The music was classic, the breeze cool, the gumbo warm and the crowd large as people packed Crawford Street between Cherry and Adams streets to taste the efforts of 17 chefs and pick the best gumbo of the lot.

An estimated 2,500 people attended the fifth annual Carnaval de Mardi Gras and Gumbo Cook-off, organizers said.

“It was great,” said Nancy Bell, Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation executive director. “The weather cooperated. We had great weather and the gumbo held out until 8 o’clock. We had a steady stream of people coming in.”

This year’s winners included Rusty’s, which took first place in seafood gumbo, with Roux Dawgs second and Nobie’s Kids third. S&M Smokers won first in the non-seafood category, with Krewe De Chaos second and Nobie’s third. May & Company won best display and Creek Krewe won people’s choice.

The menu for the fifth Carnaval was diverse as the diners visited each booth lining the south side of Crawford Street multiple times to taste variations of seafood gumbo, chicken and sausage gumbo and a brew that included catfish, alligator and crawfish. Parents with children whose tastes were inclined to favor other fare could find hotdogs, pizza and other food items in the Southern Cultural Heritage Center auditorium.

The cook-off was to begin at 5 p.m. after the city’s annual Mardi Gras parade ended, but many people decided to get a jump on the sampling and enjoy the mild 55 degree weather before the crowds from the parade began strolling in and the temperature began to drop.

“This is our first time here; we like gumbo, so we came to see what it was all about,” said Teresa Barnett, who with her husband Robert were savoring cups of smokey chicken and sausage gumbo offered by May & Company.

“We moved here from Florida about a year-and-a-half ago,” Teresa Barnett said. “This is great. The gumbo is good.”

Next to the May & Company booth, Chana Hargrove and Donald Dunaway were dishing out chicken and sausage gumbo from Hargrove’s booth, labeled the “Tattooed Chef.”

“If you like it, it’s the Tattooed Chef; if you don’t, I was never here,” a grinning Hargrove told people as he served his recipe.

He said the booth’s name came from his two skills. “I’m a professional chef and a tattoo artist,” he said.

“I grew up here, but moved to Houston, Texas, where I had my own catering company,” he said. “I’m back home now. This is my first time to cook here.”

“It’s good,” said Don Harder as he took a spoonful of Hargrove’s gumbo. “It’s all been great so far.”

Harder recently came to Vicksburg from Korea, where he was stationed with the Army. He is now at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Development Center.

Ann Williams and her husband Rueben came from Jackson to enjoy the gumbo, while Vicksburg residents Norma Habeeb and Nancy Bonner were enjoying the way the event has changed over the years.

“We do this every year; first the parade and then the gumbo,” Habeeb said. “The crowds are getting bigger, we have more cooks participating and the music is just an added attraction. And the gumbo, I think, has gotten better over the years.”

“This is exciting an a whole lot of fun,” Ann Williams said, but added she and her husband were in a quandary over who had the best seafood gumbo, the Mississippi State Bulldogs (Roux Dawgs) or Rusty’s.

“They’re both double good off the wall delicious, as my granddaughter would say, but I think Rusty’s has more seafood,” she said. “Other than that, they’re both excellent. It’s a hard decision.”