Get Your Grill On

Saveur Magazine has just released it’s 2008 Top 100 list and guess what tops the list. Yup, it’s BBQ. Barbeque rules!

The frenzied grilling, the enormous barrel smokers, the piles of tender ribs—is it any wonder that COMPETITION BARBECUE is our favorite sport? Pluck, hubris, and good humor are on display in equal measure at these open-to-the-public, juried events, as backyard hobbyists, brandishing team names like Partners in Swine and Dr. Porkenstein, vie for glory against barbecue-circuit legends like Paul Kirk, of Manhattan’s RUB restaurant. We’re not alone in our predilections: over the past five years, the number of official barbecue contests around the country has grown from about 200 to more than 600, says Carolyn Wells, co-founder of the Kansas City Barbeque Society, competitive barbecue’s main governing body, which sets contest guidelines and trains and accredits judges (there are now more than 8,000 of them). The best part about the sport: the fans are as generously compensated as the players. Attendees get to eat to their hearts’ content and bond with fellow ‘cue fanatics amid a haze of fragrant wood smoke.

Umm, I hate to break the spell here, but most barbecue contests do not allow the attendees to eat from the competitors. Before you go to an event, check with the contest organizer.