Georgia Barbecue Championship comes to Cedartown
Wondering what the good smells and smoke rising from the Polk County Fairgrounds was over the weekend?
A privately held barbecue championship event was held just outside of the Cedartown city limits and brought teams from all across the state to compete for who had the best in a vareity of categories, from the professional level all the way down to youth cookers.
The event marked the end of the season and a final chase for points on the state level as teams cranked up the heat to determine who has the best ribs, chicken and much more across all of Georgia.
Scott Smith, who is the president of the Georgia Barbecue Championship this year, is a Cedartown native. He grew up on Collard Valley Road, and lived here until the mid-1990s when he relocated to Kennesaw.
He didn’t get into taking part as a professional barbecue contestant until 2009, but in the ensuing years it has become his livelihood. He has two businesses that build smokers and the trailers to haul and cook in, with several of his customers present as competition over the weekend at the fairgrounds. The pair of companies — Southern Q Smokers and QSB Trailers — are based in Acworth.
“We have a hometown competition in Kennesaw called Pigs and Peaches, and we went as spectators a time or two,” Smith said. “My neighbor said ‘hey, we ought to do this’ and it looked like a lot of fun. Having a beer and socializing as a big family. So we started in our hometown of Kennesaw.”
He’s cooked all across the country in the past 10 years
— from Maine to Las Vegas — and he and his wife Lynn drive everywhere. He spent around 38 weekends on the road in years past, though during his tenure as Georgia Barbecue Championship president has seen him out participating in events less this year.
“We get to stop at a lot of different places,” Smith said. “It’s family. I know people from all over the country just through barbecue.”
Smith said 36 pro teams took part, plus many other backyard teams and a kids team took part at the fairgrounds just outside of Cedartown over the weekend during the private event.
“These guys are chasing points,” he said. “This was our last Georgia event for the season.”
The Georgia Barbecue Championship is a non-profit group with more than 300 professional cooks across the state of Georgia alone. The festivals happen every week across the country, Smith said.
“We can pick and choose which one we want to go to,” he said. “It’s always family, it’s always fun.”
He added that his wife and son usually get involved in the cooking process as well, and are involved in the company as well.
Among the many professional and backyard teams taking part is the only high school team in the state involved in Georgia Barbecue Championship from Tallulah
Falls Schools. They were just as busy as the rest preparing for deadlines to turn in their finished ribs, chicken legs and more into judges on
Saturday afternoon.
Though a private event, organizers wanted to thank Cedartown and the Fairgrounds for playing host this year.