World Food Championships get cooking in Las Vegas

Amid a long row of peaked white canopies at the World Food Championships, one stood out. A "no-smoking" sign dangled futilely from a flap as steps away, dozens of barbecue smokers were being stoked.

Their owners prepared for the World Barbecue Championship, Pork Shoulder and Sauce category - and its prize of $50,000.

If you wanted to find the main competition area behind Bally's on Friday morning, the easiest way was to follow a couple of guys in barbecue T-shirts. After entering the gate to Competition Square, you might have passed the Here's the Rub BBQ Team, the Redneck Scientific Competitive BBQ Team & Field Staff and someone wearing a T-shirt for the Sin City Smokers, promising hot women, cold beer and spicy barbecue.

But not everyone was consumed with barbecue (or consuming barbecue). Cheek-by-jowl from the smokers were rows of competitors getting ready for the World Open Chili Championship, Competition Chili category, with a prize of $25,000. And before the weekend is over, others will be competing with burgers, side dishes, sandwiches, free-style chili, barbecued pork ribs and beef brisket and potato salad - more than 300 entrants in all. It'll all culminate at The Final Table on Sunday at Caesars Palace, where seven finalists will compete for the $75,000 top prize.

The chili and barbecue folks were just getting their respective fires going Friday morning when, on the nearby Kitchen Alley, Carmell Childs from Ferron, Utah, ("It's a tiny town") was displaying her completed White Chocolate-Apricot Sunrises as her husband snapped a photo and she prepared to enter a tent for judging. Like competitors in other areas she had qualified by winning a preliminary event, in her case the Del Monte Crown the Cook contest. The entries, she said, would be whittled to the top 10, who would vie for $25,000 in the World Recipe Championship. Their final round, she said, would be tapas, which pretty much confirmed the notion that about any type of food one could cook up would be a source of competition over the weekend.

Ferron may be only about a half-day's drive from Las Vegas, but a lot of the competitors traveled much farther. Over in the barbecue area was the Boar's Night Out Championship BBQ Team from Olive Branch, Miss.

Boar's Night Out member Allen Smith was sipping his first beer of the day as his cooker gently smoked. Since the team got together in 2006 it has won eight grand champion awards, which means it has seen more than a few competitions.

"This is unbelievable," Smith said. "There are people here from 41 states and three countries; to be one of those 81 teams is a unique opportunity."

Bob Wiseman had a much shorter drive, but no less enthusiasm. The king of Burro Bob's Chili, he's a Las Vegas resident, and one of more than 50 competitors in the chili category.

It all started, he said, with a dare in 1982, and a chili cookoff at the Boulevard Mall on Maryland Parkway.

"We thought we made the best chili around," Wiseman said. "We went out there and got our butts kicked."

The competitive world has been more welcoming in the years since. Wiseman said he has been to the World Chili Championship five times, and once placed in the top 20 in the salsa category.

And he was happy about the way things were going Friday.

"For the first time," Wiseman said, "this has been pretty smooth."

Contact reporter Heidi Knapp Rinella at hrinella@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0474.