Barbecue Goes Global

Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 05.21.08 | 5:17 PM ET

Memphis in May’s World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, aka the Super Bowl of Swine, took place last weekend with some fresh blood: teams from Belgium, Norway and Estonia. How’d they do? Well, give ‘em a little something for the effort. “[I]t takes sheer guts to fly over from a part of the world where this way of cooking is fledgling at best and to try to speak the complicated language of barbecue with a French, Estonian or Norwegian accent,” writes the Washington Post’s Joe Yonan. “To then try as the Belgians did to win the whole-hog contest using the antithesis of barbecue—and a mere six hours—is like soccer star David Beckham jumping onto the field with the Patriots and the Giants and attempting to head a football pass.”

So ‘cue with an international flavor is a work in progress. And that’s fine. The most intriguing development is that the teams actually flew across the Atlantic and competed, and that barbecue is gaining a foothold internationally, or at least in Europe. American aficionados in Memphis seemed to welcome the potential globalization of their favored cuisine.

From Yonan’s story:

Diane Hampton, executive vice president of Memphis in May, said the organization wants to get more international teams involved, perhaps by inviting champions of contests in Jamaica, Great Britain and South Africa to participate.

The more, the merrier, says Jim Boland of Memphis, who was helping the Norwegian team. Boland has competed in Ireland and says true barbecue (rather than high-heat grilling) is “embryonic” in Europe, but the spirit is strong. “These guys are the pioneers,” Boland said, referring to the foreigners in Memphis. “It’s like the Oklahoma land rush.”

Will barbecue become a global food like sushi, or even the next Mongolian hot pot? Time will tell.

Photo by davidpbrown, via Flickr (Creative Commons)