Hot Times at Oxnard Salsa Fest

For Suz Montgomery, judging salsa at the Eighth Annual Oxnard Salsa Festival on Sunday was more than just dipping tortilla chips in various goos made with onions, tomatoes and spices.

As she held a tray filled with entries in small plastic cups, each with a number stenciled on its side, Montgomery, a professional chef and host of her own cooking show on cable television, smelled each saucy recipe and then sloshed them around one by one in her mouth.

Occasionally, she closed her eyes and appeared as if she were in deep thought.

For the care she took, these could have been prized French wines instead of mixtures sliced and stirred by restaurateurs and amateur home cooks.

“You live to eat. You don’t eat to live,” said Montgomery of Ventura, who dressed festively for the judging in a bright-red pantsuit and chili pepper earrings. “If you have no passion for food, then you have no passion for life.”

For the thousands of salsa lovers who came to sample, rate and have their own homemade creations judged, the festival offered dozens of tasty, knock-your-socks-off concoctions that were fresher and far more complicated than the red bottled liquid splashed on tacos.

In addition to salsa, the festival was jammed with food, craft and game booths that lined the main concourse at Plaza Park in the city’s downtown corridor.

Festival organizers estimated the two-day party attracted more than 30,000 people--many of them repeat customers.

While families strolled and ate, Montgomery and 15 other judges sampled 60 different entries made at restaurants such as Fresh Catch in Oxnard, or by amateurs such as Judy Foster of Oxnard, who works as a purchasing clerk at PSI Bearings in Simi Valley.

In the end, the judges tallied their votes and announced that Foster, the home cook from Oxnard, had produced the best amateur mix by using little green tomatillos and fresh, aromatic cilantro.

A salsa made by a Thousand Oaks-based cooking club called the Pork Belly Bandits was voted the best professional submission.

Foster was shocked by the win because she entered on a whim.

“I’m thrilled and fully expect to be famous,” Foster said with a laugh.