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Pig In or Pig Out serves baby back pork ribs on a stick during Grillin’ In the Gardens in Palm Beach Gardens. (Meghan McCarthy/Palm Beach Post) 
More photos | For more information see our event listing
Let Iron Chefs wear their kitchen whites with all the smug pride they want. When it comes to competitive cooking, they’ve got nothing on barbecue champ Gordon Bryant.
He may not dress the part of a chef, but the Central Florida retiree has all the right tools of his culinary trade, from a $12,000 jet-black smoker to piles of charcoal and wood to feed it. Just as important, he’s got the right attitude.
“I can give you a recipe and you can cook it, but you can’t make it taste like mine,” said Bryant, speaking Friday at the start of a marathon weekend of barbecuing.
Take that attitude, multiply it by 32 and you have Grillin’ in the Gardens, a barbecue competition, drawing 32 teams from Florida, Alabama and Georgia. It’s taking place through today at Palm Beach Gardens’ Mirasol Park.
The festivities are part of the city’s 50th anniversary Founder’s Day celebration, honoring John D. MacArthur, and featuring food (including the competitors’ barbecue), music andkids’ activities.
But the contest is no mere backyard cook-off. It’s a new event that’s part of the increasingly high-stakes competitive ‘cue circuit. Think men (yes, it’s mostly men) traveling the country with smokers in tow, trying to best one another in taste, tenderness and presentation.
Kind of like a PGA tour stop with pits instead of putts.
Technically speaking, the stakes aren’t that high. At this event, sanctioned and run by the Florida Bar-B-Que Association, the top prize is $2,500 – or about twice what each team pays in entry fees and expenses (those slabs of ribs don’t come cheap).
“We don’t come here for the money. We come for that little piece of plastic,” says veteran Georgia-based competitor Walter McDowell, referring to the trophies to be awarded at 5 p.m. today.
By then, the teams, who started arriving Thursday morning, will have made enough spare ribs, pork butts, chicken and beef brisket – the four competitive categories – to feed 42 judges. Given the often slow cooking times – up to a day for brisket – that means a sweaty weekend’s worth of slicing and smoking, all punctuated with the occasional opening of a beer can.
Take away the beer – and the small talk and back-slapping – and you have something that resembles “a sport,” as Georgia contestant McDowell explains it.
“You got to practice,” says the pit master. And he should know: McDowell has been in as many as 600 competitions over the past 22 years, spending as much as $40,000 annually.
Veterans like McDowell will tell you there’s no single path to barbecue greatness. Some competitors put their faith in the most high-tech of gear, including smokers that can run almost automatically using machine-fed hickory “pellets” (it saves on having to wake up at 3 a.m. to keep the fires going). Others take pains to perfect their rubs, marinades and sauces.
And still others think it’s all about the cooking temperatures and times, as in the traditional “low ‘n’ slow” method vs. the increasingly popular (and speedier) “power cooking” one.
Let’s also not forget presentation, which counts for about 15 percent of the scoring (taste and tenderness make up the rest). You might prepare the must succulent spare ribs on the planet, but if you’re sloppy with the sauce, judges may ding you.
That’s what the Big Heart Brigade team, barbecue-loving Palm Beach Gardens firefighters competing for the first time on the circuit, were learning from the event’s organizers.
Suddenly, the team members, including Palm Beach Gardens Deputy Fire Chief Scott Fetterman, realized they might have a long day ahead of them.
“I guess we’re going to learn how good we really are,” Fetterman said.
Grillin’ in the Gardens
The competition and festival, part of the Palm Beach Gardens Founder’s Day celebration, run from noon to 9 p.m. at Mirasol Park, 12385 Jog Road. Admission and parking are free, but food (including barbecue from some of the competitors) and drinks are extra. Proceeds benefit the Big Heart Brigade charity and Give A Smile To A Child foundation.
I thought It was a great idea until we went there. By 6:00pm most BBQ places were out of food and sides or only had a few items left(dinner time). Only a few places had somewhat of a menu posted so you had to wait in line just to ask whats on the menu & how much does it cost. After we purchased a $10.00 sandwich we had to find another loction to buy a drink. Now we were ready to sit down and eat. We walk over to the public pavillion and they want $2.00 per person to sit. We were not paying $14.00 for all of us to sit and eat! So we stood in the hot sun and tryed to eat. Im not saying they didnt have good BBQ because we didnt taste food from every stand, but the place we ordered from was average at best. It would have been cheaper and more comfortable at a restaurant.
I’ve got to concur with the above poster. We went to the Grill Off also and were, likewise, disappointed. THe only thing we figured in was that it was a “first” time event for the Gardens and was poorly organized. We were there at around 5pm and there wasn’t much left of food. Stands were already closing, places running out of ribs, walked all over looking for a place to buy soda or water….and after all that, we simply weren’t impressed with the cooking over all. Most ribs we tried were chewy (no fallin’ off the bone) and the sauce was out of a bottle. Most used rubs on their smoked ribs…so where’s the heat??? Most lacked flavor, tenderness and spunk.
Frankly, my home made ribs with my tex mex grillin’ glaze is far more tasty than what we had at the competition.
Jupiter used to have a similar cook-off and it was kick butt great! Tasty, firey, fall-off-the-bone glazed ribs, chicken, pulled pork with all the accoutrements of corn on the cob, beans, slaw from all sorts of winning vendors from all over the country. AND!!! They had live music and all sorts of stuff going on at the time. Now THAT was a cook off with great food.
Maybe the Gardens event was a first timer and surely in need of some definite organization if it’s going to be an annual thing.
come to my house i never run out of bbq!! smoked hams smoked pork smoked fish you name it i have it!! and you dont have to worry about parking just bring the beer!!!
Our family had a great time. The band was great. The water slide and bounce house activities were a huge hit with the kids. The other games and activities were fun. We had no trouble sitting in one of the other three seating areas for FREE. There were two pavilions and a huge tent with hundreds of chairs a few feet from the “wine and mixed drink tent” that was charging $2 only if you didn’t buy a drink. At least that’s what the huge sign said. Luckily we had seen this type of event on the Food Channel before and knew it was about the competition, and that most of the competitors do not sell their food. It was all about the judges. I noticed that one of the teams had two separate set ups. One was for the competition and the other to sell. Can’t wait to go again next year.
The event was very unorganized! They ran out of food by 5. The food left was dry & chewy. Some served different food to the public then they did to the Judges. Some were packing up and leaving by 6, for an event that went on until 9. I dont mind paying top dollar for good BBQ,I do mind paying top dollar for what I was served. I felt I should have gotten a refund. You can have all the fancy equipment you want, the bottom line is you have to have a good ol family recipe and know how to cook.