The Big Pig Gig

This weekend, Menomonee Falls hosted The Big Pig Gig, a Kansas City Barbeque Society sanctioned BBQ competition. Although Moist Heat did not compete, a few members were in attendance to check out the competitors and critque the smoked offerings.

Me and the Mrs. arrived at "The Gig" at 11:30am on Saturday morning and could smell the smoke as we neared the grounds. We were expecting to fight huge crowds as the local newspapers were predicting 50-75,000 visitors to the event. There was nowhere near that number of people at the event when we arrived or 3 hours later when we left. As we enetered the event, we walked down a strip of about 8-10 vendors selling evetything from ice cream to roasted corn to pork sandwhiches and ribs. The final vendor in the row, Big Daddy's who was last year's winner, had a line that was 20-30 people deep all day long. For $10 you could get 3-4 bones, a side of beans, and a side of slaw.

After watching the "celebrity" rib eating contest (mainly local radio personalities), we met up with T-Bone and the family and headed to get something to eat. None of us wanted to stand in the long line for only 3 bones so we decided to try one of the other vendors, Spur City BBQ. Me and the Mrs. had the ribs, T-Bone had the brisket, and Cody had the pork sandwich. The ribs were just ok. Flavor was descent but the bones were very short and the bark was a bit too tough. The sauce pretty much tasted like ketchup. T-Bone's brisket had no smoke flavor and tasted like beef roast. The pork shoulder sandwich also did not have much smoke flavor. As we were finishing up our lunch, an old man sat down next to use and told us that the competitors were all giving away free samples of the good stuff. We headed up to the competitor area and sure enough, they were handing out good portions of their left over brisket that they had made for the competition. Those samples were MUCH better than the vendor food and it was free!

We stuck around for another hour or so and watched the magic show for the kids but we did not stick around for the judging. On our way out, Cody decided to ride the mechanical pig and did a mighy fine job. Pictures to follow.

Overall is was interesting to see all of the competitors and their smokers (a few even had my Chargriller and we saw at least one Backwoods Smoker) but the event was a bit of a bust. The vendor food was terrible and overpriced and besides begging for scraps from the competitors, there wasn't a whole lot to do. I'm sure T-Bone has his own thoughts on it and will post them later this week along with the pictures he took.

We would probably go again next year but we would be smart and skip the vendors and head right to the competitors for food. Or maybe WE will be one of the competitors next year. You up for it Joe-Be-Wan?



Rib Eating Contest





A view of some of the competitors





A massive smoker that one of the competitors was using