WNY Event Centre, 11163 Main St, Clarence NY 14031
Web: Oinktoberfest BBQ Cookoff
Phone: 716.759.8483
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Barbecue Clarence Festivals
Though Western New York is best known for WingFest and the Taste of Buffalo, this area actually has lots of food festivals - it seems like there's one every other week, most underpublicized. So when we showed up to visit the Great Pumpkin Farm's Fall Festival, held annually at the WNY Event Center in Clarence, we had no idea we were also about to visit Oinktoberfest, a surprisingly large regional barbecue competition held at the same place on the same weekend.
The funny name masks a seven-year-old, three-day event, starting this year on Friday, September 26 with a day of check-ins, meat inspections, and meetings, followed on Saturday and Sunday with cook-offs. Saturday is the formal Kansas City Barbecue Society (KCBS) challenge - apparently a state championship - where judging consists of Chicken, Pork Ribs, Pork Shoulder/Butt, Beef Brisket, Side Dish, and Dessert categories. On Sunday, there's a separate local Outdoor Cooking Contest for Chicken Wings, non-rib Pork, Sausage, Side Dishes, and Desserts, plus a Chili Cookoff. According to the organizers' web site, sixty-plus different competitive barbecue teams signed up for Oinktoberfest, the majority from Western New York, but others from Ohio, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and even Canada. There's also live music throughout the weekend, which somewhat amusingly included songs such as Rapper's Delight, Boombastic, and Sexual Healing while we were walking around, before shifting over to a James Brown-inspired blues revue.
The good news: you can pay the $5 per person admission fee for the Fall Festival, see the pumpkin patches, and then wander around a large yard packed with smokers, grills, and hundreds of people at their barbecue stations. Food tickets are $1 each, with four tickets buying a couple of big ribs, seven a large sandwich, and two or three small desserts. Twenty tickets at one booth bought a full rack, and there were other options, including macaroni and cheese, Hawg wings, and BBQ wings. We didn't show up with empty stomachs, but managed to try a few different ribs, some beef brisket, cornbread, and a Yuengling before leaving. Our general impression was positive. Some of the items, including brisket from Donnie's Smokehouse - last year's second-place winner - and ribs from Ike & B.G.'s - were actually very good, just a hint under great.
The bad news: only a handful of the competitive barbecue teams were selling their barbecue. Roughly 90% were there solely for the contest, not to actually serve patrons, and thus the organizers' web site explains that "WNY's #1 taste of BBQ" consists of "seven teams selling their award winning barbecue." By our count, the BBQ offerings here were only a little more numerous than what you'd find at the Taste of Buffalo, and that's only if you exclude Jamaican and other non-Southern barbecues that the Taste had on offer. We saw food being served for tickets at Donnie's Smokehouse, One-Eyed Jack's, Formal BBQ & Catering, Ike & B.G.'s, Desperado's Barbecue and Catering Co., the Lafeyette Tap Room, and Baran Catering, while others, notably including last year's first place winner Lunchmeat, had booth-like barbecue areas set up but no food to sell.
In other words, show up for Oinktoberfest and you won't leave hungry, but you'll definitely wonder what you're missing. Next year, we hope to see a larger and even better selection of participating vendors, possibly incentivized to compete for people's choice awards and some prize money. On a somewhat related note, we were surprised to see guys walking around in t-shirts from Syracuse's (and now Rochester and NYC's) famous Dinosaur BBQ, but there was no evidence that this beloved barbecue house-slash-biker hangout was even competing, let alone serving patrons. We can only pray that they were scouting the area for a new location.
One other surprise: the tickets purchased for Oinktoberfest weren't accepted at the physically connected fairgrounds, so the huge assortment of fair foods - kettle corn, candy apples, ice creams, and all sorts of fried things, as well as areas set up to served baked goods and sweet treats from Parkside Candies - were cash-only. We managed to pick up some snacks, and of course some pumpkins and gourds from the Festival, before we left. Next year, we're going to show up hungry; hopefully, more of the competitive teams will be ready to show off their specialties, too.
