Rules

RULES TO THE GRILLED CHEESE INVITATIONAL

(revised 03/30/2010)

PREFACE

The following explains the official rules and regulations for competing in the Grilled Cheese Invitational (GCI) Competition. The GCI retains the right to amend, modify, or terminate the rules at any time and at our sole discretion. Any game day interpretation of the rules will take place only at the approbation of the Chief Instigator. The opinion of the Chief Instigator will take precedence over any interpretation of the rules. Any questions regarding the rules can be sent to rules@grilledcheeseinvitational.com.

It is the responsibility of the competitor to be familiar with the rules of competing in the event. A copy of the rules will be made available to any competitor on the day of the event, should you have any questions regarding the rules.

REGISTRATION

For Competitors

All competitors must register on-line in advance of the competition. There will be NO ON-SITE REGISTRATION ALLOWED.

There will be a maximum of 300 competitors (250 amatuer/50 professional) for this event. Once we have reached capacity for competitors, we will start a waiting list for people to compete. There will be no guarantee of competition implied with the waiting list.

Before registration, all competitors MUST familiarize themselves with the rules as well as educate themselves as to safe and sanitary cooking and handling of food.

For the purposes of fairness, each person will only be allowed to enter ONE (1) sammich per category. That means each contestant can enter a total of THREE (3) grilled cheese sammiches for the GCI: ONE (1) in Missionary, ONE (1) in Kama Sutra, and ONE (1) in Honey Pot.

There is a NON-REFUNDABLE $10 per entry competition fee. Your competition fee gets you one free admission to the event and one runner admission to the event.

Competitors will STILL HAVE TO REGISTER AS JUDGES in order to judge the competition.

Note: Teams are permitted, however you will have to fight amongst yourselves as to who gets the trophy if you win.

See the Competitor Rules below for more details.

For Judges

Judging of the competition will be conducted by the GCI’s executive judges and by the official GCI registered judges ONLY.

All judges (including MINORS) must register for membership in the judging society via the GCI website and present their membership card at the entrance to the competition arena in order to judge.

All judges must still purchase a ticket to the event. There is no free admission for judges.

THERE WILL BE NO ONSITE REGISTRATION FOR JUDGES & YOUR MEMBERSHIP IN THE SOCIETY AND ADMISSION FEE TO THE EVENT DOES NOT GUARANTEE YOU A JUDGING SPOT IF THE ARENA REACHES CAPACITY.

If you are not signed up as an official judge, there is still PLENTY of fun stuff for you to do and you will be more than welcome to attend the event and enjoy the entertainment, pack in as many free samples from our sponsors and purchase samples from the event vendors.

See the Judging Rules below for more details.

COMPETITOR RULES

What Will Be Provided to You

For competition, each competitor will receive a GCI competition kit that will contain the following:

7″ Skillet (NEW FOR 2010- Mandatory cookware)
Spatula
Grilling Hats
Grilling Apron
Cutting Board
Knife
Hand sanitizer
Disposable Gloves
Safe Food Handling Information Sheet
Official Sammich plates w/votes attached
Paper towels
Rules sheet

Onsite, you will be assigned to a numbered grilling station relative to your grilling heat. The GCI will provide at least 75 new, electric “Olympic-Rated” cooking stoves for the event and tables for supplies to be kept above the ground. There will be sanitizing stations available for competitors to sanitize their cooking equipment, before, during and after they compete.

What You Need to Bring

Please be sure to bring any and all supplies and ingredients necessary to make twenty (20) judging samples. That means bread, butter, and cheese at the very minimum. See the Sammich Categories below for more details on what is allowed for each category. Do not take anyone else’s supplies to complete your sammich. You will be shunned for stealing, disqualified from competition, plus, it just ain’t nice.

PLEASE NOTE: Any perishable items MUST be kept in a cooler with ice and be stored at safe temperatures (below 45F and all foodstuffs must be stored off of the ground, at least 6”. Please be sure to label your bags/coolers with your name.

NEW FOR 2010 – NO OUTSIDE COOKING EQUIPMENT OR COOKWARE ALLOWED.

