Award Winning Advice: Don't Be Fooled By Medals & Ribbons

The short answer is no, they mean very little when it comes to flavor. This has been on my mind for a few days after I had read the BBQ issue of Bon Apetit. In the short blurb describing their favorite bottled BBQ sauce, the last line trumpeted that the makers have won over 20 ribbons for their bottled sauce. "Wow," I thought, "20 ribbons must have set them back quite a bit." I must say at this time that I haven't ever had my food judged in a formal contest, I always considered my paying customers to be the most honest judgement of my food. Plus I have a long-standing distrust of other peoples' palates, I have been lied to and misguided way too many times to believe anything other than my own taste buds.

Not too long after I opened the cafe, I was reading the food section of our local paper that featured and article about two local chefs going up against some sweet old lady in chocolate chip cookie bake-off. One of those chefs happened to be a friend of mine and my former boss and a damn good cook. The old lady won by a landslide with her abominations made from margarine (aka, the Devil's favorite spread). My friend stopped by the cafe that day so I had a chance to grill him about his humiliating defeat, he ducked his head with a bit of embarrassment and told me that the pros were not supposed to win. It's not a feel-good puff piece if the little old lady loses, after all.

Too true, but what is now the point of having a contest at all? Unless all the participants have a fair shot of winning honestly then no one really wins, particularly the consumer. The point of almost all those awards is to build a market for the winners, medals and ribbons translate to more orders and inflated sales. However, they are not a good yardstick for measuring actual quality or flavor and should be viewed with a great deal of skepticism.

Let me share a couple of stories to illustrate my point.

Way back when I was in culinary school, one of the chef-instructors was telling us about the many wine competitions that he had officiated. He was an in-demand judge because of his comprehensive knowledge of food and wine and because he understood the system. He warned us all never to believe the hype, that medals are not earned rather they are bought and paid for. The competitions were not in place to distinguish good wines from bad, they exist mainly to sell bottles of wine to consumers in need of guidance.

I must say that I lost a big chunk of my innocence that day. I have always had faith in the purity of good food. It was very disheartening to find out that so many of those righteous oenophiles were nothing more than glorified prostitutes, selling themselves to the highest bidder. After hearing this news, I became much more cautious about these competitions and hoped against hope that it was restricted to the world of beverages. Of course, that's not true, it's everywhere and pretending it's not is bad for my mental health.

Not long after I opened the cafe, I went to the Fancy Food show, which is held every summer in San Francisco. It's a huge food convention that takes up both sides of the Moscone center and features every type of food imagineable. While I was overwhelmed that first time, my palate was typically hard to please and I tasted too many forgettable foods that day. But there were still a few winners and I continued to go every year. Also, I received monthly publications from the association that puts the event together.

Two years ago, the magazine began trumpeting a small cracker company somewhere back East. For months leading up to the show, many articles were published in praise of these artisanal crackers, especially the graham offering, telling me of the awards they had already won and the incredible flavors of these hand made treats. With three months to go before the show, I was already bored with the hype and was very anxious to taste the crackers of mythic reputation. This was going to be my bell weather, I would know from this example how much integrity this association actually had and whether they were truly on the side of flavor or the side of commerce.

While I didn't make a beeline for that booth upon arriving, I did make sure that my path would take me there fairly early in the day, before my palate was over-worked. I took my close friend with me that year, a non-professional food lover who wanted to witness the spectacle and taste the samples. She knew of my mission and was eager to try those crackers herself. When we came upon the booth, it was swarming with buyers, milling around and buzzing about the flavors and the really cute packaging.

We made our way up to the table that had five or six different samples of their crackers. A representative beamed at us from behind the table, asking if we had read about their products. My friend did most of the talking, she informed the cracker girl that while she hadn't read any of the press herself, I had and was very familiar with the product. Cracker girl started assuring my friend that we were not going to be disappointed, that these were the finest crackers the world had ever known. My friend is a good and fair person so she warned cracker girl that her lips better not be writing checks that the crackers couldn't cash. I have a reputation for brutal honesty about food so don't ask my opinion unless you really want it. At this point cracker girl had a real condescending look on her face, surely these multiple award winning crackers were far too good for backwater hicks such as us.

It was time for me to step up, let me say right here that I very much wanted the crackers to taste good. I wanted my palate to be overflowing with graham cracker goodness, so good that I would need a frosty glass of milk to wash all that tastiness down. I took a cracker from the bowl, fixed my steely gaze on condescending cracker girl and took a bite. I was still looking into her eyes and watched as her expression turned to disbelief while I spit that nasty spackle out into the conveniently placed trashed receptacle nearby. "Where's the flavor?", I demanded to know. How could something this foul even be considered for an award?

She stammered and sputtered and actually had the nerve to say that I was unfair. This upset me. What is more unfair, I asked of her, for me to expect that this would be a great cracker after all the press it had been given or that the makers had deliberately misled me with awards that didn't represent the actual quality of the product?

There is only one way and that is to taste it for yourself. If you happen upon an interesting product, ask the retailer if it is possible to have a sample. Sampling is the very best promotional tool and most retailers regularly place product out to be tasted by their customers. If you aren't able to taste it for yourself, ask the retailer how much of the product has been sold and, more significantly, how many of those sales were from repeat customers. Selling it once isn't that hard, but you can't sell more unless it's good.

You are the very best judge of your own palate and all the awards in the world won't make something bad taste good. Those awards were long ago bought and paid for and your money has better things to do.