BBQ GRAND CHAMPIONS    
Read this amazing story ...

Grand Champions of
The 2006 Nooksack Casino BBQ Cook-off

In case you missed it, we had such a great time at our first competition cook off! We had no idea what to expect, besides the competitions on the food network, we had never seen or been to anything like this or involved in any sort of a cook off or food sales outside of the restaurant. We know that we have great food at Billy’s but it is a whole new ball game doing it outdoors on a pellet burning BBQ.

After an extensive search to find a BBQ that was not propane, we ended up at a friend of an uncle’s house begging to use his Traeger BBQ, a pellet burning BBQ with flavored wood chips. On the night before the competition Robert found himself camping outside of the Nooksack River Casino, along with the other competitors, to watch his pork butt that had to cook through the night in order to get the perfectly tender pulled pork. 

When the following day arrived we were less prepared than we expected, having enough food but no real organization, which this can be attributed to this being our first sales outside of the restaurant. By the second hour of the day we had gotten our act together. We ended up having a great time, enjoying the hot weather, the smell of BBQ in the air and trying all of our competitions BBQ food. At this point we weren’t sure how good our chances of winning anything were but we were just excited to be there and enjoy the day with everyone that came to check it out.

When they began announcing the winners at five, we were still not sure what to expect. Because we didn’t win the first two categories we were pretty sure that this was just a fun day for us not a competition winning day. Then came the third award, pulled pork, and our name was announced. That was pretty exciting, but then it continued to get even better when the Grand Champion was announced. We were pretty sure it wasn’t going to be us, after all we had only won one out of the five awards given. When the announcement came, Grand Champions of the 2006 Nooksack River Casino BBQ Cook-off is “Billy McHale's,” we were shocked and surprised. We were delighted to find out we had scored so high in every category that we were number one overall.

Although we now have a lot of expectations and a big title to try to hold onto at the 2007 cook-off, we are still just as excited to try to do it again.  So come on in
and try our award winning BBQ food and we’ll see you at the 2007 Nooksack Casino BBQ Cook off.