Best Chile Roaster

OK, a more appropriate award to give Larry Mallin would be Only Chile Roaster. After all, the rule behind Best Of is that the winner beats its competition based on the Pitch's thoroughly researched yet admittedly subjective reasoning. Larry Mallin didn't have any competition. Anyone -- especially anyone who'd clocked any time in the Southwest during the fall, buying bushel bags full of roasted green chiles from roadside vendors, smelling their dopelike smoky aroma and tasting their sweet burn in stew or burrito sauce -- anyone could have ordered the chiles and fired up a hand-turned roaster in a parking lot at the River Market Antique Mall. The difference is Mallin did it. Mallin had been turned on to the addictive greenery when he lived on the western slope of the Colorado Rockies years ago; back in Kansas City he could stand it no longer and this fall bought a warehouse full of chiles from growers in the renowned chile-growing heaven of Hatch, New Mexico. He proceeded to spend a few weeks roasting them and communing with grateful customers who, like him, had been out West and knew what it was to experience this nectar of the gods. Sadly, though, not enough people understood. "I dumped $6,000 worth of peppers in three dumpsters around town," he would say after closing up shop early. "I got nice publicity, but it was too little, too late. I had the chiles in cold storage, but I only had five weeks, and when they went bad, they went fast." Fortunately, Mallin isn't giving up. "The weather hurt me. If it wasn't 105 degrees, it was raining. I learned my lesson, though. Next year I'll bring them in later in the season -- not in the late summer -- and will bring in a lot less. And I'll give a lot more notice to work up some excitement."