The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten [140]
Each of the serious teams had a long table that sagged under the weight of its twenty or thirty proudest trophies. The most breathtaking example had three tall and lustrous blue metal columns supporting a black triangular platform, on which were three pink metal pigs each standing on a golden rectangle. In the center, between the three pigs, stood a loving cup surmounted by a tall golden figure in the form of the Victory of Samothrace, this one not headless and chipped like the version at the Louvre, but fully formed and with a slimmer, more modern body, her wings shimmering with speckles of blue and pink, her saucy breasts straining through gauzy drapery, one arm raised to hold a torch aloft, its flame a rosy radiance.
Saturday was judgment day. The sky was blue, the air was filled with smoke and tension, and the ground was getting dusty. When it rains on a Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, Tom Lee Park turns into a hog wallow. But today the event went off with benign military precision. Many among both the public and the contestants wore pink rubber snouts; your present correspondent did not. There was also a sprinkling of Elvis impersonators. Admission for the public was four dollars; the crowd was later estimated at eighty thousand.
Teams had driven in from seventeen states to vie for twenty-five thousand dollars in prize money, most of it divided among the winners and runners-up in the three categories of pork barbecue—Ribs, Shoulder, and Whole Hog. Some judges visit each team’s site, and some participate in a blind judging, in which each team’s product is carried in a numbered Styrofoam box to the judges’ tent, where four judges evaluate (in order of importance) the entry’s flavor, tenderness, and appearance or doneness—on a scale from 5 to 10. In the on-site judging, three judges make independent trips to each team’s location and assign points for the quality of the food, the cleanliness of the team’s area, and what is called the team’s presentation, a lengthy speech explaining the history of the team; its theories of barbecue cookery; the source of its meat, fuel, and machinery; the secrets of its sauce. Truth is not an indispensable element. As long as a speech is consistent and intelligent, a team is allowed to say, southern style, anything that may impress you. “It’s like sitting around an old pit late at night, swapping stories,” one of our teachers had explained. I have never sat around an old pit late at night, but I can imagine what he had in mind. Appearance and presentation are given minor weight. The meat comes first, and flavor is its most important attribute. Garnishes do not count, not even Memphis slaw.
The on-site judges are repeatedly warned not to get drunk before visiting all three assigned teams, but I saw no judge who was anything less than stone-cold sober. Each on-site judge is given an apron (a different color for each category of pork) and an assistant to guide him or her around the crowded park to three teams within a precise sixty minutes. Then the scoring cards are tallied by Price Waterhouse and its computers. The three highest scorers in each of the three categories become finalists. All nine finalists are visited late in the day by a group of four special judges who decide the winner in each category and the grand champion of the entire contest.
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