The 2016 Belleville Chili Cook-Off was Oct. 7 & 8. After Art on the Square in mid-May, is easily the second most popular event in downtown Belleville.
There was around 50 booths serving up all forms and varieties of chili – at least that was the official number I heard. (It seems like there were much more than that.) Since I love chili, it is dream come true for me. The cook-off, as the name implies, is all about sampling lots of different chili. Every booth will serve you a sample size serving for fifty cents. If you find one you like, you can buy a bowl for $2, or if you really like it you can buy larger take home containers. Then there is voting and awards, but honestly I don’t pay much attention to that. I am all just about eating chili.
The Chili Cook-Off is so popular that years and years ago I gave up on trying to go down and sample chili on Saturday night when the crowd is the biggest. I go down to eat chili on Saturday afternoon. The crowd used to be very sparse on Saturday afternoon, but the idea must be catching on because this year even Saturday afternoon had a pretty good crowd.
Still much easier to get around and sample chili than Saturday night, however.
With the crowd and the lines and the chili booths, it can get a bit hard to get around on Saturday nights. But I still often go on Saturday nights to socialize, people watch, and so on.
This year on Saturday night my patience paid off. I bought some beer chips (yes, you have to buy beer chips to buy cups of beer. Just like the beer fests (called “pinics) in those small Southern Illinois Catholic towns I used to frequent as a younger man (like Radom and Du Bois). While standing in line to get my beer chips, I noticed the promo sign included a Leinenkugel brand. So I passed beer tent after beer tent that only had Bud Light and Coors. No thanks. There must be a tent SOMEWHERE selling Leinenkugel, which is
at least a step up from the other options.
Then, at the far end of the cook-off (at least from where I came in) there it was. A tent that proclaimed Samuel Adams. A de cent beer. Then when I queued up I saw this tent had a decent variety of better beers – including New Belgium Fat Tire. So Fat Tire it was. And I really enjoyed it. Thank you, Belleville Chili Cook-Off, for including at least one tent serving up decent beers for those of us who have grown weary of drinking crap.