World Food Championship BBQ

My 4 seconds of fame

Today the event I came for: The World Food Championship BBQ. This is an (almost) all day event, so I stayed on site until it was almost time for the award ceremony which took place in Celebration.

I skipped breakfast today, as I think that I will have enough bites to taste as a judge during the World Food Championship 2015 BBQ Competition.

I drove over to the Westgate Resort & Spa, where the teams set up their gear on the parking lot. I parked my rental car and walked by the teams to register for my duty. Since I was early, I walked back to a lot of the teams. I talked to some of the teams, wishing them good luck today, without entering their prepping area, since you do not want to see their boxed before they end up on the table.

Then it was time for the judges meeting, where we were greeted by the KCBS reps, Wayne Lohman, Bill Gage and Debby Gage. I was specially welcomed as being the only european judge at the BBQ contest. I even had to read out the judges oath.

What happens in the judging tent during judging will remain in the judging tent, so I cannot comment on any of that, except I can tell that the judges were very nice and the scores given by me were similar to other judges. This makes me believe that european judges have been thought how to judge properly.

After judging I stayed on site to talk a bit more to some teams and got a pink drink from Holly Harvard, Sweet Smoke Q. What an amazing lovely girl who makes a mean drink. Then I helped out the reps getting everything ready in time for the award ceremony later that day, together with Okker.

From the Westgate I just made it in time to Celebration for the award ceremony.

Alethia Shih (Independent) won the World Championship 2015 category Recipe.

Cindy Taffel (The Bad Vegan) won the World Championship 2015 category Seafood.

Stephen Coe (Mirbeau) won the World Championship 2015 category Bacon.

Lynn Smith (Que’n Stew’n & Brew’n) won the World Championship 2015 category Dessert.

In the BBQ Category there are multiple categories, as this is just like a regular KCBS contest which contains chicken, pork ribs, pork shoulder and beef brisket. The chicken category was won by Good Buddies BBQ. The pork ribs category was won with a perfect 180 score by Freeman Brothers BBQ. The pork shoulder category was won by Team Compart. The beef brisket category was won by The Shed. The overall winner of the World Championship 2015 category BBQ was The Smoking Hills BBQ.

The european teams can be proud of their results, competing in this tough competition with fierce competitors from all over the US and Canada. BBQ Wiesel was the best european team ending up overall 22nd. Serial Grillaz 30th, Boheman BBQ 41st and The Beast 54th out of 58 competing teams. In chicken BBQ Wiesel was the best european entry with a 19th place, in pork ribs a 23th place, Serial Grillaz was the best european entry in pork shoulder with a 29th place and in beef brisket Bohemian BBQ had a 16th place.

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World Food Championship BBQ

Check in at the World Food Championship

Cookers at Celebration

Today it’s Check-In Day at the World Food Championship. At least that’s what I thought reading through my emails. So the day started off as usual, with selecting some photos, checking emails and creating a daily post for my blog to keep everybody updated on my whereabouts. We went to Waffle House, Celebration, some malls and stores before having dinner at Longhorn and heading back to the rental home.

We were very warmly welcomed at Waffle House for our late breakfast. Some people eat breakfast as soon as they step out of bed, some wait for a couple of hours. I am one of the latter persons and do not eat breakfast first thing after getting up. The breakfast was very good and the personnel was very nice. It was fun eating breakfast at this place.

From there we headed for Celebration, where a great part of the World Food Championship is being held. I thought I needed to check in there as I am volunteering, table captaining and judging. It took a little while to find a parking spot, since Celebration is not very big and are not used to having so many people visiting I guess. After looking around the area a bit, I went to the volunteering check-in, but there I noticed that this is for a different kind of volunteers. I did not have to check in at this time, so we left to head over to the Westgate Resort & Spa, where the check-in for BBQ teams is located.

There we met the wonderful people of the KCBS International Outreach team, Debby and Bill Gage and Mariah and Wayne Lohman. Also while checking in, we met Clint and Eva from the Czech Republic who are also competing. After all the form filling and photography we were ready and on our way out we met the very nice Big Papa’s, Dana Hillis.

From there we went on a shopping tour, which started at the Vineland Premium Outlet Mall, probably the biggest outlet mall in Orlando. After a while we had a snack and shopped a bit more before leaving this mall for the Mall at Millenia, the luxury mall of Orlando. There we also shopped for a while checking out stores and from there we headed over to Dick’s Sporting Goods and ended up at The Home Depot.

By the time we left The Home Depot we were getting a bit hungry again, so we decided to go for steak this time. On our way back to the rental home we stopped at Longhorn. We had some great steaks (yes with vegetables) and after this great meal we went back to the house and called it a night.

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Check in at the World Food Championship