Here are the top winners of the 2008 Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest in the main categories.

Grand Champion

Natural Born Grillers, Olive Branch

Whole Hog

First: Natural Born Grillers, Olive Branch

Second: Gwatney Championship BBQ Team, Cordova

Third: Yazoo’s Delta Q, Nesbit, Miss.

Shoulder

First: Sweet Swine o’ Mine, Olive Branch

Second: Southeastern Smokers, Cumming, Ga.

Third: The Ques Brothers, Memphis

Ribs

First: Rib Ticklers, Batesville, Ark.

Second: Sassy Sows, Brandon, Miss.

Third: Smokin’ Razorbacks, Little Rock, Ark.

Patio Porkers

First: Got Pig?, Memphis

Second: Smokin Spiders, Memphis

Third: Here for the Beer, Little Rock, Ark.

People’s Choice*

First: Rhoda Brown’s Smokie Fatties, (#31), Monroe, La.

Second: Rock ‘n’ Roll BBQ (#55), Lakeland, Fla.

Third: Wizards of Que (#14), Hot Springs, Ark.

*The numbers are provided so participants will know whether the barbecue they voted for in the blind tasting, which were numbered and not named, won.

Links

All winners of the 2008 Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.

Jennifer Biggs’ wrap up of the contest.

Article about how the 2008 Mrs. Piggie contest only had 2 competitors. Sad.

Commercial Appeal Editor Chris Peck sees the Fest as a casual way to make important connections.

Saturday night: otherwise known as the fourth night of partying for many barbecue teams competing in the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.

 We watched some of our rivals pack up shortly after the winners were announced. But we won’t be going home early this evening. We’ll be here until the wee hours. We’re celebrating.

 The Ques Brothers, the barbecue team I am on, took third place in the country (and by simple math, the world) for our pork shoulder. I would love to report the names of all the other winners. But as soon as our team was announced in third place the whole team jumped up on stage. I was taking pictures with two cameras. The trophy is huge. Three people carried it back to our booth, triumphantly. More champagne. This scene was repeated throughout the park as the other winners celebrated. Music, beer, more food. Good times.

Willie, our head chef, will go back to his small barbecue joint in South Chicago and display his trophy. It will invariably bring recognition and hungry eaters. After last year, our first, he changed his recipe and to 9 primary ingredients instead of 3. He thinks this could have cinched it. There will always be speculation in this contest. On the way back to our booth lugging the trophy – the equivalent of a winning trot around the course – Willie and his cooks were already discussing what to do differently next year.

That’s barbecue for you. You can get an amazing flavor, master a recipe, smoke the hell out of a rib, a shoulder or a whole hog. In the end, it’s all about the next light of the grill. It’s an obsession that has made Memphis the epicenter of barbecue.  Year after year, we come, we cook, we eat, we party, we ask: how are we going to top ourselves next May? 

Congratulations to all the teams who competed. The Ques Brothers will see you next year.

After last night’s storm and the ensuing cold front, today is perfect weather for funneling beer. After all, you have to do something at Barbecue Fest when the food is still in production.

And so a handful of teams in the party mood go on a poker run. Our booth is one of the stops. Participants enter, take hits from the beer bong, get a card. Invariably, someone says “It feels so good when it hits your lips,” quoting Old School’s Frank the Tank. 

Steve acts as master of ceremonies and there is a lot of hooting and hollering. The party will be starting early this evening.

So far, things are looking brighter for The Ques Brothers, a team that went into the competition without a major sponsor this year. John Bragg, owner of the restaurant Circa, joined our team and has donated tables, chairs, booze, cups, etc. Last night, our volunteer bartenders Frank and Mikey talked up the tip jar as if it were a Presidential candidate. We made enough to buy more beer for this evening. Considering how packed our booth was last night, we need lots of tips tonight as well.

On the cooking front, Willie’s rig had a couple of minor breakdowns yesterday. The electric rotisserie quit spinning. As one of our cooks, Chicago Dave, pointed out earlier this afternoon, as he prepared a half dozen pork shoulders for the smoker, “If this thing quits turning in the middle of the night, we’re going to have a disaster.” The shoulders will smoke 16 hours before we serve them to the three judges tomorrow morning. 

