How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Practice, practice, practice.
The same directions apply for winning a crawfish-eating contest.
After all, there's hardly any meat in the bitty "mudbugs," so nimbleness is needed, more than raw jaw power.
You have to twist the body at just the right point, so the head comes off and the rest gives up what resembles the insides of a mini lobster tail.
So explains Dave "U.S. Male" Goldstein, a postal carrier from Voorhees, who won the top prize of $1,500 in a Showboat Casino eating contest held Tuesday in Atlantic City as a nod to Mardi Gras.
Goldstein, ranked No. 28 on the Major League Eating circuit, copped his first pro title by edging out Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas, the diminutive dynamo who once won Philly's Wing Bowl.
Unlike that gluttonfest, this one had only "a couple of Mardi Gras-type showgirls," Goldstein said.
No Crawettes.
Helping jack up the enthusiasm of about 200 onlookers, though, was newcomer Jack "Boss Hog Calhoun" Martin, a wrestler who weighs over 600 pounds. He kept yelling "Sooey!" while sitting next to Goldstein, according Ryan Nerz, the MLE media manager who hosted the event.
Measuring a crawfish contest is a bit tricky, Nerz said.
So much of the crawfish doesn't get eaten - although Thomas did eat some shell - that the fairest gauge is weight, he said.
Knowing that, clever competitors also drank what liquids they could.
"When you pull the head, there's actually juice in there you suck out of it," said the 6-foot-1 Goldstein, who weighs 260 pounds. "It's a Southern tradition."
He learned that by studying YouTube videos, he said.
"I had never eaten a crawfish or seen one until a couple of weeks ago," he said, adding, "I'm the furthest thing from keeping kosher."
Some competitors drank brine that collected in the trays, Nerz said.
A peak dining experience it was not.
The taste, Goldstein said, was like "dirty water with a little bit of spice. It's not a good flavor and it's one you really want to become accustomed to."
After eating all that crawfish, what did the contestants do?
They got more to eat.
Goldstein, along with the likes of "Crazy Legs" Conte, Eric "Badlands" Booker, "Nasty" Nate and "Wing Kong," went over to the House of Blues and ordered beers, mini-pizzas and dessert cakes.
Next up for Goldstein might be a corned beef and rye challenge to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in New York. He hopes to get invited.
In October he finished ninth in a Times Square pizza-eating contest, he said.
Ate 22 slices - almost three pies - in 10 minutes.
"And" - unlike the crawfish - "it was delicious," he said.
