The Fire Department defeated the Police Department in a grill-off on Sunday in Evanston Plaza’s parking lot.
Supporters paid $10 at the fundraiser to try burgers from both teams. Then they used their ticket to vote for their favourite. The contest came down to the wire: EFD’s Smoke Eaters received 79 votes, narrowly defeating EPD’s Brunch Burger team, which received 77 votes.
The police department appeared to be the favourite this year, thanks to team leader Jody Wright, who admitted to grilling 365 days a year at home. “If it snows, I get a shovel, and I shovel to the grill,” Wright told me. “If it gets below freezing, I bear the elements and keep going.”
Mike De Leon, the firefighters’ leader, admitted, “I am just an amateur cook. I only cook for fun and at the firehouse for my guys.”
In the end, the De Leon team burger beat out the Wright team burger.
The competition began in 2013 and ran annually until 2019, when it was discontinued due to COVID. The Fire Department has won six of the previous seven grill-offs.
This is a promotional event, according to Brook Redemann of the Evanston First Responders Foundation, which sponsored the grill-off. “It is meant to get the community to come out to see the firefighters and police officers as human beings that do anything a normal human person can do.”