The entire park and several miles downwind smell like barbecue. Hickory, mesquite and apple wood smoke billows from hundreds of chimneys. Whole hogs are splayed out, ready for the giant smokers. The crowd builds. Tonight’s feast will be larger than last night’s, if that is even possible. I’ve been assigned to watch the door tonight. We expect a throng. 

Our cooking team reconvened back in January to gird ourselves for the 2008 Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. Some readers might remember the story I wrote last year about putting together a pit crew from scratch.

A quick recap: we were a swarm of barflies who drunkenly thought it’d be a great idea if we convinced 30 friends or so to pitch in $200 and try to beat some of the best pork smokers in the country. Scroll down or click here to read last year’s posts.

In spite of a huge case of overconfidence, our team, The Ques Brothers, placed 12th in the country in the pork shoulder category. For first timers, that is what anyone would call outstanding. It made a great story, at least. We were all happy: the team, the sponsor, the readers.

And then came The Ques Brothers’ sophomore slump. This year we’re cooking by the hem of our aprons.

I was talking to Diane Hampton, executive vice president of Memphis in May, and she laughed when I told her some of our financial problems. “You’re finally realizing how good you had it the first year,” she said. “Nobody, comes out of chute like you guys did.”

With a price tag of around $15,000, a good-looking barbecue team is not for those with light wallets. Not unless you manage to land a corporate sponsor. Businesses sponsor BBQ cooking teams for different reasons. Last year our sponsor gave us a huge chunka change to make the front of our booth a billboard for the company. We also had to feed employees on “sponsor night.”

Some big companies like Valero Refined (who came in 11th place) hire contractors to build party pavilions for employees and investors. It’s a prestige thing.

We found no corporate sponsors this year. The past week, we’ve gone through an agonizing reexamination of the budget. We are now hacking away amenities in terms of kegs of beer (1 keg=$40). As in, “Can we do without these $90 team buttons?” “Hell yeah, that’s two kegs right there.”

Everyone on the team, however, refused to buy the idea that we could do the fest with just a tent, a bar and a smoker. We are luxury hogs, all of us.

“We have to have a second level!” was the unanimous declaration at a planning meeting last week. Barbecue Fest is not your domain if you don’t have an upper deck upon which to stand and look over it.

Fortunately, one of our team members had a giant steel structure sitting in a field down in Mississippi. We just had to go pick it up — all 800 pounds of it. And put it together. And weld handrails onto it. And make it structurally sound. And paint it. And lay a plywood deck.

I feel most sorry for Danny, a general contractor and millwright, who joined our team for some much needed relaxation and vacation and ended up spending the last four days constructing our booth with a handful of others. Last night, at 9:30 p.m., I was popping his back atop the unfinished deck. “Usually I leave this to my chiropractor,” he groaned.

We’re all hoping to have most of it finished by tonight (Wednesday) — for friends and family night — when, to get things started, we’re smoking a half-dozen turkeys just for fun. For everyone else, the contest kicks off on Thursday.

Meanwhile, here are some links to whet your appetite as all the teams get their smokers in gear for the Super Bowl of Swine.

General overview of Barbecue Fest Events.

Jon W. Sparks writes about a cooking team from Belgium.

Food critic Jennifer Biggs blogs from Barbecue Fest.

Fellow Ques Brother and Downtown blogger Paul Ryburn’s drunk posts from the Fest.

Artists on team Sow Luau create crazy pig heads.

Story about company that rents monster tents to barbecue teams.

List of 2008 BBQ teams and where from.

Saturday morning, the Ques Brothers were hurriedly preparing for the judges at the 2007 World Barbecue Cooking Contest down in Tom Lee Park. Several members of my freshman cooking team had stayed up all night making sure nothing went wrong — that the rotisserie kept spinning, the smoke kept rising, and the food was the best that could possibly come out of our oxy-moronic “Southern Yankee” smoker, made in Indiana.

After 19 hours slowly turning in the applewood, hickory and cherry smoke, our 17 pound pork shoulder was as good as it was ever going to get. (more…)

My BBQ Team, the Ques Brothers, has been patting ourselves on the backs for the last few days. For freshman contestants, we’ve got a darn good set up. Most teams settle for a big tent. We went whole hog — putting up a tent in the rear AND a two-story scaffold structure in the front, which is a great place to perch for sunsets and people-watching.

What does it say about my team members? That we go to extreme lengths to party? That we like to look down on others?

And what, I wonder, does this booth say about the Adribbers? (more…)