KEY WEST, Fla. — Twenty-five competitors indulged their appetites for the Florida Keys’ signature dessert July 4 in Key West, but nobody did it faster than Nicholas Luera.
Luera, a Seattle resident, won the World Key Lime Pie Eating Championship, scarfing down an entire 9-inch pie topped with whipped cream in just 2 minutes, 13.5 seconds — without using his hands, per contest rules.
Luera’s winning strategy included competing shirtless and plunging face-first into the pie, emerging with whipped cream coating his cheeks, nose, and eyelashes.
The southernmost answer to New York’s famed Fourth of July hotdog-eating contest, the Key West consumption competition was a highlight of the island city’s annual Key Lime Festival.
“In New York they’ve got the hotdog contest, and that’s great and all, but in Key West, we’ve got the real contest,” Luera said. “It’s a speed-eating round, face first, all one and done, Key lime pie. I think that’s where it’s at.”
The contest and other July 4th events took and are taking place despite a tropical storm warning in place for most of the Keys because of Tropical Storm Elsa. Weather forecasters communicated to event organizers and local officials that Elsa’s tropical storm-force winds are not likely to begin affecting the Keys until late Monday afternoon or early evening. No mandatory visitor or resident evacuations have been ordered for Elsa.
Believed to have originated in Key West in the late 1800s, Key lime pie was designated Florida’s official pie by the state legislature in 2006. Its primary ingredients are condensed milk, egg yolks, and the juice of the tiny yellow Key lime, with the creamy filling typically nestled in a graham cracker crust and topped with whipped cream or meringue.
The pie is so popular that few people visit the Florida Keys without sampling at least one slice.
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