 The
contest was hosted by the
Sunset Beach Resort
in Montego Bay. It is a beautiful facility and the staff was very
friendly, courteous and supportive. They did a fantastic job of
organizing it, especially for a first time event. Everything the
cooks needed was provided and the entertainment was great. Rocky
Danner and Jeremy Fowler, from WBQA, acted as consultants for the
event. There were 29 teams, about 50/50 US/Jamaican and one Swiss
team. Most of the Jamaican teams were chefs from the hotels and
resorts. The team next to us was led by a German chef who has been
in Jamaica for 6 years.My
wife Irene and I arrived Thursday morning but couldn't check into
our room until 3:00 PM so we went into town and wandered around
downtown. We ate in a little café. Irene had chicken feet soup and
I had fried chicken with rice and peas. It was great! The soup was
really good. I also drank a lot of Red Stripe. Thursday evening we
mostly just chilled out. The Resort is all-inclusive meaning all
the meals, drinks and everything were included in the base rate.
Meals were served buffet style and were quite good. Most meals
included several local island dishes. The resort is a great value.
On Friday we went down to the
contest site to get setup. Each team was given a 55 gallon
drum cooker and a smaller cooker made from half a drum. We were
also given a cooler to hold the meat, an 8' table, two chairs and
a bag of Jamaican pimento wood charcoal. Then the meat was issued.
Each team was given a 5 pound pork butt, two whole chickens, two
whole red snappers 1 1/2 pounds each, and two racks of ribs. I
bought an additional butt and two more racks of ribs. The ribs
were interesting because they don't raise their pigs very big in
Jamaica. The racks were tiny and the bones were really small.
Also, they had hardly any meat on them.
I have a picture where
I held up one of the racks and you can actually see the light
shining through them.
Several of us took a bus from the
hotel to a local supermarket to buy supplies. I bought one of
every kind of jerk seasoning I could find. When I got back to the
hotel I tasted them and picked out the ones I liked best. I rubbed
the chicken and ribs with my regular rub and put them in the
cooler for the night. For the pork I injected with an injection
marinade then marinated in a jerk seasoning over night. I left the
fish for morning.
 The
rules were a little different for this contest. All meat had to be
cooked whole, including the chickens. Once it was cooked you cut
it up for the turn-in. They couldn't find any Styrofoam boxes in
Jamaica so the turn-in box was a small disposable aluminum pan. It
was a lot bigger than the usual turn-in box so I ended up putting
in a lot of meat. Also, no garnish was allowed. This was somewhat
of a technicality since any ingredients used in the cooking could
be put into the box. I cooked some sliced mangoes, papaya and
oranges to decorate the meat. Judging was KCBS rules and scoring.
Everyone was on an even footing, using the same cookers, charcoal,
and meat.
Since there was no brisket, and the first turn-in was 2:00 there
was no need to cook all night. Friday night there was a cocktail
party with hors douvres. We were a little surprised to see women
in evening gowns. Not your typical BBQ event. After the party I
turned on the weather channel and it showed tropical storm Lili on
a dead course directly for Jamaica and was estimated to reach the
island around midnight Friday night. I expected the worse the
following day. Miraculously the storm stalled just east of Jamaica
and sat there until late Saturday night before moving onto the
island. We had a little rain Saturday morning but the weather was
just about perfect the rest of the day. We even had a gorgeous
sunset right before the awards ceremony. Either the BBQ Gods were
smiling or Rocky has learned a little voodoo.
 I
went out to the cooking site at 6:00 AM and started some charcoal
and heated up the large cooker. I put the butts on and kept a
small fire going to keep the temp around 250. It was actually
pretty easy to maintain a constant temperature with the barrels. I
wasn't sure how long to cook the ribs for since they were so thin
so I decided to shoot for 4 hours. After two hours I wrapped them
in foil so they wouldn't dry out. I took them out again for 1/2
hour before turn-in. I cooked the chickens on the 1/2 barrel. I
seasoned the fish with a dry seasoning labeled "Fish Seasoning"
that I bought in the local supermarket. Then I rubbed it down with
a wet jerk seasoning and marinated it. About 1 1/2 hours before
turn-in I put the fish on. I brushed it a couple of times with a
coating of Ruth's Spicy Mango Sauce I also bought in the
supermarket.
I entered the fish whole with some grilled mango, papaya and
orange slices. It's a good thing I did well in the fish category
because the rest of my scores were pretty bad. I didn't see the
scores until Monday morning when they were posted on the BBQ
forum. I finished 15th overall. Fish was the category I least
expected to win anything in competing against all those Jamaican
chefs who cook fish all the time. USA Smoke won 1st in chicken
with a 180. Bubba's Got a Top Secret won 1st in ribs. Big Bob
Gibson won 1st in pork. A Jamaican team, LTB Smokers won 1st in
fish.
USA Smoke won Grand Champion. I don't know how they do it, but
they seem to win every contest they enter. They won the CA State
Championship out in Imperial Beach. In '98 when I went to the
American Royal they won the Invitational. They are really nice
down to home folks and haven't let the success go to their heads.
A team from Chicago, Chicago Smoke, won 2nd overall. They entered
twice under two different names and also won 3rd overall under the
team name Rib Shack. In the Who's Sauce is Da Boss? category USA
Smoke won 3rd and the Jamaican team LTB Smokers won 1st.
One of the best things about this contest was that after it was
over I didn't have to break everything down, load up equipment,
haul it home and unload it. Just go back to the resort and keep on
drinking! I won $500 for the fish which covered the entry fee.
Also, the trophies are these really neat carved wooden plaques.
It's a great souvenir of the event. I feel fortunate that I won
anything.
 Late
Saturday night tropical storm Lili came onto the island and there
was a lot of rain and wind. It would have been pretty bad if that
had happened the day before during the contest. It's a miracle
that we made it through before the storm hit. Around noon the
center of the storm was located 25 miles north of Montego Bay.
There was a lot of rain and there was flooding and mudslides in
some areas. I saw Monday morning where 4 people died in Jamaica as
a result of the storm. Our flight was delayed so we didn't get
home until about 3:00 AM. We had to check out of our room at 11:00
AM on Sunday so there wasn't much to do but sit around and drink
and watch the storm until we went to the airport.
We had a fantastic time! I would
definitely do it again. The Sunset Beach Resort staff were great
hosts. The Jamaican people are so friendly. It's interesting how
they use the phrase "yeah mon". The say it for everything. It
means hello and yes. It is used as a question, "yeah mon?". It's
basically the catchall phrase. By the end of 4 days I was saying
it. Will I be back next year? Yeah Mon!
Garry
The Smoke Ring BBQ Team
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