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Krewe of Zingaro takes chili crown

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By STEVE OTTO | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 27, 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 Saturday 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 craft legends about contests they won along the way.

They didn't win this one. The honor, and $1,000, went to defending champion Krewe of Zingaro, which does terrific charity work. So it was a win for many people.

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

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

Chili teams get to know each other at 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 in front of the coffin is an empty Jack Daniels bottle with some remains of former teammate Terry "Cowboy" Smith, who died 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. He still was standing after a 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 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 judges noticed 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 know how to burn burgers on a grill and women to do everything else while men get the credit.

But somebody needs to tell anyone who wants to get on the chili contest cooking circuit that it is not nice to hurt judges. I have names and phone numbers of some in this cook-off and when I wake up at 2 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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