COMMENTARY : A Macho Ritual, More to Do With Funny Hats Than Food

Expensive-restaurant chili might be the equivalent of hand-tooled cowboy boots on the feet of a Texas millionaire, a sign that the owner is really a regular guy even if he does serve a whole lot of raie en vinaigrette . It’s almost as easy to find a refined bowl of red on local restaurant menus these days as it is to find a piece of grilled swordfish.

But chili is not gourmet food.

Ma Maison’s Patrick Terrail struck out with the chili at his late Hollywood Diner. Chasen’s famous product is distinguishable from a bowl of Dennison’s only by a silver chafing dish and an 1,800% price differential. Leonard Schwartz’s “Kick-Ass Chili” at 72 Market Street goes better with a bottle of Merlot than it does with a cold, long-neck Bud. And Ken Frank’s chili at La Toque, though exquisitely spiced, is made with duck.

Despite the chili renaissance, you’d have to attend an event like the World Championship Chili Cookoff if you want to taste anything approaching authentic chili, at least in Southern California.

And you’d find that championship chili is more macho ritual than foodstuff, more about funny hats than about American cuisine.

You can always tell a real chili head, but you can’t tell him much. He’ll stand in the pouring rain, sauteing chuck in Wesson oil, dousing it with canned tomato sauce and simmering it with great gouts of supermarket chili powder--when he’s not altering the formula with gobbets of soy sauce, cinnamon or powdered cloves.

He’ll dose the stuff with plenty of cayenne and call you a sissy when your eyes water.

He’ll wear a hat and a gut, and just possibly a jacket that carries a message on the back something like: “Do Not Follow Closely . . . Official Chili Judge.”

If you were to join the dozens of soap stars and chili-world personalities actually judging the preliminary rounds of the event, you’d don an apron and address a table laden with about 20 numbered containers of the goods.

(You’d also probably hope that your table didn’t draw the possum, rattler or armadillo chilis, or the official entry from Korea spiked with fermented cabbage . . . the rules for cookoffs usually specify that entrants may be required to eat a spoonful of their own chili.)

There are fruity chilis, teriyaki chilis and almost dessert-like chilis that would go nicely with a chilled glass of Sauternes. And there are chilis that taste like they were made with cardboard and carrot juice.

But most of the chilis tasted remarkably similar, various stewinesses of beef spiced with various wallops of salt, cumin and dried peppers.

The differences in texture, aroma, balance of spices are subtle, kind of a Zen thing among some of the least contemplative people in the world.