BBQ Festival Tour Day #4 “I Can’t Believe I Ate the Whole Thing”

Today was the big day.  We arrived very prompt and early for our 8AM check in.

There was a little confusion yesterday when Patrice asked what time we needed to arrive and one of the organizers told us that, “Chicken’s at 8”.  Both of us were confused and asked for clarification, “Chicken?” to which she said, “No, chickin.  Judges need to chick in at 8”.  “OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH, you mean check in at 8?”  “Yes that’s what I said, judges chickin at 8”

So this morning we arrived promptly at 8 and received our assignments.  Judging is either “Blind” where you are given boxes of food and judge the quality or “On Site” where you go to the contestant’s booth.  On site seemed much more stressful to me.  Here a know-nothing like me goes to a cook site and meets someone who has been doing BBQ for 20-40 years.  Then I have to judge them?  Waiting for my name to be called I was praying for a blind judging assignment.  Well only fitting for a Jewish judge at a BBQ festival my name was called for on site judging of Whole Hog.

I nervously paced until my time for judging approached.  The teams spend large sums of money to produce these elaborately decorated booths and cook ribs, shoulder or whole hog.  I heard that some teams spend as much as $40,000 for equipment, supplies (including the pork), building and decorating the booth in addition to the entry fee.   One of the most popular booths was “3 Taxi Guys”.  This is their booth.

Finally my time arrived and I introduced myself to my first team, Rick and India from Macon, Georgia the owners of the “Dixie Que” booth.  They were very friendly and fed me some amazing pork.  It was easy to talk to them about their entry because it was incredibly tasty.  Rick asked me the question I dreaded, “How long have you been a judge”.   He didn’t seem to cringe when I told him this was my first year.  I returned the favor and asked if he owned a restaurant.  “No I sell toilets”.   At that point I didn’t want to hear any more about the cooking process.  As Jack Nicholson said in A Few Good Men, “You can’t handle the truth”.

I then visited the “Cotton Patch Cooking Crew” a team from Columbus, Mississippi who also produced some very fine pork. My final team was “PLP” from Nashville, Tennessee.  PLP stands for Peg Leg Porkers because their team leader, Cary, had a leg amputated as a teenager (due to cancer).  At first I couldn’t find their booth thinking that booth 237 would be located between 236 and 238.  Apparently there was a mix up and their booth had to be moved and they wound up in a non-booth area sharing space with the local news crew.  PLP didn’t spare any expense to decorate their booth.  Actually let me rephrase that, they didn’t spend anything to decorate their booth.  See below.

While they didn’t spend much on decoration their pork was fantastic.  After judging I took Patrice to meet the cookers and they were incredibly excited to see me.  Apparently they made it into the finals.  They could not stop thanking me.  They asked me to pose for a group photo.   The results of the final judging are still pending but I will let you know once I find out.

Tomorrow we have an early flight for Phoenix.  Enough talk about pig.  Now it is on to the National Park portion of our tour.