scorecard, with a box for each team number (the judging is blind, conducted by number rather than name) and blank lines for the three judging criteria: appearance, taste (the most heavily weighted category) and texture. Each entry is scored from 2 (inedible) to 9 (excellent). The 1 is reserved for rule infractions, and a 10 doesn’t exist — here, anyway, there is no perfect barbecue. Lake has spent the morning identifying violations for us with PowerPoint slides, and now we’re trying to spot them. For example, garnish and sauce are optional in KCBS competitions, but a cook who opts for it (and Lake advises us that it’s hard to win without garnish) can use only approved greens such as iceberg lettuce, green leafy lettuce and cilantro. So when a box arrives with red-tipped leaf lettuce, it gets an automatic 1 for appearance. Infractions that result in an across-the-board 1 include sculpted meat (Lake has seen pork fashioned in the shape of the Texas Star), the wrong meat, a marked box, and foreign objects (foil, toothpicks). Lake quizzes his students, asking some how they’ve justified their scores. He’s look-
ing for outliers. A woman who awarded a 5 in taste to both chicken entrants attracts his withering attention. “Do you like chicken, ma’am?” Lake asks. “I just thought it was dry,” she answers, her voice meek. Judging, I learn, is about conviction.
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udges aren’t allowed to fraternize with teams on Sunday. Before then, though, the rule doesn’t apply. So Friday night, I hand $20 to a parking-lot attendant (who then directs me to park in a different lot, across Liberty Street), and my wife and I set about filling our plates at the tents of several acquaintances. A lesson that most learn the hard way at their first Royal: Teams aren’t obligated to let you try their barbecue; instead, it’s an offer that must be freely given, like the moral in some meatcentric fairy tale. After we eat, we walk through the expo space, where barbecue rubs and sauces are sold next to children’s clothing and adult tricycles (“mobility without the stigma” — the manufacturer’s tagline, not mine). She
thumbs through a pile of sequined toddler shirts while I look at stainless-steel smokers with the hungry eyes I once reserved for flat-screen TVs. I leave the party close to 11 p.m., but it doesn’t leave me. Salt and chili powder form a ring under several of my fingernails. Barbecue sauce is tacky on the sleeve of my jacket. Even my pee seems to have the faint hint of smoke. Somehow, though, I’m still hungry for barbecue the next day. And I’m not alone. “Yo, you going to eat some barbecue?” asks the leader of four friends as we board a yellow school bus idling in front of Union Station. I felt that question to be rhetorical. It’s 9 p.m. Saturday night, and the shuttle to the American Royal is empty, save for our two groups. “Dude, I am going to eat the shit out of this place,” the kid tells his friends. “But how am I going to pick? It could be him or him.” He gestures at the teams working under their tents, their lots marked by hay bales and Port-a-Potties. I’m pretty sure he thinks my brother and I are on a date, so I don’t interject to tell him that he won’t be able to sample the compe-
tition barbecue unless a team offers him a taste. The only barbecue for sale is from food vendors, and it’s generally not on a par with what’s being cooked in the surrounding lots. It’s calmer tonight. The 154 teams in the invitational, which spent the previous night cooking, are exhausted from preparation for Sunday’s open contest. And the other 400 teams are recuperating from Friday night’s parties. Judges who show up Sunday morning with beer on their breath are barred from registering. I made a solemn vow to forgo alcohol and meat in the 24 hours before the contest. So, naturally, I’m drinking the world’s coldest aluminum bottle of Budweiser as the temperature hovers around 40 degrees just five minutes after we step inside. My meatabstinence pledge is broken shortly thereafter. My brother and I head to the Burnt Finger BBQ tent, where one banner touts Bacon Explosion — the latticed bacon-and-sausage creation that has made team co-founder Jason Day famous — and the other has the team’s mascot: a cartoon pig made of fingerprint-like whirls. Day and his wife, Megan (the team’s unofficial public-relations continued on page 10
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