Spice Boys do it again
Once derided by talent scouts as minor league chili cookers with little hope of ever making it to the big leagues, the Spice Boys, a crew from out of Huntsville, Alabama, once again showed how experts can be wrong.
In a stunning display of culinary Hall of Fame skill, the trio of college buddies, who gather every other year along with a fourth, once again swept the annual St. George Island Chili Cookoff Saturday.
After finishing in the basement during their rookie seasons, the Spice Boys eventually took first prize in both 2016 and 2017, the year when teammate Greg “The Hammer” Machamer took the $500 top prize and then earned a 10th place at the world championship.
They then dominated the field in both 2022 and 2023, the year when Scott Abercrombie, J.G. Carver, Heyon Hoe and Mechamer swept all three of the top prizes.
This year they repeated the magic, as Carver won the top prize of $500, Abercrombie took second with $300 and Machamer took third, of $200.
It’s all kosher, because while they cook at the same booth, each Spice Boy cooks under a different International Chili Society, and each of them can earnestly proclaim that they do their own thing, sharing of course the same type of tri-tip beef that nearly all the other 20 entrants use, but creating their own variety based on their personal preferences.
“I cook the meat until I see seven bubbles,” said Carver. “That’s when I know it’s ready.”
Finishing fourth was Gary Carlson, with the Uncle Bugs team out of Fort Pierce, another longtime competitor, and fifth was Rick Barnes, with the Lake Blackshear (Georgia) Bottom Feeders.
Grayson Shepard, the veteran head of the judges crew, oversaw a collection of amateur chili experts who included Jenna and Dan Harper, Danny Itzkovitz, Jay Abbott, David Putz, Rex Humphries, Barbara Sanders, Bill Bassett, Randy Grant, Keith Branner, Mason Bean, Jake Jacobsen and Lindsey Shepard.
While the Spice Boys tend to stick to the tried and true recipe, new competitor Renee Kramer, with the team No Chili for You! out of Crawfordville, tried something different, with a Venison Maple Beer Chili. Following the ICS rules, with no beans, Kramer, a graduate of Minneapolis’ Cordon Bleu who has worked as an executive chef with Red Hills Village resort lifestyle community and is a real estate agent, went with her favorite Vermont recipe, with a touch of Modelo.
“I didn’t want to be like everybody else,” she said.
Tommy Darsey and wife Marie, with the Grill Deal out of Lake Blackshear, Georgia, spiced theirs with jalapeno and arbol peppers, all carefully de-seeded.
Lighthouse Chili, a long time competitor, said they sold out of their 20 gallons of chili, including 10 pounds of ground beef, early in the day, as the crowd that frequented the cookoff, and visited the many homes on the island that offered fun and flavor as part of the amateur Chili Crawl, was robust throughout the entire day.
Meet the Editor
David Adlerstein, The Apalachicola Times’ digital editor, started with the news outlet in January 2002 as a reporter.
Prior to then, David Adlerstein began as a newspaperman with a small Boston weekly, after graduating magna cum laude from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He later edited the weekly Bellville Times, and as business reporter for the daily Marion Star, both not far from his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
In 1995, he moved to South Florida, and worked as a business reporter and editor of Medical Business newspaper. In Jan. 2002, he began with the Apalachicola Times, first as reporter and later as editor, and in Oct. 2020, also began editing the Port St. Joe Star.