A group of friends who enjoy cooking together won bragging rights and the coveted boot trophy in the second annual Mike Flowers Memorial Chili Cook-Off, held on Saturday at the Compass Centre.
Team Chil-Eh – pronounced with a strong Canadian ‘eh’ – were this year’s winners, taking over the title from last year’s victor, West Bay’s vegan restaurant Vivo.
Franck Bottero, of Vivo, handed over to the new chili champions the ceramic trophy boot, which has been on a journey of disaster and recovery – much like Vivo itself – since last year’s event.
When the restaurant at Lighthouse Point on North West Point Road was inundated with crashing waves during last month’s destructive nor’wester, the boot was broken, split in two pieces.
Bottero told the Compass, “The boot was broken in half, we found it underneath all the mess.”
His restaurant was wrecked in the storm, but looks like it’ll be ready to reopen in about 10 days, Bottero said.
Vivo’s chili entry for Saturday’s competition was the first dish cooked in the restaurant’s kitchen since the storm.
Initially, the broken boot was glued back together, but then Three Girls and a Kiln, who originally made the trophy, repaired it, ready to be handed over to whoever won the people’s choice award at Saturday’s event.
Team Chil-Eh – Maya Flores, Aaron Dewey, Anthony Liddle and others – despite having the supposedly unlucky number 13 as their stall number, proved to have the most popular chili at the outdoor food festival.
“We’re friends that just love cooking together,” Flores said.
Dewey said they cook together every weekend, and when they saw the call for entrants to the Chili Cook-Off, they decided they had to go for it.
This year, there were 13 entries in the cook-off – some professional restaurateurs, and some, like Chil-Eh, talented amateurs, but the quality was high throughout.
Each attendee, for the price of $10, was given a card with numbers on it. Each stall was assigned a number. The diners visited the stalls and were given a small cup of chili – some offered pork, some beef, one had jerk chicken and there was one vegan – and the stallholder marked off their corresponding number on the person’s card.
Once they’d sampled all the delicious offerings, the diners voted for their favourite.
As well as feasting on 13 great chilis, attendees were entertained with live music from Melody Copley Knox, who played her debut single ‘Home to the Islands’, Seaford Russell Jr. and Kate Knox, and The Sandkickers.
When the sun set, the chili cook-off was followed by a night of country music at the Compass Green with headline act Ryan Griffin taking the stage after Cayman’s own Bob Moseley.
The event, sponsored by the Moore Team at Coldwell Banker, is held in memory of Mike Flowers, the founder of Lone Star Bar & Grill, who died in Houston, Texas, on 22 April 2022, at the age of 68.
Flowers was a well-known figure in the local restaurant industry, and started what is now the Taste of Cayman food festival, with his own Chili Cookoff, which was created by him to raise money for charity.
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