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'Dead Serious' chili team says goodbye

Staff photo by FRED BELLET

The judges at this year's cookoff had lots of entries to taste their way through to pick a winner.

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By STEVE OTTO | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 26, 2009

WESLEY CHAPEL - Under a steamy Pasco County sun and in front of thousands of spectators and millions of love bugs, the Dead Serious chili team made its final appearance today at the 22nd Annual Steve Otto Chili Cook-off.

The black enamel coffin they picked up at the funeral home for 50 bucks back in 1986 will go to its final resting place at Leo's Bar (1948 E. Hillsborough Ave.) where the faithful will gather and create legends about the contests they won along the way.

They didn't win this one.

That honor, along with $1,000, went to the Krewe of Zingaro, the defending champions. Zingaro does terrific charity work all year so it was a win for a lot of people.

Second place went to the all-time prize winner, Cowboy Chucky Langston the Legend of Lutz. Third place went to another former winning team, K.A.T.N. of Clearwater. K.A.T.N., which I'm sure stands for something, also took the salsa contest.

The winning recipes already are being posted on Tampa Bay Online and Tribune food guru Jeff Houck, who was one of our judges, will put the winning chili in Mother Trib. If you were around last year, Zingaro's chili remains pretty much the same, which is to say it is good stuff.

Chili teams, like competitive teams of every stripe, get to know each other at the various events and none has been more visible than Dead Serious.

"Well,'' says team captain Ken "The Embalmer'' Burke, "a couple of us were at a hot-pepper eating contest when the idea of a chili team came up. We went over to a funeral home and picked up this used coffin, slicked it up and entered a competition in St. Petersburg. The next year we entered your contest.''

The team, which includes "Graveyard'' Gaylor, "Tombstone'' Stone, "Guitar man'' Smith, Paul "Bearer" Casavant and "Rotten'' Robbie Welle, has taken its coffin around the country and won a stack of trophies. Parked out in front of the coffin is an empty Jack Daniels bottle with some of the remains of one of their former teammates, Terry "Cowboy'' Smith, who passed away two years ago.

Judging was tough. I brought in some new judges, including Bob "Irongut'' Wise, Judy "Is Anybody Looking" Gay, and from SOCOM out at MacDill, Col. Rob Cerjan, who claimed that after Iraq and Afghanistan he could handle anything the teams could throw at him.

He did pretty well. At least he still was standing after the one sample that appeared to be crawling. He also didn't even blink at the so-called chili that was eating its way through the bottom of the sample cup.

We had several of the regular judges, including our own Walt "Big" Belcher, "Montana'' Fletcher, Dennis "Joyjuice'' Joyce and "Sandsnake'' Paterno, who made it despite breaking an ankle biking in Alaska last week.

Several of the judges did notice an alarming trend (other than the continued use of beans, a no-no in the chili world) that nobody seems to understand what chili is about.

American men, and apparently some women, are born with an innate sense of making chili. It's in the genes, just as men automatically know how to burn burgers on a grill and women to do everything else while the man gets the credit.

But somebody needs to tell anyone who wants to get on the chili contest cooking circuit that it is not a nice thing to hurt the judges. I have the names and phone numbers of some of those people who were in this cook-off and when I wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning wondering what happened to my insides, I'm going to give them a call.

Keyword: Otto Graphs, for more of Steve Otto's musings.

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