Barbecue showdown

Canberra barbecue restaurant Smoque is heading to Port Macquarie to compete in the first national Blues and Barbecue championships next month. Smoque owner Grant Kells says he visited the world championships in Kansas last year, where he discovered the intense rivalry between different states. Kansas is all about ketchup-based sauces, Texas eschews sauce and specialises in brisket; in Carolina it’s pork.

For Kells, barbecue should be melt-in-the-mouth, slightly smoky but not overpowering. with a good sauce. The Australian competition covers all the bases – pork, beef, lamb, chicken and ribs. He will use his home charcoal smoker, experimenting with local peach and fruit wood, and his restaurant gas smoker with hickory chips.

Kansas, Kells says, was ‘‘crazy’’. ‘‘Everyone had to get around on little buggies and stuff it was so big.’’ But not scary, he reports reassuringly. ‘‘No, I was expecting to meet all these rednecks sleeping with their cousins, all that stuff, but everyone I met was lawyers and doctors because they need to earn the money to pay to travel round and do these competitions on the weekends. It’s not cheap.’’