About Steve the BBQ Guy

I started barbecuing/smoking in earnest in 2005. A friend of mine, Rick, and I became interested in Southern style barbecue and wanted to try our hand at it ourselves. I bought a small offset cooker and through that summer we made a variety of first class shoe leather. But, finally, one day it all came together. Tender, tasty perfectly smoked ribs. Ambrosia. Food of the gods. So, the journey to master the barbecue arts began.

Later that year we bought a larger offset cooker, and our first Weber bullet. Through that fall and winter we continued to practice, and expanded out to chicken, pork shoulder and beef brisket. We had some good results, and began to think maybe we had a good thing going.

With the encouragement of friends we decided to enter our first contest – it was May of 2006 and it was at the Eat Vancouver event at BC Place. We named our team Lucky Barbecue and I was the team captain. We brought our gear down and fussed all night getting our meats ready. Come awards time we were hopeful for something – maybe to place in one category? To our surprise and delight we took first place in Pork and also ribboned in chicken and brisket. We were third overall. It was a very exciting introduction to the world of competitive barbecue.

We continued to compete, 4 events in 2006 and then 6 in 2007. Despite it only being our second year competing, we won the Canadian National Barbecue Championship in Whistler in 2007. That win got us invites to several prestigious events in the US – Best of the Best in Georgia, the Jack Daniels World Invitational in Tennessee, and the KCBS Royal in Kansas City. We could only afford to travel to one, so we selected the Jack, as the most exclusive. Only 80 teams compete, by invitation only.

We had a great experience, and managed to take home a third place ribbon, in Sauce. Overall we placed middle of the pack – 41st out of the 80 teams.

We continued competing for several years after that, and won over 50 awards at different events, in many categories, including ribs, chicken, brisket, pork, burger, tri-tip, sausage, lamb, chili, open categories (anything goes) and desserts.

I moved away from competition for the last couple of years as my daughter was young and my time was not my own. Just recently, circumstances have changed and I am in a position to take my barbecue skills and translate those to a living.

I have catered many times over the years for friends and colleagues – weddings, church functions, birthdays and company picnics.

Now with the launch of Steve The BBQ Guy I hope to share my gifts with a larger audience. I also have 15 years experience working in the hospitality industry so I can take that experience and my barbecue skills and deliver a superlative catered event to my customers.