Cheese dip contest has aged well
7,000 people process all the flavors, chip in for good cause
The World Cheese Dip Championship hosted annually in Little Rock is, if anything, only getting cheesier.
Two years ago, Justin Wise said the championship served about 2,500 cheese aficionados and novices. He said coordinators expected this year’s event, held at the Clinton Presidential Center, to draw double 2016’s numbers.
But Wise was wrong. This year’s championships drew an estimated 7,000-plus people, far outstripping expectations for the day.
The 70-degree October day was perfect for eating copious amounts of fresh, hot cheese dip, Wise said.
Participants in the lactose-full competition help raise money for Harmony Health Clinic, a nonprofit medical and dental service provider for uninsured and underinsured people in Pulaski County.
“We’re just connecting cheese-dip lovers to Harmony,” said Wise, the executive director of the Harmony Health Clinic. And the event “just keeps growing.”
Volunteer Lonnie Bradley, who worked in the people’s choice tent where nacho fans dropped tokens to vote for their favorite dip, said 16 vendors signed up for the 2017 championship.
This year, that number nearly doubled with 29 different booths set up — each carrying with them gallons and gallons of cheese, he said.
And with great cheese
dip comes great quantities of tortilla chips, said Justin Buck, Harmony’s community engagement director. He said more than 80,000 tortilla chips were cut and fried for the event.
The On the Border Mexican Food and Cantina in west Little Rock donated all of the chips for the event, Buck said, and fried them in-house.
Making enough of the crispy corn triangles took more than 18 hours of frying Thursday and Friday before Saturday’s event, he said.
By Saturday morning, the chips were bagged and ready for the stream of incoming dippers, and the sound of crunching tortillas made for a constant ambiance for the event.
A few yards south of the Red Cross’ spooky cheesedip
zombie — complete with an IV full of melted cheese — was the Studio Theatre’s tent named “In Queso Emergency.”
Justin Pike, while scooping cheese dip out of a warming plate, said he’s been a fan of the competition for years.
“We got involved because every year I come, and every single year I say, ‘We should do this next year,’” Pike said.
And, on their first try, Studio Theatre won first place in the amateur cheese dip category.
The overall winner of the day, and recipient of The Big Dipper trophy, was Santo Coyote, a bar and restaurant in Little Rock. McAlister’s Deli won in the professional category. The crowd chose Habitat for Humanity’s nacho dip for the amateur people’s choice award, and Capitol Hotel as the professional people’s choice winner.
For newcomers, like Cody
Durham, who attended with his wife, Jaimey, and three sons, the championship is less about contest and more about trying new foods and having fun.
By 1:30 p.m., Durham had tried seven of the 29 varieties of dip, but promised he would get through them all before he left.
“Oh, we’re excited,” Durham said.
Longtime fans of the championships — like Bill and Karen Wenneker — know to arrive prepared, with an empty belly and a cupcake tray for carrying cheese samples.
The Wennekers attended with their daughter, Kristi, in the first year of the cheese
dip festival back in 2010, Karen Wenneker said.
“When we first came, it was like 10 stands and a couple hundred of us,” she said. “When I saw it in the paper, I said ‘We have to go.’”
Each year the championships have grown, she said, and each year her family returns. For this year’s event, the Wennekers returned with now-married Kristi Kurtz and the most recent addition to the cheese-loving family: Kurtz’s 7-month-old son.
“We’re starting him early,” Bill Wenneker said while pushing the baby’s stroller Saturday. “No cheese for him this year but next year, he’ll be ready.”