If you are a fan of good food and great music then you have to take a trip to the one and only Best In The West Nugget Rib Cook-Off! Held annually towards the end of August and spanning the Labor Day weekend, this culinary event brings together some of the top rib chefs from all across the United States who compete over a six day festival for the coverted award of best rib cooker and prize money of $7,500.

This year brings out 24 competitors for you to sample including last year’s winners Butch’s Smack Your Lips BBQ from New Jersey as well as some of Nevada’s own rib cooking and barbecue specialists Carson City BBQ, Maui Wowie BBQ Co. and from my very own new hometown, local favourite and past winner B.J.’s Barbeque from right here in Sparks.

Even if ribs aren’t your thing, there are 6 free live music stages playing throughout the day featuring artists you may have heard of like War, English Beat (some of whose members formed the Fine Young Cannibals back in the 80’s) and Mumbo Gumbo who are always great fun. In addition, the cook-off features quite a sizable craft fair with over 200 arts and crafts booths featuring all kinds of jewellery, paintings and other crafts to browse and buy as well as activities to keep the kids amused during the day.

The Best In The West Nugget Rib Cook-Off began 18 years ago in 1988 when John Ascuaga’s Nugget Casino Resort created the event. Since, then it has grown in size and popularity every year to become the premier destination for America’s barbeque chefs and now this year’s event in downtown Reno, Nevada is set to span a full six days and play host to 24 professional rib chefs and is fully expected to top last years estimated total of 411,000 visitors and the more than 85 tonnes of ribs consumed by those visitors in 2005.

Superb though the food may be here to any fan of barbeque cooking, the Nugget rib cook-off is not just about the ribs, or the sauce or the other culinary delights on offer as there are other great attractions which make this Reno Summer event a winner.

My first experience of the Nugget Rib Cook-Off was this year on Thursday August 31st 2006 of the event calendar. I’m not a huge fan of ribs or barbecue food in general but I went instead for the free live music, my wife for the craft stalls..and her friend for the Silver club casino right there by the main event stage. In fact, I’m not sure anyone in our little party went for the ribs at all.

Anyhoo, Thursday night saw War occupying the main stage kicking off around 7pm and funk-rocking on until around 9pm whcih gave us a little pre-show time to check out the stalls and grab some ribs. By the time we’d finished browsing through the various arts and crafts on display, picking up some real lemonade from one of the various other food and drink booths out there we ended up in front of the Aussom Aussie rib stand and of course, had to sample what they had to offer. Quite simply…Aussom! The hot sauce was to die for.

War kicked off around 7pm (the band that is!) running through some of their classic tracks including Low Rider, Why Can’t We Be Friends, The World Is A Ghetto and Me And My Baby Brother. Reno attracts a lot of ‘old’ touring bands like War and it’s fun to check them out when you get a chance. Many are better now than they ever were and War were pretty darned good that night too and well worth checking out if any of their tour dates send them your way. It was kinda amusing to see them slip into Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” during one off-track jam…

Later in the week sees the British Ska band English Beat hitting the main stage too who you may remember having hits with Mirror In The Bathroom and Can’t Get Used To Losing You and that’s another one I’ll definitely be checking out…and maybe some more of those ribs too.

A full event listing can be found at http://www.nuggetribcookoff.com/ which tells you more about the venue, location, times and ‘order of play’ for the next few days. The event runs through the Labor day weekend so if you are in the Reno area in the next few days then be sure to come and visit.

Technorati Tags: Reno Travel Attractions War Concerts & Music

Read Full Article