Q BBQ Fest. Boulder (10/20/23)
That’s right, the Q BBQ Festival is back, this was a festival that took place in Denver’s Empower Football Field that I attended this past May. This time around, the festival is making it’s way into Boulder’s Folsom Field and, once again, will be brining in nine (seven if you didn’t get the VIP ticket) barbecue experts from Colorado, Texas, and Missouri to share their love of barbecue, beer, and fun times.
I was fortunate enough to attend the festival and I would love to share all of the bites I took and how great the festival was. There is no particular order that I have to do these in…but I’m going to do it alphabetically from the restaurants that visited.
ADOBO-Smoked Chicken Tacos and Sopapillas
Taking a turn into the Filipino side of barbecue, our first stop comes from a food truck based in Denver that puts a unique spin on classic barbecue for us Americans to enjoy. ADOBO, started by Chef Blaine Baggao who left his previous career in finance following a severe motorcycle accident in 2017 combines his New Mexican and Filipino roots to give us a style of food that nobody can match.
It is hard to go wrong with a great chicken taco, and the one from ADOBO was filled with smoked chicken done in the style of adovada, where it’s marinated in a red chili sauce with oregano and vinegar, then topped with diced onions and shredded cheese for some little tacos that were big on flavor.
However, there was also a sweet offering from ADOBO, that being some wonderful sopapillas (fried squares of dough) which, when dunked in the honey butter that they gave us, gave a perfect blend of sweetness, richness, and a bit of chew from the sopapillas themselves, I ended up getting two more before the night was over.
Arthur Bryant’s BBQ-St. Louis spare ribs with BBQ pork rinds
Some say that the tradition of Kansas City barbecue was started by Charlie Bryant, and when Charlie’s brother Arthur visited, he never left. Following the passing of Charlie, Arthur Bryant took over his brother’s legacy in Kansas City, MO, and continues to crank out delicious barbecue to this day.
At the festival, Arthur Bryant’s BBQ offered us some classic St. Louis spare ribs, baby back ribs, and a basket full of spiced pork rinds.
First off, the spare ribs were nothing short of perfection; good smoke, tender but with a bit of bite to it, and perfectly juicy, and the baby backs were even more perfect as they had a bit of char on the outside for added depth of flavor. However, just as amazing as those ribs was a basket full of pork rinds dusted with their signature spice rub, and this wasn’t like those pork rind snacks you get, these had a fresh pork flavor that made them the best pork rinds I’ve ever had.
Blues Hog Barbecue-Pulled pork nachos with pineapple coleslaw
Our next stop brings us to a barbecue restaurant from Washington, Missouri called Blues Hog, owned by Tim Scheer, the pitmaster of the successful competition BBQ team called Shake and Bake and the inventor of the Gateway Drum Smoker, making his style of barbecue truly next-level.
The offering from Blues Hog was both inventive and delicious, pulled pork nachos and pineapple coleslaw. The nachos were piled up with tender pork, melted cheese, green onions, and a drizzle of Blues Hog signature barbecue sauce for a blend of smokiness, cheesiness, and a hint of sweetness that those crunchy tortilla chips picked up like a pro. As for their slaw, it was good, but I didn’t taste or get any sort of texture from the pineapple in there; it could be that it was chopped up too small, but the nachos were so great that I didn’t even mind.
GQue-Pulled pork sliders with slaw
After walking into the gates to the festival, everyone was treated to a little welcoming bite of a pulled pork slider topped with classic coleslaw and your choice of barbecue sauce provided by GQue, a barbecue restaurant based in Denver who, thanks to pitmaster Jason Ganahl, put their passion for St. Louis-style Cue for Coloradans to enjoy.
You can rarely go wrong with a great pulled pork sandwich or slider at any barbecue restaurant, and this one hit all of the right spots. Tender pork, tangy slaw, a nice sweetness in the sauce they provided, and it was a great start to a great festival.
(I know it doesn’t look very pretty in the picture, but this is how it was presented to me. I promise you that it tasted much better.)
