On Saturday, Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q was named Grand Champion of the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.
Big Bob Gibson’s Carolyn McLemore talked about competing in Memphis on Thursday.
“There’s no feeling to explain it,” she said. “It’s heart-stopping, because it’s so tough to make the finals here. There’s more than 200 teams competing and a lot of them are really good cooking teams, so when you win, you really win something.”
Chris Lilly of Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q in Decatur, Alabama, is competing at Barbecue Fest. He’s also working the rounds as the official pitmaster of Kingsford Charcoal.
Chris is a renowned barbecuer — a cookbook author, two-time Barbecue Fest Grand Champion, a contestant on Food Network’s Best in Smoke.
So I ask him about selling out to Kingsford. He politely laughs at my very rude joke and notes he’d been using Kingsford since he started barbecuing, years before the company approached him.