Golden Acorn II State Championship BBQ

August 12 - 13, 2011

Campo, CA

Twenty BBQ competition teams descended on the Golden Acorn Casino in Campo, California.  If you haven’t been to Campo it's 60 miles due east of San Diego.  As you climb to an elevation of 4,200 feet, the terrain changes dramatically compared to San Diego.  It sits at the top of a bluff overlooking a huge valley on all sides.  The Golden Acorn Casino is very nice and all of the staff couldn’t do enough for the BBQ teams.

The All Hogs go to Heaven BBQ competition team Steve, Vince, Ted, and Ardith were assembled by Friday morning.  The spaces were great as well as the weather, little warm in the day, but cooled off at night. There were hot showers for the BBQ team members and lots of amenities all weekend long provided by the Casino.

We participated in the Iron Chef on Friday eve.  Vince and Ardith used 3 ingredients as well as the mystery ingredient provided.  Our dish didn’t win, as the judges said the mystery ingredient took over the whole dish.  The mystery ingredient was a “spicy” garbanzo bean snack, which was hard to work with.  Oh well, there is always next time.

In the competition we placed 6th overall out of 20 teams, with a 3rd in chicken, 15th in ribs, 6th in pull pork, and 12th in risket.  We wish to thank Henry Silvestre for a great event, and Kelly and Kathleen McIntosh for an excellent job of being our reps.  We are looking forward to next year already!