Chili Elite Meet to Eat Heat in Thousand Oaks

You didn’t have to be a chili aficionado to enjoy the chili cook-off Sunday at Conejo Creek Park in Thousand Oaks.

Instead of eating, you might have spent the day peering at the whiskers on the proud faces of 78 men competing in a beard contest--judged by an all-female jury.

“Why not?” said one of the judges, Elizabeth Eslick, 20, of Thousand Oaks. “Men judge us.”

Or you might have been among the 15,000 or so in the crowd who turned out under sunny skies to simply enjoy the color of the event, a bit of advance hoopla for the Conejo Valley Days, which officially opens April 22.

For the chili buff, though, it was a feast. Literally.

Witness the colorful names of some of the 60 entries:

ChiliVision (the cook, Ralph Laboy, 34, of Thousand Oaks, is in the cable-television business); Bull & Bear (a group from the Dean Witter brokerage firm, according to Matt Morrison, 34, of Thousand Oaks); Roach Chili (“We scrounge everything from the kitchen into it,” said David Gaughran, 32, of Thousand Oaks);

Two-Steppin’ Red Death Chili (“We all like Western things and living with a redhead could kill you,” said redhead Marie Moran, 32, of Thousand Oaks); Chez Douglas (“We’re on the Westlake side of Thousand Oaks, so it’s refined,” said Mark Tyoran, 28, a Westlake Village realtor;

Sancho’s Chili Co.-New Mexico Red (“We get our chilis from New Mexico,” said Rick Johnston, 26, of Ventura); Trashcan Chili (“You name it and we got it” in the chili, said Paul Pearson, 32, of Newbury Park.

But if you wanted hot chili-- really hot--you beat a path to Cup o’ Death. It wasn’t for the fainthearted.

Just how hot is hot?

Well, Mike O’Rear, 42, of Van Nuys, a computer technician at USC, said the chili peppers he uses are specially imported from Central America.

“They’re 10 times hotter than jalapenos,” he said.

And how hot is that?

“Just a little bit below blistering your mouth,” he said.

In fact, so hot, he declared, that just that morning he had been handling a fistful and inadvertently touched his neck.

“My skin blistered,” he said.

Marty Suer, 55, of Newbury Park, who is in the travel business, and his wife, Deborah, bravely stepped forward and cautiously dug their plastic spoons into paper cups brimming with O’Rear’s pride and joy.

For a second, it appeared that Deborah had been shot. She blinked after swallowing. Then she groaned.

“Oh, my God,” was her brief response.

“It sure makes you sweat,” said Marty.

But Larry Randall, a 39-year-old bricklayer from Camarillo, didn’t blink when he wolfed down the deadly stuff.

“I’ve been lookin’ for something like this all day,” he said with an air of satisfaction.

Just because a contestant’s chili is super hot doesn’t mean it will win a prize. In fact, it probably won’t.

“Good chili flavor tastes not too hot, not too mild,” said Mike Avent, 48, of Agoura, the chief chili judge.

The secret, he said, is to have just the right meat texture--”not too mushy, not too tough”--and a tasty sauce with what he called “consistency.” (Beans aren’t allowed in the chili submitted for judging.)

Contestants had four hours to cook their entries Sunday in preparation for judging. The brew they fed to the public, ranging from super hot to mild, was cooked separately from the grub they gave to the judges.

Sunday’s winner, Steve Deveux, 34, of Simi Valley, got $250, a trophy and a chance to compete this fall in the world championship chili cook-off at Rosamond in Kern County.

Avent has probably tasted a ton of chili as a judge over the years, but he still remembers a recipe from four years ago that he considers perfect.

“In my opinion,” he said, “it was as near to a perfect bowl of chili as I’ve ever tasted.”

Standing a few feet away was Fred Weiland, 59, of Paramount, another judge and the creator of that “perfect” chili.

“Flavor, flavor, flavor,” that’s the bottom line of judging chili, Weiland said.

Keeping chili stains off their beards, at least until after the Whiskeroo contest, were 78 buckaroos vying for the best set of whiskers.

That honor went to Bill Smith, 48, of Newbury Park, a printer at UCLA.

“I’ve had it for 18 years,” said Smith of his trim, silver-white beard. “Actually, it started out brown.”

What do the female partners of these macho men think of their hairy companions?

Robert Campbell, 28, of Thousand Oaks, a student, had a prominent reddish beard that won a third-place ribbon in the fullest-beard category. Sitting beside him was his proud girlfriend, Michelle.

“It tickles,” she said.