Every year in April, Mamasake hosts an event so hot it makes your eyes water — the Raw at Squaw Handroll and Wasabi Eating Contest. Chefs diligently prepare ridiculous amounts of spicy tuna hand rolls and competitors fearlessly eye the various forms of wasabi globs they will soon ingest.
This year’s event started as usual: Competitors from as far away as Australia arrived full of hard-core, sushi-eating pride. The audience waited with anticipation, or perhaps a hope for the worst: What goes down will sometimes comes up.
An impressive panel of judges, including Tim Dutton, Marco Sullivan, JD Hoss, Jamie Burge, Todd Offenbacher, and Pam Ferris, provided the contestants with his or her best advice. While many suggested water, Dutton just wanted to see someone throw up.
In the first of two eliminating rounds of the handroll category, contenders ‘smashed the sushi,’ as one contestant said, with diligence and speed. Ryan ‘Mooyay’ Mailhot scored his fourth consecutive victory in the handroll category after eating more than 11 in the final round.
The action really got heated in the third and final round of the wasabi-eating extravaganza, when the possibility of an additional tie-breaking round was brutally interrupted by Dutton’s fondest hopes. In the end, the victory went to Andy Tuschler.
First-prize winners went home with a $75 Mamasake gift certificate, a sweatshirt, and a long board.Elsa Corrigan, owner and chef, went home with a chuckle.The other competitors went home with some loot, and a stomach ache. And I went home with a new appreciation for human behavior.
~ Photos and story by Emily Rademacher
