Pigs Feet Results, NJ State Fair, 6/23/07

Complete Results (IFOCE rank in paranthesis):

10 Minute Contest:

1 - Arturo "the Natural" Rios(9): 46 Oz., $750
2 - Erik the Red Denmark(14): 30 Oz., $350,
3 - Crazy Legs Conti(11): 19 Oz., $150
4 - Pat "from Moonachie" Philbin(24): Total not recorded

Sorry for the late update, I have been trying to digest what happened at this contest for the past week. It wasn't pretty in a lot of ways. Starting with the food: the pigs' feet were boiled and then chlled on ice and spritzed with lemon juice before serving. They were prepared by a local butcher and though this may have been the best or most traditional way to serve pigs' feet, I think it was a bad idea. The contest was originally supposed to involve pickled pigs' feet, which are by no means any tastier than the boiled pigs' feet, but are more of a novelty and they would have been easier to eat and easier to judge in my opinion.


these were more like pig legs - giant and nasty

It was apparent as soon as the food arrived in the coolers that this contest would not be an easy one to plate or judge. There were large chunks of pigs feet - bones, tendons, skin, nails, I don't know they were all there. Each leg probably weighed around 1.5 pounds but there was probably only 25 percent yield of meat. Only four eaters showed up for the contest - four! I have never been to such a contest.

Pat Philbin was coming only to watch and help out with the judging since he lives literally down the street from where the contest was being held. But Pat wanted nothing to do with the pigs' feet and I don't blame him. But since only Crazy Legs, Arturo, and myself showed up, Geroge Shea and Charles Hardy virtually begged Pat to come up on stage and at least pretend like he was eating sot that the stage would not be so empty.

Charles, Crazy Legs, and I spent about an hour trying to get the pigs' feet in somewhat equal trays and trying to determine how we could properly weigh them. The contest started about one hour later than it was scheduled even though there was only four of us there because it took so long. We ended up putting about 170-175 Oz. in each tray - around 11 pounds. Each eater was given 2 trays. Pat Philbin's trays were not really marked since he agreed to go on stage but he insisted he did not want to "compete".

Staring at the pigs' feet before the countdown to the start of the contest did not induce any feelings of hunger. The only saving grace for me was that a brought a bottle of Barrel no. 51 habanero BBQ sauce to dip the pigs' feet in to drown out the taste and texture of the pigs' feet. My friend makes the BBQ sauce and I am a big fan of the spicy habanero flavor. The first few bites however, made me gag. I dug straight in to the soft thick skin first but that was the worst part. Once you got past the first couple of layers, there was bigger chunks of meat close to the bone that actually did not taste too bad, kind of like cold pork.

As the minutes went by it got harder and harder to get to the meat, I felt like this was a digging contest as much as an eating contest. I ended up cleaning one tray pretty thoroughly and got in to about one fourth of the second tray. I didn't look up once during the contest, I kept my head down focused and tyring not to think about the fact that I was eating the whole feet of a dirty animal. Once the contest mercily ended, I looked up and saw that Arturo had picked chunks out of legs from three trays and were stacked in a large pile.

It was really hard to tell how much anyone ate until everything was throroughly weighed. In the end, Arturo was able to pluck off more meat from the legs. I have to say this was the most intimidating contest that I ever participated in. This would have been a nice title to have, a unique title. But to tell you the truth, I don't neccesarily regret not having eaten another pound of that shit.