2010 Weekend of Fire Diary
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ShareThe Weekend of Fire is perhaps the most anticipated hot sauce event of the year for me. Sure, other trade shows dwarf the WOF in sheer size, but this annual gathering of spicy food and BBQ vendors held in the Cincinnati suburb of Fairfield claims the biggest and best turnout from the chile bloggers, has one of the most exciting wing-eating contests in Defcon Sauces' Deathmatch, and is hosted in the same building as Jungle Jim's International Market - one of the largest grocery stores in America. As a bonus capper to the weekend, there is also an open house at CaJohns' Fiery Foods less than two hours away in Columbus (with a new Bloggers Cup contest this year).
You kids shut the bathroom door. Daddy's trying to concentrate!
SATURDAY
Arrival and Breakfast
We arrived at the Oscar event Center's front entrance shortly before 9 am (one hour before the official open time) and were eventually let in by Jungle Jim's employees. Kathy and I headed towards to familiar Bloggers Booth area in the far left corner of the Grand Hall. The booth area seemed sparse, due to the fact that there were no charity items to sell or salsa contest ballot boxes like last year, and also because there was one extra table to accommodate the bloggers' growing attendance numbers. Right before we sought out Jungle Jim's complementary vendor/blogger breakfast inside of one of the Oscar Center's meeting rooms, my wife and I decided to make a quick stroll around the show floor to see who was there. I ran into Scott Ross of Great Scott Sauces walking around the floor as well and he had handed me a bottle of his FireStorm 3.0 BBQ Sauce to review. I saw Michael Lampros of Gunther's Gourmet who had picked up a box of habanero and sour cream-flavored pretzel bites for me to try out. Crazy Uncle Jester himself, Jeff Stevenson, stopped and handed me one of his lemon-flavored Make Me Cough Drops, which are blazingly hot candy made with 6 million SHU extract. I popped it in my mouth, but had to remove it a minute later when it was time to consume breakfast.
The kinder, gentler, and roomier Bloggers Booth
Johnny McLaughlin of Heartbreaking Dawns (right) chats with Firehead Thom (left), while Passow wishes all mustards be eradicated from the face of the planet.
It was good seeing familiar faces from the blogosphere, both ones I've met before and others that I hadn't. I finally got to meet Brian and Marilyn Meagher of HotSauceDaily.com in person for the first time. There was Al "Buddah" Goldenberg whom I've met a few times before and talk with him on a weekly basis, along with "Firehead" Thomas Gately (with his significant other Annabelle Salazar) of ILoveItSpicy.com. There was also Joe Levinson (sadly without his wife Linda) and Jonathan Passow of TheHotZoneOnline.com; Eric Grant; David "Hudd", Betty and Danny Huddleston; Ethan and Mia Clapham; Bill and Sandi Kraft; "Chilehead" Ed Rome of RedrumHotSauce.com; and Paul "The Big Show" Raczynski.
I saw Randy Combs (Brian's co-host for the first dozen episodes of the Hot Sauce Weekly podcast) once again and met chilehead Shawn Mundell. Passow brought along his close pal Eric "Chem" Chmielewski, whose name I've seen on many of Passow's Hot Zone Online postings, but mistakenly thought Eric's nickname was pronounced with a hard "k" like "kim", as in short for "chemical". Later I discovered that it was actually pronounced "chim" as in "chimney", so I felt bad for saying it wrong for the better part of a day.
New Duties
Other than the food eating contests, the big addition to the Weekend of Fire was the addition of the product voting. The awards for these were dubbed the WOFIs. The voting for WOFI winners was split into two types. The first was where the general public could pick out what they considered to be the best hot sauce, BBQ sauce, salsa and specialty food item at the show and mark them on a ballot. The second type of voting would be strictly for the bloggers in attendance, and featured two categories: one for Best New Product, which could include anything released by this year's vendors after the 2009 WOF show, and second was for Best of Show and could be any product available from attending vendors, even if said product was several years old.
The Torchbearer Sauces Booth
Unfortunately, one thing that Jungle Jim's employees bungled was communication on how the selection and voting process would be executed, despite it being clear as day on the WOF website on the contest and awards pages.
Apparently, vendors were told to bring products (one in each of the categories) they had submitted for the general public voting back to the bloggers booth - a completely unnecessary task. Over-analysing and over-thinking had a few bloggers confused and thinking that the contest had been modified in the middle of the show, but we eventually came to a consensus and agreed that all we needed to do was to walk around and sample everything for our part of the WOFI award voting. We bloggers would then write down our top three picks in both the Best of Show and Best New Product categories and then come up with the top vote getters.
Sizable chunks of time on Saturday were then spent trying out products at all the booths. Not that I wouldn't have done that anyway - I love to sample food and sauces of all kinds. But more careful attention had to be paid as I made mental notes as to what sauces and salsas wowed me and what didn't for the Bloggers Best voting.
