Glen Retief discovers that tradition transcends borders when he joins a boilo competition and crafts his own South African-inspired version.
From left to right: Marlon, champion of the 2024 Boilo Contest at the Tamaqua Elks. A tasting portion of Marlon’s winning, peach-flavoured boilo. This juror came prepared for the evening with a T-shirt from a previous boilo-making contest.
Susquehanna University, where I teach creative writing, sits on the edge of a once-prominent anthracite-mining region. From the 1820s to the 1950s, successive waves of Eastern European immigrants came here to dig out one of the rarest and most carbon-dense coal varieties in the world.a Lithuanian, Christmas hot toddy made with honey and whisky.
I enlist friends’ help. Now, as mentioned, my pals tend to be, like me, artsy, cosmopolitan, detribalised foodies. Peterson and Natasha join me at the bar. There, we quickly learn that there are only two contestants in tonight’s competition — yours truly, and Marlon, a bald, heftily-built, middle-aged man, dressed in a red Santa Claus cap and a bright green reindeer shirt.Marlon, champion of the 2024 Boilo Contest at the Tamaqua Elks.
Like many rural working-class people, Tanker joined the army to get job training. In Iraq and Afghanistan, he drove a tank, and the nickname stuck. He generously lets me try some of his own boilo, chilled, in a skull-shaped glass bottle. He’s not entering it tonight, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s competition-worthy, with smooth, delicious notes of cinnamon and vanilla, and made from grain alcohol so potent you can only buy it on a military base.
Marlon’s first flavoured boilo stuns me. It is at least twice as sweet as mine. It tastes like caramel liqueur, Bailey’s without the cream, or maybe Jerepigo without the brandy. Is this what flavoured boilo is supposed to be? Personally, I’d pour it over breakfast pancakes.
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