Visitors strut in to taste chitlins

SALLEY -- The town of Salley went in whole hog Saturday for the 44th annual Chitlin' Strut.

About 30,000 people visited the festival throughout the day, estimated Salley Town Council member Paul Salley. The Strut opened at 7 a.m. Saturday with a pancake breakfast sponsored by the Dean Swamp Masonic Lodge and got into full swing with a 10 a.m. parade through Main Street. The Night Vision Band provided live music between events such as the eating contest, hog-calling contest, the Strut dance contest and an antique tractor show.

"This is our 44th year for the Chitlin' Strut. It was an idea a previous mayor and a deejay came up with; it caught on, and it's grown ever since. It's a beautiful day, so far the weather has been perfect," Salley said.

"We've been coming here since I was a kid," said Chitlin Strut attendee David Jennings of Edgefield. "It's got fun, food, music, rides, and tradition."

But the festival's main attraction was the chitlins. The word is the Southernism of "chitterlings," the proper name of a most unusual butcher's cut of pork: the small intestine of the pig.

Chitlin plates went on sale at 8 a.m., and they were the gastronomical Mount Everest for the contestants in this year's chitlin eating contest, which, for the first time, featured a couple of ringers from the professional competitive eating circuit and a cash prize of $1,000, put up by Busbee's Hardware and Security Federal Bank.

Professional eating contestant Jesse Doyal joined the World League of Competitive Eating's world champion eater, Dale Boone, in answering the challenge of the chitlin eating contest. Contestants were given 2 pounds of boiled chitlins to eat in 10 minutes; once the first batches were downed, volunteers provided an additional pound at a time until the 10 minutes were up.

Boone won the $1,000, consuming more than 4 pounds of boiled chitlins.

"It tastes like bacon, a little bit," Boone said. "I've been around the world tasting things like crocodile's eggs, Thailand doughnuts, cobra meat in India. I'm just glad to bring it home."

Dylan Davidson came in second with 3¼ pounds. The remaining contestants were still polishing off the original 2 pounds at the 10-minute mark. All contestants received free commemorative T-shirts for taking part.

"I like competitive eating, but it turns out I don't like chitlins," Doyal said. "I'd never had them before."

Chitlins weren't the only dining experience available at the festival. Food vendors had something for just about every taste: turkey, barbecue, gyros, hamburgers, hot dogs and corn dogs, funnel cakes, kettle corn, fried potatoes, bloomin' onions, Polish and Italian sausages, fried fish, seafood gumbo and more.

The Chitlin Strut raises funds to supplement the town's budget, according to Salley.

"The money we raise just helps us make improvements to the town we couldn't make normally," Salley said.

Contact Suzanne Stone at sstone@aikenstandard.com.