New Products
There was not any one new product that blew me away this year that I hadn't previously sampled. Instead, I would have classified several sauces and items as "very good": Hot Squeeze Sweet Chipotle Sauce; Heartbreaking Dawns Fiery Trail Preserves and Datil Pepper Reserves, plus their Bhut Jolokia Brownies; Race City Sauce Works 4-Year Reserve Sauce; CaJohn's 3-Year Reserve; Montezuma Brand's as-of-now unlabeled salsa, hot sauce, and all-purpose sauce, all made with the calamansi citrus fruit from the Philippines; and Tom's Roid Rippin' Tapestry Sauce. Many of the bloggers who went to the Peppers at the Beach event in May had raved about Rising Sun Pepper Farms' cheese/beer dip made with their 3 Pepper Garlic Hot Sauce. They had samples of the dip available (sans beer) at their booth and it simply had much of a harsh garlic/vinegar taste for me to go ga-ga over it. But I plan to give it a chance at home (made with beer this time, mind you) to truly give it a fair shake.
I filled in for Chuck Evans at his Montezuma booth for a few minutes while he went to scout for some lunch, and subsequently returned food-less. The lack of any type of purchasable grub on the Oscar Center premises was a small letdown, and even the carts that were outside the entrance and exit of Jungle Jim's last year offering barbecue, nachos and roasted peppers were now non-existent. If anyone desired lunch, they were required to grab some inside the Jungle Jim's market itself or trot down to any of the other restaurants in the JJ's mall such as CiCi's Pizza and Buffalo Rings and Wings.
Contests in the Arena of Fire
Buddah, go back to your hotel room. The contests won't start for another 5 hours!
Debuting this year was the newly-christened "Arena of Fire", the large, open room up the stairs from the Oscar Center's entrance and adjacent to the booth-filled main ballroom. This area was used for Intensity Academy's Lick-a-Thon in 2009 and then had been proved adequate enough to house a large, round tournament table and several dozen spectators. This year, Jungle Jim's had two sets of metal bleachers installed around long, rectangular tables where contenders fought their spicy eating battles.
Attendance and participation for all of the contests were high, and all were exciting to watch. The bleachers were always full, with a lot of spectators standing all around enjoying the competitions.
Do you dare enter?
The insane Horseradish Eating Contest, sponsored by Bald Eagle Foods
Ice Cream Eating Contest, sponsored by Velvet Cream and Crazy Uncle Jesters Inferno World
Deathmatch
The highlight of the contest lineup and perhaps the entire show was of course Defcon's Deathmatch National Wing-Eating Championship. Defcon Creator John Dilley cooked up his most fiendishly nuclear-fueled wing coating yet in the Deathmatch MKIII Sauce, rumored to be at least 50% hotter than last year's MKII, and that's not even including the additional extract he and the Createss Maggie always add before applying the mixture to the wings.
The same rules applied in the competition: eat 10 wings within four minutes, and after that four minute period has ticked down, contestants must wait an extra five minutes with their palms down on the table while their compromised faces and mouths stew in the misery and pain.
But there was a classic case of "it was over before it began" as newcomer Steve Smallwood blazed past all comers and cleaned his 10 wings in a Deathmatch record of 58 seconds. While he was still chewing on the meat for an additional 30-plus seconds before swallowing, he still was far ahead enough of the second-place winner to earn the title of grand champ.
Steve Smallwood, 2010 Deathmatch Champ
SUNDAY
Not to sound ungrateful or pissy, but the free breakfast provided by Jungle Jim's for vendors and bloggers had been for the most part slim pickings. So Kathy and I opted for the heartier complimentary continental breakfast at the Hampton Inn. After a few bites, we drove up to Jungle Jim's Market to do a bit of exploring and to look around the famous Hot Sauce Fire Truck between the Asian and Mexican sections. I scanned the shelves and snatched up a few sauces available at JJ's for a cheaper price than my local St. Louis hot shop, in particular Marie Sharp's Hot Habanero and several bottles of Pepper's (who were oddly absent at the Weekend of Fire) Georgia Peach and Vidalia Onion Hot Sauce.
DEFCON Creator John Dilley introduced Def-Konichi, a new Asian-style sauce. He also debuted new versions of old faves, namely the Deathmatch MKIII and the ZERO Sludge.
Since Saturday was sample day at the show, Sunday was purchase day. I had already made my spicy foods shopping list a week prior back in Missouri (might as well get as much as I could at the Weekend of Fire so I could save by not paying shipping costs!), and had some additional things I wanted to pick up while walking around the show floor.
There was more hanging out and a few more faces to talk to. Jungle Jim Bonaminio himself candidly talked to Brian Meagher and I about the ins and outs of the grocery business. I finally met Jay Calvert of Jake Albert's Specialty Foods who flew down from Ontario to witness the show and to hand out bottles of his delicious Fuego Rojo and Fuego Azul sweet habanero glazes to us bloggers.
Jay Calvert of Jake Albert's Specialty Foods
The buzz surrounding the contests had died down somewhat, as there were repeat competitions with ice cream and lollipops, but a new one with bugcicles proved to be a gross-out hit with the kids, and the Bhut Jolokia Brownie Buster Brawl sponsored by Heartbreaking Dawns and I Love It Spicy also was fun to watch.
