get the frame through the door [of Modica’s Deli],” said Long Beach Heritage President Chris Hogan. “The frame had to be cut into four separate pieces to get through the door.”
This year Salgado also created a second village at the historic Bembridge House, though it’s dwarfed by the massive display at Modica’s.
The villages are a collaboration between Salgado and Hulean Tyler, an engineer that creates a wood framework that helps the gingerbread houses withstand weighty layers of icing, candy and chocolate.
Previously working in the food industry and now a Signal Hill business owner, Salgado has nine years of experience in the art of gingerbread villages, earning him the informal title of “gingerbread master.”
His first formal gingerbread house was featured at Drake Park nearly a decade ago. He described the 2.5-foot tall and 3-foot wide house as “pretty small.”
The three-house display captured the attention of local realtors at the Mike Dunphy Group, who recruited Salgado to create a display for their firm.
“Instead of doing a small one, I went from three houses to 10 houses,” Salgado said. “I put a little bit more chocolate, a little bit more icing.”
The gingerbread village has grown since, and it’s slowly transitioning into a family affair.
“My oldest was very involved in putting the structure together. She did some of the tile work along the train, because we have a live train that goes around it,” Salgado said. “She’s becoming very intrigued and very skillful at this.”
The villages are made possible thanks to donations from local businesses and residents in and around Willmore.
“It’s a smaller community with a big community feel,” Salgado said, noting that the gingerbread villages are made possible by volunteers and fundraising. “We do a lot for one another.”
The gingerbread village will be on display until Dec. 31. Modica’s Deli is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day of the week except Sunday, when the deli closes at 4 p.m.
