Review: "Canada's Largest Ribfest"

When smoke hangs low over Burlington Bay on a long weekend, it's probably because the wind is blowing in from Hamilton, but on Labour Day, the haze was coming from what the Burlington Rotary Club has dubbed "Canada's Largest Ribfest". That Burlington has a claim to any "est" other than "boring-est" surprises me, but this is what they call it. Thousands of lakeshore 905ers gave up their routine Kelsey's/Milestone's/Montana's night-on-the-burb to gnaw the meat off pig bones.

Bibb's BBQ of Naples, Florida, and Bone Daddy's of Dallas, Texas, both claim, inexplicably, to have won last year's festival. Perhaps Canada's largest ribfest is not its most decisive. Bone Daddy's fall-off-the-bone meat is what you want in a spare rib, but Bibb's salty rub and finger-licking sauce combination would have taken the Silver Sow on taste. Neither, however, could top Silver Bullet BBQ of Fort Erie, Ontario, with its complete package of tender swine and candy-sweet sauce. Silver Bullet's brand of barbecue was good enough to justify another 20 minutes in line for a pulled pork sandwich, for which we asked them to ring out the sauce mop a little more. Washed down with the silver bullet beer, Silver Bullet BBQ is the Parking Lot's winner of Canada's Non-Trivial Ribfest.