I haven’t been to many rib festivals in the past for various reasons. Three of those reasons are as follows:
- Admission charges
- Expensive per bone
- My mom’s ribs are usually a lot better
Still, when I had the opportunity to meet my friend Rich at the free Canal Winchester Blues and Ribfest…
…I thought it would be fun!
I arrived a bit earlier than Rich and started checking it out from the southern end…
…passing vendor booths that included the local art guild…
…and a booth filled with cool Alpaca products.
It wasn’t soon after…
…that I remembered why I came.
I walked through the area, trying to figure what ribs I would try first…
.There were more ribs here than I could possibly consume!
…checking out the cool inflatables and the kids’ area…
…and finally distracting my hunger with some music found on two stages…
…blues music, that is.
When I got a text that Rich was nearby, I took a gamble with my first rib sample…
…heading for the booth with the most advertisements.
Here I got a sample for $6 and these ribs were pretty decent.
But, when Rich arrived, I told him about a guy in line who had sampled ribs from 6 booths already, announcing Buckeye Back Ribs as the best so far.
So we went there next…
…and got some fall-off-the-bone flavorful deliciousness for $4.50.
With our food in hand…
…we sat down at one of the eating areas.
And we enjoyed our ribs and told each other stories, until a man came by with a $1 coupon off a funnel cake and we considered that option.
It was a really hot day (not the best setting for fried food) and I had planned on going to the Ohio State Fair for deep fried Kool-aid and a donut burger that evening (you can read about that here), so I seriously didn’t want to overdo it.
But I hadn’t had a funnel cake in all the festivals that I’ve written about (more than 150).
Perhaps it was a sign to finally get one.
Fortunately, it matched my shirt.