Taste buds get tickled at annual event
Tamale Festival’s return signals start of season
Cheering crowds pressed in around the focused competitors as “The Eye of the Tiger” boomed from the speakers. The tension was palpable as the would-be champions powered through their annual face-off.
There was sweat. There was saliva. There were random food crumbs flung in every direction.
It was all in the name of the passion and glory that was the yearly tamale-eating contest at the sixth annual Tamale Festival.
Houston’s own John Anthony Gaitan, 46, turned up his tight tamale-eating technique and trashed 24 of the husked treats in just over 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
His soaked shirt speckled in tamale tidbits, the first-time competitor held up the gleaming trophy and grinned for the dozens of spectators enjoying Saturday’s foodie-friendly festival.
Launched in 2011, the gathering has grown steadily over the years, according to founder Daniel Hinojosa.
“The first time we did just under 1,000. Today, we were preparing for well over 10,000,” he said.
The weekend’s cool and drizzly weather kept away some of the crowds — but hardcore tamale fans were undeterred.
“Houston is infatuated with tamales,” the 42-yearold said. One festival-goer even sported a necklace honoring Tamalito, the event’s tamale mascot.
Hinojosa, who also runs a catering company and plans to launch a restaurant next year, got the idea for a tamale festival while he was consumed by the world of competition barbecue.
“I started brainstorming for a good festival,” he said, so he combined Houston’s tamale pride with his own love for the food — and a new Bayou City institution was born.
Although the rest of the year Hinojosa runs Harris County General Store Barbecue and Catering, launching the tamale-festival also eats up a good bit of time.
“This is a yearlong labor of love,” he said.
But tamales themselves, he explained, are a mostly seasonal food.
“The tradition in Hispanic culture is that tamales are a Christmas season recipe where families get together and make them and present them to each other as gifts,” he said.
That’s why the festival is typically slated for the first week in December, at the start of “tamale season.”
The festival features dozens of vendors, hawking everything from tamales to giant gourmet cupcakes to Vietnamese nachos.
“I pride myself on this having small mom and pop businesses,” he said. “It’s like the ultimate small business Saturday.”
To honor Hinojosa’s contributions, Councilman Robert Gallegos showed up to read an official proclamation honoring the huskfilled occasion.
“On behalf of Sylvester Turner, mayor of the city of Houston, and my colleagues on City Council, we hereby proclaim December 3, 2016, as Tamale Festival Houston day in Houston, Texas,” he said to a chorus of raucous cheers.
Among the handful of tamale vendors on scene Saturday was local favorite Alamo Tamale & Taco. To gear up for their favorite annual event, the nearby eatery calls in around 10 staff to whip up a few hundred tamales in a three-hour cooking craze.
“This is the biggest event of the year because our specialty is tamales,” said Alamo supervisor Lucrecia Garza.
For some of the popular tamale-makers, it’s just a once-a-year occasion, not a regular specialty.
Debra Mattix of Victoria, who took first place in the chef’s choice category, said this was her first time competing — but her pork and beef blend wowed the judges. But for Hinojosa, it’s not the contestants who are the real stars of the day.
“The real highlights are the tamales,” he said. “They are the real heroes.”