Although Hudd lost the previous night's Deathmatch, he emerged as the brownie champ in the contest.
Bloggers Roundtable
Long before Brian Meagher recorded the first Hot Sauce Weekly, he and I bounced around a few ideas for possible show topics, and a roundtable discussion amongst bloggers was brought up. I personally loved listening to roundtable discussion programs ranging from the weekly technology news on This Week In Tech or one of the special topic editions of The BBQ Central Radio Show.
Fast forward several months and a couple dozen HSD podcast episodes later. Brian put out the call to bloggers to see if they wanted to participate in such a roundtable talk. I figured that since a large blogger contingent was going to turn up at the Weekend of Fire, why not record us in person? Brian and Marilyn brought their recording equipment with them to Fairfield and we were almost set...
Left to right: Brian Meagher, Scott Roberts, Al "Buddah" Goldenberg, Jonathan Passow, "Jungle Jim" Bonaminio (standing), Marilyn Meagher, Joe Levinson, "Firehead" Thomas Gately. Photo by Annabelle Salazar
We asked the Jungle Jim's staff what conference rooms were available to do such a discussion, and they directed us towards a smaller meeting room that literally had a round table in the middle and was perfect for our needs. After a visit from Jim Bonaminio explaining what exactly the decorations on the conference walls were and some loosening up, we were ready to go.
You can download Episode #25 - the Bloggers Roundtable episode of the Hot Sauce Weekly podcast here.
We had a lot of fun doing it and there felt like there was a natural energy permeating the air. Despite having the discussion lasting around 40 minutes, we barely scratched the surface with this. There is easily another episode or two all of us bloggers could record. Topics such as how we first became chileheads and how each of us started our blogs, to marketing, labeling and packaging spicy food products, and our general thoughts on the industry and hot sauce shows could all be covered. There are a lot of stories to tell and a lot of opinions to be given, and even me just as a chilehead and a fan of other blogs look forward to hearing all of this.
So a follow-up roundtable talk is definitely in the works, but how it's going to be done - either online through Skype and phones or recorded at another hot sauce show - remains to be seen.
The Awarding of the WOFIs
At 4 o'clock, all the vote were tabulated from both the bloggers and the general attendees, and it was time to hand out the WOFI awards. A caravan of individuals comprising of some of the Jungle Jim's staff, photographers and bloggers followed the cart full of WOFI awards around to each booth to personally bestow each prize.
Bloggers' Best, Best New Product: Heartbreaking Dawns Datil Pepper Reserves
Bloggers' Best, Best of Show: Race City Sauce Works Four Year Reserve Sauce
Best Hot Sauce: Uncle Phil's Habanero Sauce
Best Salsa: Don Sabrosa
Best BBQ Sauce: Kentucky's Smokin' Grill
Best Specialty Product: Deano's Jalapenos
Best Booth: Defcon Sauces
Who is this man and what has he done with the guy who normally dresses up in costumes?
A third trip to Jungle Jim's market was made by Kathy and I, and after that it was time to call it a day on the show and retreat to the hotel before supper.
Dinner at Pappadeaux
we arrived a few minutes late for dinner at Pappadeaux but were able to find seat next to the Huddlestons, who were talking about how their son Danny had locked himself out of the house earlier that day and was wanting his parents to make an 2-hour round trip to let him back in. Other empty table seats around us were filled by Tom Hann of Jungle Jim's and wife, Skip Symonds of The Extreme Gourmet, and Doehne "Deano" Duckworth of Deano's Jalapenos.
I hadn't really gotten a chance to speak with Skip during the show itself, and he talked quite a bit about his chile pepper growing for his products and some of the interesting hybrids he's working on. He even brought along some tiny, super-hot chiles that looked like thai peppers and had me try one. Deano conversed about his 15-hour-long drive from Vermont and his life as a restaurateur.
I had a cedar-planked salmon steak with grilled asparagus and Kathy ordered a ribeye. While the food was rather good, the service wasn't. We grumbled about having to shell out the automatic 18% gratuity to the lousy wait staff. Poor Hudd forgot about the automatic tip and paid an additional voluntary one.
Eventually we were able to get our check, we said our goodbyes to everyone, and headed back to the hotel to rest up for the trip to Columbus the next day where I would get to see CaJohns' new facilities.
Comments
2010-08-06 23:17:11
2010-08-07 05:44:55
2010-08-07 07:01:52
It was great to have so many bloggers attend. The energy you create is great! It was also good to see the bloggers from last year and meet the new.
If anyone (bloggers in attendance) has comments, please send them to me. I really do want to know what you think of the show.
2010-08-07 08:07:13
2010-08-07 08:17:27
2010-08-07 14:14:04
2010-08-07 14:57:28
2010-08-07 15:21:59
Jay, I feel the same way about myself. There's a picture of me taken by someone else at CaJohns the next day where it looks like I'm storing a monster truck tire in my shirt.;-)
2010-08-07 22:35:15
2010-08-07 23:42:36
2010-08-08 05:36:43
2010-08-08 11:51:32
It was quite amusing watching everyone try to get "Chem's" name correct, lol
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