Last night was the 20th annual United Way Gumbo Cookoff, and Tom was again a judge. First let me say that this event is worth going to for the door prizes alone. Several hotels gave away staycations with spa visits. And restaurants were generous with $100 gift cards.
The gumbo wasn’t bad either.
A gumbo cook-off is tough work for a judge. There are usually more than ten, in three different categories, and each judging form has distinct categories with a range of 1-5 or sometimes 1-10. Things like aroma and presentation and taste begin to all meld together by the time the sixth one is presented to you. The only real distinction with a wide variation is when something is spectacularly presented. Normally one or two of these pop out, and then other factors become more significant. How much different does one smell from the other? Actually, a lot. Even more so than taste.
A gumbo by its very nature is salty and smoky. I overheard one patron exclaim to another, “Boy, this is salty!” Uh, yeah. The winner overall was the Desire Oyster Bar which had one of those unique presentations, featuring half a fried softshell crab flanking one side of the dish. The roux of the gumbo was surprisingly light, but the crab mitigated any other offense. The second most arresting presentation was a bread bowl filled with all kinds of seafood, in very generous proportions, with a crab claw sticking up (of the kind you have to work for). This gumbo had a better flavor to us, and was literally brimming over with seafood.
There were dessert awards, and best table decoration awards. It was a tallying challenge for them, fielding the judge's choices and the people’s choices, and melding the two. A fun and recommended evening for next year. The Royal Sonesta does a good job with this event.
