A beautiful city of 150,000 sitting on Lake Ontario 30m west of Toronto off of the QEW. Don't thank the Lord for the wonderful Lakeshore Blvd with its shops and boardwalk. No thank the Lord for Canada's largest most tasty rib fest hosted by Burlington.
As always the Labour Day weekend means a lot of things to a lot of people, the last day at The Ex, the last weekend of summer (although not officially), the end of summer vacation and back to school, or the 13th annual Canada's largest rib fest.
I’m soooo overwhelmed as I write this that I just don't know where to start. The beautiful aroma of sweet charcoal pork that fills my nostrils leading me in all directions, the smell of kettle corn dipped in butter, hot apple pie, hot fudge, baked beans, fresh 'slaw', potato salad and hand cut home fries browned in the biggest cast iron skillets I have ever seen.
Ohhhh I've died and gone to Hog Heaven.
The festival goers could not have asked for a better weekend the skies were clear blue all
weekend long and the breeze off Lake Ontario kept your brow cool as you tried to discern whose racks were best of all.
I must admit as I stepped into the festival to being completely blown away. This was my first food festival of this kind. My former food festival experiences amount to a bunch of Toronto Tastes, and the old Forks and Knives festivals.
But the difference this time around is I wasn't a working participant in the festival I was simply there to enjoy the fabulous food on offer as the 100,000 plus other rib goers consuming 90,000 pounds of ribs had done this weekend. There was a real down to earth feel about the festival. All walks of life were represented, they had a band playin ole country rock and everyone was dirty from walking on the trampled grass and kicking up a little dust everywhere they went.
The heroes of the weekend had to be the 'ribbers', the grill men and women cooking over the hot bbqs all weekend long flipping and 'mopping' every succulent rack. While yelling, 'Folks come try our world famous racks'.
The festival boasted 30 award winning contestants from as far as New Mexico, all proudly displaying there 1st place awards and accolades in the form of trophy tables and banners hoisted up high to coax you into trying there racks. But as usual the best advertising is word of mouth. Or in the case of the festival its the number of people in your line.
For the most part all vendors were busy except for maybe 3 or 4. I tried a vendor that had no line just to get something in my belly and yup the ribs weren't very good. So with my lesson learnt we split up and hit as many lines as possible and met back at the eating area, which offered up gorgeous views of Lake Ontario. Heck there were even people showing up to the festival in their motor boats.
Within 30 minutes we amassed probably 7 lb of ribs and brisket. We agreed earlier that we wouldn't bother with the sides of baked beans, slaw, home fries or potato salad; today we dedicated ourselves to ribs and brisket only. We were split on the vote we agreed that our faves were the "Jack On The Bone" ribs and the "Rib Daddy's" ribs. With Deringer's brisket being the best pork we tasted all weekend.
Not to mention the fresh squeezed lemon aid, the fresh fried Tiny Tom's donuts tossed with icing sugar. Yum!
So for get the Air Show! Forget Canada's Wonderland! Forget going to the cottage, postpone your honeymoon and call up your mates, tell your folks, grab the kids and make absolutely sure that you make it to next year's 14th Annual Burlington Rib fest, you wont regret it. Don't forget to dress like a slob because you're gonna eat like one.
For more info on the rib fest check out this link http://www.canadaslargestribfest.com/
Ciao!
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