NOW THAT'S AMERICAN:

A national passion: Chili takes its place at the table of classic American dishes (Susan Campbell, Hartford Courant )

Chili - whatever its regional form - is pickup trucks and dusty roads. Chili is cold beer and hot nights. Chili is the great equalizer.

Movie star Elizabeth Taylor is said to have ordered hers from fancy-schmancy Chasen's, sent frozen to the "Cleopatra" set in Rome. Humorist and world traveler Will Rogers measured a town's worth by the quality of its chili. Outlaw Jesse James (the original, not the television star) ate chili. On the campaign trail, John Kerry once (famously) ate a bowl from a Wendy's fast-food restaurant (with a Frosty).

Chili is (flags up, drums rolling) universal yet uniquely American. In 1999, Connecticut's Jane and Michael Stern wrote a book about it ("Chili Nation") and called the dish the "one truly national shared food." That's not hyperbole. What other food has an entire cult grown up around it, with fierce discussions as to ingredients, its origin and its place on the table of classic dishes.OK, maybe barbecue, but still.

Chili has multiple festivals devoted to it, and if you live in America, you live within driving distance of a chili cook-off.

All this over a simple bowl of red. No other country - certainly not Mexico, where people mistakenly place chili's roots (and Mexicans wish they wouldn't) - could get so bent out of shape over such an easy dish. For all its lore, chili is, says Carol Hancock, owner and CEO of the International Chili Society, a bowl of meat, chili peppers, and spices.

"It doesn't take a genius to add spices to bad meat," says Hancock.

Working in the Permian Oil Basin on a geoseismic crew, we used to take cans of Wolf Brand Chili and put them on the manifolds of the crew pickup trucks for a few hours, then open them and eat it straight from the can.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 1, 2005 6:48 AM