Rib Rumble
Taking a break from all of the barbecue, I will now talk about a different kind of competition that might as well be my version of watching sports, a rib eating competition, sponsored by Blues Hog Barbecue.
This unique brawl brought in 11 competitors who each had 5 minutes to eat 2 racks of baby back ribs as fast as they can for a chance to win some unique merch and some signature Blues Hog sauce. Due to the crowd, it was quite hard for me to see the actual competition as it was happening, but what I did manage to see was 11 men gnawing on ribs as if they haven’t seen food in a week.
It was a very close competition, but the winner ended up eating around 2 pounds of rib meat in the course of 5 minutes, which in my mind was some form of record. The Rib Rumble was both thrilling to watch and made me hungry for one or two more ribs.
Not Just Q-Brisket, smoked sausage and baked beans
In 2019, in the heart of Dallas, Texas, Chef Eric Hansen teamed up with 9-year NFL Veteran, David Hawthorne, to create the #1 rated BBQ food truck in Dallas, and if you know anything about how big barbecue is in Texas, you know that’s a huge honor. With awards such as the Best BBQ Food Truck by the Dallas Observer and being the highest rated BBQ restaurant in Dallas, according to Yelp, Not Just Q does classic Texas barbecue their way.
Their offering were a few classics for barbecue, especially in Texas; sliced brisket, smoked sausage, and baked beans.
Growing up in Austin, TX, I have had a lot of brisket in my time, I have even stood in line at the famous Franklin’s BBQ more than once, so you can believe me when I say that this brisket from Not Just Q was outstanding, it had the perfect amount of smoke flavor and bark encasing that juicy, tender meat.
The sausages were full of flavor as well, but my favorite of their offerings has to be their baked beans, which had bits of chopped brisket studded throughout along with a nice blend of sweet, tangy, spicy, and the beans themselves were plump and tender, they were one of my favorite sides of the evening.
SMOK Barbecue-Asian Pork Belly and Banana Pudding
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and the pit fires at SMOK Barbecue in Denver are no exception. Over at SMOK, Chef Bill Espiricueta, who was born in Austin and has been eating and making barbecue with a fiery passion from an early age, they are masters at putting an Asian twist on classic barbecue for Denver and Boulder residents to devour.
For the festival, SMOK presented us with their Asian-style smoked pork belly tossed in a sweet, slightly spicy glaze then topped with sliced red onion. Bear in mind, by the time I got to this stand I was already getting quite full, but I managed to power through to enjoy the tender, succulent pork belly that was full of flavor and fatty goodness.
On the side was one of only two sweet items that were offered that night: banana pudding. There are few things to not love about that creamy vanilla pudding studded with thin cookies and chopped bananas, and the pudding that SMOK offered hit all the right notes.
Sugarfire Smokehouse-Chicken wings with Brisket Chili
For the final stop of the evening, we now head over to a restaurant located in Westminister, CO (between Denver and Boulder) where Clint Whittermore and Liz Krosnicki brought an icon from St. Louis over to Colorado in 2018. Clint happens to have a background in fine dining, so it was natural that he came up with unique specials and side dishes that make Sugarfire Smokehouse one-of-a-kind.
You probably wouldn’t expect chicken wings to pop up in a barbecue festival, but here they are, and the wings that Sugarfire offered had that classic crispy skin encasing juicy meat and dusted with their signature spice rub for wings that any barbecue lover would go nuts for. Made only better when tossed in a bit of buffalo sauce.
Even more unique than those barbecue wings was the most unique and creative dish in the entire festival (that I ate), that being a brisket chili that was loaded up with beans, veggies, and topped with a bit of cheese. Chili is great, but this chili was outstanding, that brisket gave the chili a unique smokiness and meatiness that, when combined with the hint of spice, made it a chili that would do Texas proud.
While my stomach certainly hated me for it, I did enjoy everything that the Q BBQ Fest in Boulder had to offer, and I can’t wait for it to come back around next year.
