Judging Chili

Every year, starting sometime in early fall, Chili trash talking starts at the Florida Department of Revenue. It gets to the point where you have to account for a good 10 minutes of chili-baiting before a meeting starts, where to inquire about prior year results is as likely as not to lead to a tirade against crooked judges and unjust outcomes.

I've been doing Grubbus a while, reviewing food from a step back and with a little anonymity. This year, I was asked to be a judge in the contest, to judge on the spot, in full view. The experience was awesome.

All four judges were ushered into a conference room and presented with trays with all 13 entrants placed in a unique order for each judge. We were given water, palate-cleansing saltines, and a score sheet. For each chili, we were asked to rate aroma, texture, and taste on a scale of 1 to 5. The final score was aroma + texture + (3 x taste).




The entrants were all good solid Florida Chili, which is to say not Texas chili, and while I was prepared to award an extra few points to any beanless entry, none presented itself. We had African-fusion, Indian-fusion, and a green-chili entrant that seemed loosely based on New Mexico Green Chili stew. Nothing too spicy (again, a lost opportunity for extra points in my book), but plenty of spice; and though all but two followed the same meat/tomato/bean/onion formula, plenty of variety. Some were harder to eat than others, but in the moment, as much joking and playing and costumes were in place leading up to the contest, it was very serious, and very quiet.

In the end, there was a pretty clear top 3. But the one that mattered was third place. After years of pouring heart and soul into chili, after years of showing up in costume, after years of coming just this close to some chili-recognition, Susan took home a medal with her mild and subtlety spiced Nun Better Chili.

The Importance of First Impressions: Boca Raton

Last week, I managed to spend a night in 4 different cities, a whirl wind tour starting Sunday morning with Boca Raton, Boca to Tallahassee Tuesday, Tally to Boston Wednesday, and Boston to Austin on Thursday. Those weeks suck the breath out of you: it's exciting, but its also exhausting and a little disorienting. All of that together highlighted the bliss on arrival in my hotel room at the Boca Raton Resort and Club.

I'm not sure that a skewer of absolutely perfect raspberries is the best use of global resources right now, and I am certain that the water they provided derived no tangible benefit by being packaged in a Christian Lacroix bottle. But the effect of the whole, together with the room, and its stunning view of the South Florida sunset was completely energizing and fortifying.






I had several meals at the resort, and while all we're good (the room service wedge salad was as good as anything I've had delivered to a hotel room), none of them had quite the staying power of the raspberries that first night.

And that's the power of a perfect raspberry. To make 7 flights in 5 days feel more like an adventure than a chore. To make a 2-hour prop-plane flight over the gulf feel a little like Indiana Jones, instead of just a headache. To turn a slog through an airport into something exhilarating.

Las Colinas Pizza Makes Me Sad

I'm in Irving, TX this week for a bit of project management training. It's a nice change of pace, good to be a little closer to home, and it's been a good class, but if there's good food here - food with soul and body, food made with love - I've yet to find it. Maybe there's some little diner out there, with good people who make delicious pies or something. There's a couple of days yet, there's still hope.

A couple of small illustrations from two area pizza joints, both highly recommended. First: I Fratelli. The Cookie.

Faced with a night of catching up on all the work I'd missed during the day's training, I opted for in-room dining. Not wanting to brave the downright scary room service here for a second night, I ordered dinner from a local pizza place right up the road. Everything looked good. And, to their credit, the pizza was pretty decent. Thin crust, a little crisp, hand-shaped, good cheese. All in all, solidly competent. But even competent pizza was not enough to redeem this cookie.

Here's what the website says:


Here's what they brought me:


I mean, good lord. They didn't even bother to take it out of the wrapper.

The second try was tonight. I was angling for tex-mex, but the team prevailed, and 6 of us headed out to Fireside Pies. More Pizza, this time in nearby Grapevine.

I'd heard from a few folks that this was a good local spot, a little upscale but not too fussy. And on entering the place, that seemed true: Fireside looks like a dark-wood-and-leather version of California Pizza Kitchen. It's got a delicious brick-oven smell, a small but not entirely terrible wine list, and cleverly named, memorably presented pizzas. But, like the I Fratelli cookie, the pitch doesn't really match the delivery.

The pizzas were giant and despite every attempt at making them fancy, they were almost impossibly greasy. I got a Hot n' Crumbled - sausage, ricotta, and chopped tomatoes, so maybe I was a little asking for the greasy, but as a group we got several different pizzas and shared slices across the table. Despite whimsical names and fancy ingredients each of the pizzas had exactly the same set of flavors - heavy on the grease, a little tiny kick to the sauce, a non-descript but decent crust, a flat sameness. The meatier the pizza, the harder it was to eat, but even the veggie options were without anything light or inviting.

Neither one of these places was bad, exactly. But neither was what they claimed to be. In that, they mirrored this little corner of this most corporate of suburbs, a thin veneer over a generally joyless landscape.