BBQ Showdown

Amateur pitmasters compete for best BBQ bragging rights at popular Labor Day fest

If you’ve always claimed to make barbecue as good as any top Texas pitmaster, now’s your chance to prove it. The Bedford Blues & BBQ Festival is soliciting entries for its first-ever amateur BBQ chef competition.

At stake is a $100 grand prize and bragging rights to the best backyard barbecue. The cost to enter is $50, but you also get 10 free wristbands to the festival for Friday, August 29.

Aspiring pitmasters can compete in two categories — chicken and ribs — following the Kansas City Barbeque Society guidelines, with a couple of exceptions:

Gas, charcoal or other cooking methods may be used. All cooking must be done onsite.
The only garnishes allowed are chopped, sliced, shredded or whole leaves of fresh green lettuce, parsley or cilantro. Don’t even think about kale, endive, red-tipped lettuce, lettuce core or other vegetation.

Contestants will cook on mass-market grills (no competition smokers are allowed), and the top three winners in each category will take home cash prizes ranging from $50-$75, as well as a trophy. Find more information, including an entry form, on the Bedford Blues & BBQ Festival website.

Veteran attendees of this annual festival may recall that it began as a music event only, spotlighting the blues. Then the organizers introduced a barbecue competition, and it went boom, says spokesman Bob Hill.

“The first year they added it, they said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we got 20 teams?’ And they got 35,” Hill says. “The next year it was 50 teams, and last year they had 90 teams.

“The barbecue part has exploded. I believe it’s now the second- or third-largest event that is sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbeque Society, and the barbecue aspect has become an equal measure to the blues part of the event.”

The Bedford Blues & BBQ Festival runs through Sunday, August 31, with live music, arts and crafts vendors, and lots of food — barbecue and otherwise.

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Churro News

Global churro chain Churro Mania takes hold of Dallas with 3 locations

Churro Mania

A delicious new dining treat has come to Dallas: Called Churro Mania, it's a chain of places dedicated to churros and it opened a location in Lewisville at 801 W. Main St, where they're promising the best churros around.

They have basic churros covered with sugar or cinnamon; bites, both crispy and filled with caramel. They have an oversized fat single churro called Big Mania. You can also get them stacked up in a churro cake, or in an ice cream sandwich, with ice cream set between two circular piped churros.

There's another category called "salted" that features tequeños, AKA cheese sticks: dough filled with melted cheese, in either mini or jumbo sizes. A Churro Dog is as it sounds: a unique salty churro topped with a sausage, which you can get topped with potato stix.

There are also savory empanadas, filled with choice of cheese, shredded meat, or chicken, for $3.50 each. The churros range from $8 to $13.

Churro Mania launched their first location in 1997 in Venezuela. They developed a franchise operation, and subsequently opened more than a dozen locations across Venezuela.

They made their U.S. debut in 2001 with a location in Miami, then in 2012, they formed a partnership with Walmart to open outlets inside Walmart stores.

They currently have five locations in the Miami area and one in Houston.

Founder and CEO is Ariel Acosta-Rubio, who worked in industries such as collections, sales, and real estate, where he learned valuable traits such as customer service, marketing, and how to create a sustainable business.

Happily for DFW, the churromania won't stop in Lewisville. According to a spokesperson, they're opening at least two more locations starting with Dallas at 3636 Frankford Rd. #320, and Irving, at 4100 W. Airport Fwy.

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