The GCI will no longer be using the table top Butane stoves because they are not approved by the LAFD and are considered unsafe. Due to the switchover to LAFD approved, electric cooking appliances, no outside cookware will be allowed for competition.

The GCI has extensively tested the new hot plates and has determined that unfortunately only skillets of certain size will work efficiently. The new hot plates have a 6″ heating surface and do work extremely well, better than the Butane stoves, actually. In order to make sure that each competitor has a fair chance at the event and does not get hobbled, we must insist on the usage of the 7″ skillets we provide. The GCI will provide each competitor with a fully approved and sanitary 7” skillet in their competition kit.

All other cooking apparatuses such as the George Foreman Grill, deep fryers, or toaster ovens are not allowed.

All competitors must wear the grilling hats and aprons provided in your competition kit, as per board of health regulations. When handling any foodstuffs, all competitors WILL wear sanitary, disposable gloves, which are provided in your competition kit. If you are grilling in costume, make sure your costume provides a hat and an apron and make sure to wear gloves.

Each competitor must have an assistant who will act as a runner to deliver your Sammich from the competition area to the judges in the judging area. The assistants will also need to wear gloves and maintain a safe food environment.

How Many Sammiches to Make

Be prepared to cook at least five (5) regular sized sammiches for judging purposes. You can then cut those five (5) sammiches into quarters, thereby creating the twenty (20) possible votes from the salivating judges. Obviously, consistency will be a key element to a sammiches’ performance.

Time Limits

All grilling will be done in separate 50-minute heats and each competitor will have only 50 minutes to complete their grilling. No exceptions! Spatulas down means spatulas down. Go ahead and practice so that you can grill 5 sammiches in 50 minutes.

Each competitor, regardless if they are competing in multiple categories, will be required to break down their station and clean up at the end of each heat. This is to guarantee that each competitor squares off with the same obstacles.

Cheese Runner

All competitors MUST have an assistant who will also act as a runner to get those damn sammiches to the judges. No Runner, no judging. No judging, no glory!

Competition Fee

Each competitor must pay a $10 competition fee per sandwich category entry. This competition fee allows for the competitor and (1) one runner admission to the event.

When It’s Time For You to Grill

When you check-in at the event, you will be assigned your sandwich number(s), cooking time and a numbered cooking station. When it comes time to compete, you’ll report to your cooking station and get ready. Don’t go and steal someone’s spot and crowd them or anything like that. All stations will be numbered and officially assigned.

How Your Sammich Will Be Judged

See the Judging Rules below for more information.

JUDGING RULES

Each sammich gets 20 votes. Any sammich that does not get at least 16 of its ballots turned in will be disqualified from competition, so it is imperative for judges to turn in their ballots after they have sampled a sammich.

Each sammich will be able to score a total of 50 points per vote. The points are be awarded as follows:

Presentation: How does the sammich look? (Scale of 1 – 10, 10 being highest)
Taste: How does it taste? (Scale of 1 – 20, 20 being highest)
Wessonality: Is this sammich special? Deliver Style points here (Scale of 1- 5, 5 being highest)

SPAZ: The Weird Factor (Scale of 1 – 15, 15 being biggest Spaz)

What is a Spaz? You tell us! Essentially, the Spaz sammich is the sammich with the biggest Weird Factor. It could be a sammich so lacking in style it’s a style in itself. Or it could be a sammich high on concept, but lower than dirt on taste. Or maybe a sammich clearly designed simply to annoy. It’s hard to define that elusive “Spaz” quality, but you’ll know it when you see it. Which one of the sammiches totally deserves that title? When you look at a sammich, does it scream SPAZ!? Award it here!

Sammich Categories

DEFINITIONS

Bread

Any leavened or unleavened, flour-based and baked thing that looks like and is considered to be “bread” by any cultural or ethnic interpretations.

Butter

For the purposes of simplicity, all sammich-grilling lubricants will be hereafter referred to as “Butter.” You can use oils or margarines if you prefer, but make sure it fits within the sammich category you’ve chosen. FLAVORED BUTTERS AND OILS (MAYONNAISE, INFUSED WITH GARLIC, ETC.) ARE NOT PERMITTED IN THE MISSIONARY POSITION CATEGORY.

