MURRELLS INLET, SC (WBTW) – Around 30 local restaurants came together for the Surfrider Foundation’s 19th Annual Chili Cook-off in Murrells Inlet on Sunday.
Teams competed to see who could make the best chili, and all of the money raised went to the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental group who works to keep the ocean and its beaches clean through education and clean-up projects.
“Especially somewhere here like Myrtle Beach where we’re a restaurant and tourism-driven economy, we need to be the leaders, and we need to show everybody else in the county that we need to take care of plastic and Styrofoam at its source,” Aubin Hooker, Vice Chair of the Surfrider Foundation, Grand Strand said.
The Annual Chili Cook-off is one of the Surfrider Foundation’s largest fundraising events, and this year drew the biggest crowd yet.
Restaurants like Bimini’s Oyster Bar have been competing since the very first cook-off 19 years ago.
“We were the first winners back in 2002,” Greg Wojcik on Bimini’s team said. He has watched the event grow every year.
“This just brings the community together. That’s what we like. This is like old school Myrtle Beach,” Wojcik said.
While the majority of the chili vendors are from local restaurants, ‘The Beverly Chilbillies’ enter the competition on their own every year; their recipe was a back-to-back crowd favorite.
“We like to come out to be the independent team to really show everybody that you don’t have to be part of a restaurant or bar to beat everybody,” Amon Reid Lambert, a Beverly Chilbilly said.
Winning isn’t the only thing on their mind. They’re also trying to reduce their waste production.
“Everybody else is opening up cans and plastic. All of our product is fresh, it’s all fresh product. We don’t have any waste. That’s one of the biggest things this year- they want to reduce waste, and that’s something we want to focus on,” Lambert said.
To learn more about the Surfrider Foundation and the local chapter’s projects, click here.
