Cooks fire up smokers for Boulder City barbecue contest

By Jean Reid Norman

Friday, May 22, 2009 | 8:24 p.m.

Cooks fired up their grills and smokers in downtown Boulder City on Friday, aiming for glory and cash prizes in the Best Dam Barbecue competition and festival.

Teams have set up movable kitchens along Colorado Street and are prepared to cook through the night, with RVs and tents close by for a few minutes’ rest while the meat smokes.

The festival, which features barbecue, live music and dancing, is open tonight through 10 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Awards will be presented starting at 6 p.m. Saturday.

The annual event, sponsored by the Boulder City Rotary Club, is sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbeque Association. That means the winner of the competition receives an invitation to the big events in barbecuing: the Jack Daniels Invitational Barbecue in Lynchburg, Tenn., and the American Royal Barbecue in Kansas City, Mo., considered the national championship.

That was enough to draw 36 chefs of various levels of experience to Boulder City. Some make a living from barbecue, while for others, it’s just an expensive hobby. But they all share a passion and competitive drive.

Richard Holguin of San Jose, Calif., relaxed in his camping chair outside his RV about 11 a.m. with his wife, Michelle, son Richard and father-in-law, John Guerra, as he waited for meat inspectors. All meat must be inspected by certified inspectors before cooking begins.

A Coca-Cola distributor during the week, Holguin began barbecuing in 2002 to help family members who had a catering business and had a job that required barbecue.

It was nearly a disaster, he said. It was a wedding reception and he found himself feeding 200 hungry people not fully prepared.

“I winged it,” he said. “Since then, I’ve been passionate about perfecting my barbecue skills.”

Kris Almquist drove to Boulder City with his 16-year-old daughter, Rachel, from Chandler, Ariz., with his smoker made from a Peterbilt tractor-trailer fuel tank.

This is his sixth competition, he said, but he still feels new at it. He won about a month ago in Indio, Calif., in the ribs category, but he’s not quite sure what his secret was yet.

“I was never in the top 30 before that,” he said. “I will try to duplicate that.”

Dave Bennett and his Dave’s Fabulous Las Vegas Barbecue team are in their first competition. Bennett has been selling his family-recipe sauce since 2005 and says all three Las Vegas Whole Foods stores sell it.

“We are coming into it blind,” Bennett said. But fellow competitors were nice, offering to help with whatever Bennett’s team needed.

Bennett said he wanted to win, as did his neighbor in the Casual Smokers booth, Ted Aggeler. But, Aggeler said, the really serious competitors are in contests 25 weeks a year. They earn points for each one, much like race car drivers during their season, and they compete for Cooker of the Year from the Kansas City Barbeque Association.

Aggeler and his wife, Vicki, of Kansas City, Mo., drove down from Utah, where Aggeler is on a job with his engineering and construction company. He will cook 100 pounds of meat this weekend but submit only 10 of it to judges, he said.

He doesn’t sell food, as many competitors do, so the leftovers will probably end up at a company lunch meeting next week, he said. His coworkers “all know where we are this weekend,” he said.