Customer Reviews

The Great Chili Confrontation

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Reading this book, over 25 years ago, I began drinking milk with chili: according to the author this is the only suitable drink with chili, and he was exactly correct, in my opinion.

One of the funniest nonfiction books I have ever read. Smith writes an article claiming that the main ingredients in chili are ego and envy. A bunch of Texans get insulted by his article and demand a cook-off, thereby proving his thesis. The resulting trip to the Lone Star State is madly funny. "She believes things a mud turtle would blush to believe." I once made the mistake of lending this book to a friend who was recovering from surgery. He laughed till it hurt.

Of course, y'all know how the chili cookoff got started?

Ol' H. had a passion for (what he called) chili, and being a United Presss Syndicate feature columnist he worked the topic into his articles whenever it became convenient.

A feller named Wick Fowler was also a chili fancier, and being a jounalist himself in Texas, decided that H. Allen "didn't know chili from beans". The gauntlet was flung, and the challenge made. They chose Terlingua TX as the site of the cookoff "because a disaster could happen there and no one would know it."

The rest is history, and any number of versions exists as to how it transpired.

I like Harry's the best.

A memoir of the famous cook-off, and its antecedents, between under-rated wry humorist H Allen Smith & nemesis Wick Fowler.
I believe the Terlinqua, Texas festival continues to this day.
Smith was a rare wit and a truly American humorist who does not deserve obscurity. If you see one of his books - buy it.