There can be only one
Story by Scottie Vickery
Submitted Photos
For every chili recipe, there’s a cook who thinks his or hers is the best. That’s why the members of Downtown Gadsden Inc. look forward to hosting a friendly competition each year. Because when it comes to dishing out bragging rights, they just can’t resist stirring the pot.
“We open it up to people who think they have the best chili and invite them to come and prove it,” Kay Moore said of the 15th Annual Downtown Gadsden Chili Cook-off. Set for February 4, the contest promises to be one of the hottest events in town.
“It’s all about having fun and camaraderie, being downtown and enjoying a lot of good chili,” said Moore, director of Downtown Gadsden, Inc., which organizes the event. In past years, they’ve had about 35 entries and crowds ranging from 700 to 1,000 have gathered to treat their taste buds.
“We ask the cookers to bring enough to feed a bunch of people,” she said, adding that there’s a $40 entry fee for the cooking teams and anyone can enter the competition. “We’ve had people enter from Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, Huntsville and as far away as Kentucky,” she said.
Whether your tastes run from mild to spicy or you prefer the traditional variety, white chicken chili or vegetarian chili, you’re sure to find a batch you love. The judges, however, seem to have a “type.”
“We have all different kinds of chili but for some reason, it’s your good old fashioned regular chili that always wins,” said Moore, adding that the competition is judged blindly. “We have runners who take the chili to the judges and each cup is marked with only a number on the bottom.”
Winning recipe
Jeff Martin and his fellow cookers seem to have cracked the code. His team, Dowdy’s Office Equipment, has won the competition the last three years, and he believes they have taken top honors five of the last seven. “We always use the same recipe,” Martin said of his team, which consists of his business partner Lewis Couch and friends David Couch and Ross Hudak. “It’s a recipe we’ve had for 25 years. I think somebody stole it from somebody else.”
Their chili is so good, in fact, that Ted Gentry, a founding member of the band, “Alabama,” bought the rights to the recipe last year. The chili is the menu headliner for Gentry’s Blue Ribbon Chili Wagon that’s often parked at the Alabama Fan Club and Museum in Fort Payne.
“Apparently he went all over the state looking for the best chili,” Martin said. The fact that Gentry has the rights doesn’t mean that the Dowdy crew is out of the running this year, though. “The only provision is that we still get to use it in the chili contest,” he said.
Although the winners earn some prize money and a Crowd Favorite is chosen, as well, the event is mostly a fun way for the community to get together and raise funds to support downtown projects. “Our job is to continue the growth of downtown while keeping our historical heritage,” Moore said. “A downtown of any small town is the heartbeat of the community.”
