ALBANY, Ohio — At around 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, 10 contestants each dropped face-first into a pound of pawpaw pulp at the 26th annual Ohio Pawpaw Festival. The youngest of the contestants was 14; another had come from as far as Lebanon.
All came up for air, but only one was the winner: Mike Fisher took the honor this year, eating the pawpaw pulp and cleaning 20 seeds of the fruit’s flesh faster than anyone else.
“I love it,” Fisher said. “I’ve watched this for the last nine years, and I’ve never had the courage to actually join the contest.”
Fisher lives in the state of Delaware and serves as treasurer of the North American Pawpaw Growers Association, an organization that connects pawpaw growers and enthusiasts.
For Pawpaw Festival organizer Chris Chmiel, also an Athens County Commissioner and owner of Integration Acres, the pawpaw eating contest is “sort of like the peak of my whole year.”
“It’s fun,” Chmiel said – and it’s also a culminating moment in all the work that goes into preparing and putting on the festival.
“It takes a lot of work to get here,” Chmiel said. “It’s like a tradition now. Look at all these people around.”
The contest, held at the main stage of the festival grounds at Lake Snowden, drew a crowd of hundreds.
Kara Ba, an Athens resident, enjoyed the contest because “everybody is so interested in something that is so not serious. … It’s humorous, and it’s also like, those people up there are being so vulnerable. They don’t care that they’re licking a plate and sucking the seeds in front of everybody. And everybody supports them.”
Fisher said he loves pawpaws because “they’re so goddamn good.”
“They’re like a perfect fruit. They have a really good flavor,” he said.
He also noted the pawpaw tree’s uniqueness and ecological importance.
“It’s amazing that they’re a tropical fruit that is able to live in a temperate climate,” Fisher said.
The tree is also the only host plant for zebra swallowtail butterfly larva. The species’ range has shrunk as the pawpaw’s habitat has fragmented.
“I’ve been raising the zebra swallowtails,” Fisher said. “I’m trying to bring the zebra swallowtail into areas where they’re native, but they haven’t been seen for a long time. That’s one of the things that I’m really, really passionate about.”
Fisher’s not the only one passionate about pawpaws.
Chmiel said interest in the pawpaw eating contest has grown to the point that he’ll need to rethink how contestants are chosen.
But on Saturday, Chmiel was mainly just happy to host and watch the contest: “It was exciting,” he said.