Cheese

Made from milk, be it mother’s, goat, cow, cat, rabbit, soy, or almonds.

CATEGORIES OF COMPETITION

There will be three categories of sammiches in this competition. Each is outlined as follows:

The Missionary Position: Standard bread, standard cheese (or cheeses), standard butter and NO ADDITIONAL INGREDIENTS.

The Kama Sutra: Any kind of bread, any kind of butter, and any kind of cheese PLUS additional ingredients(the interior ingredients must be at least 60% cheese).

The Honey Pot: Any kind of bread, any kind of butter, and any kind of cheese (the interior ingredients of the sammich must be at least 60% cheese), and with an overall flavor that is sweet and would best be served as dessert.

The Missionary Position

The Missionary Position Sammich is the standard grilled cheese we have all come to know and love through these many moons. In the past, there has been a slight controversy as well as plenty of confusion over this category. Standard bread means bread with no extra ingredients or flavorings. In other words, if you’ve got an Olive Loaf you want to make a sammich out of, then enter it in Kama Sutra category. Got some Rosemary Sourdough? Enter the Kama Sutra, Dragon! Cinnamon Raisin? Too bad, Charlie, enter it in Honey Pot.

Standard butter means just butter or margarine. No flavored oils or butters in this category. Truffle oil is flavored oil. Garlic Infused oil or butter is Kama Sutra. Garlic Butter is Kama Sutra…you get the picture. The only interpretation we’ll allow here is Mayonnaise. Some people grill with mayonnaise. We’ll allow standard mayonnaise in the Missionary position sammich.

Standard cheese means American, Cheddar (mild through sharp, NO FLAVORING — yes, “smoked” is a flavor), Swiss, etc. No pepper-jack in this category, jackass. No mean-o Jalapeño either. You get to use more than one cheese if you like, as long as these cheeses do not contain any additional flavorings or spices.

The Missionary Position grilled cheese sammich is all about the art of grilling simple bread, butter, and cheese together, NOT about what meats or spices you can put in a sammich. There is an art to the simplicity of the grilled cheese sammich and we celebrate that perfect icon of Grilled Cheesiness here in the Missionary Position category.

This is, by far, the most difficult category to win. You must have complete mastery over your grille, your cheese and your sammich in order to become a Missionary champion.

The Kama Sutra

The Kama Sutra sammich is any grilled cheese that is made with exotic bread or contains any other ingredients than the above mentioned.

The only rules to the Kama Sutra sammich are as follows: The sammich MUST be grilled and the internal ingredients must be at least 60% CHEESE. Other than that, this is a freestyle category, so go for it. This is where you can create any savory flavor concept your twisted mind will allow, so long as the internal ingredients are at least 60% cheese.

The Kama Sutra category is not only the most liberal, but also the most popular. So you must keep in mind that the competition is fierce and you could be up against the largest block of competitors, so you better get it right!

The Honey Pot

The Honey Pot represents a new frontier in Grilled Cheeses: Dessert! The rules for the Honey Pot are simple. The sammich is a freestyle sammich; therefore, many of the same rules that apply to the Kama Sutra apply here. Exotic ingredients, the sammich must contain at least 60% cheese and must be grilled. The additional rule is it must be dessert and be sweet in nature. Savory sammiches will not be allowed in this category. Sugar and spice and everything nice, however, WILL BE ALLOWED!

Note: GCI management reserves the right to re-assign a sammich to its rightful category or DISQUALIFY the entry completely if there is an obvious attempt at cheating.

AWARDS

Once the scores have been received and tallied, the top three scores of each sammich category will be declared winners for both the Amateur and Professional competitions. There will be one winner for the Spaz Award, plus a runner up. Winners will receive one trophy per placement for each category. See the “Entries” section for information on teams.

RULES

THESE ARE THE RULES. IF YOU DON’T LIKE ‘EM, TOUGH!