Rescuing Barbecue

Wright: Before a man with one leg got women to take their shirts off while he poured liquor into their mouths via an ice luge; before the wild-eyed guy who provides the pigs to the French Laundry walked around the party slipping packages in people's hands, which at least two of us thought were drugs but turned out to be bacon; before Donald Link's boudin for lunch and John Currence's andouille for happy hour and Sean Brock's soft-shell crab for dinner; before ten-year-old Jess Edge asked his daddy, the Southern food guru John T. Edge, "What's a Jell-O shot?"; before we waited to hear if we'd made the finals of the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest; before the revolutionary act of creating an all-star team that included four James Beard Award–winning chefs, three old-school Southern pit masters, and one boozehound writer; before any of that, there was a pretentious but earnest idea: Could we rescue a barbecue contest, and maybe even barbecue itself, from a crushing sameness?