Great barbecue gets down to smoke and time. It doesn’t necessarily call for festival booths built out like movie sets, amusement park attractions, or miniature food festivals.
But such setups are one defining feature at Hogs for the Cause, and a big part of what makes this annual barbecue-themed festival and charity cook-off such a uniquely fun event in New Orleans.
Hogs for the Cause returns this weekend, Friday and Saturday, transforming the grounds at the UNO Lakefront Arena into a whirling campus of barbecue and live music, and raising money to support families contending with pediatric cancer. At its heart are the 90 teams that provide the food and compete for barbecue awards and fundraising totals.
Each team builds its own camp or pavilion, where pitmasters work overnight on the competition barbecue they’ll submit for judging, and where the teams serve creative dishes to the festival crowd.
Through the years, these structures have taken on lives of their own. There’s something new to taste, pose by, laugh at or play with around every corner of the grounds. One is a nearly-to-scale riverboat paddle wheeler, another is like a trip to Augusta National for the Masters golf tournament. New this year is a New England dockside lobster shack, complete with chowder and oysters.
From these basecamps, competing teams get wildly creative with the cooking. If it can be stuffed, grilled, skewered, wrapped in bacon or smoked you may well find it here, and yes that goes for dessert too.
The cook off teams who make the food also give the event its formidable fundraising muscle and its character. Attending this fest can feel like getting an invitation to 90-plus different parties in one place.
A mission that couldn’t be more serious plays out with much fun and delicious food, and that’s made
Hogs for the Cause one of the great eating weekends on the local calendar. Because yes, this is Louisiana, and we do have special eating weekends marked in advance. This is one not to miss.
