This is a very small festival for one in its third year. It was $6 admission ($3 with website coupon), but it really should be free. There was not alot of things to do besides eat and who wants to pay a cover charge to eat food from a very small sampling of merchants. I went on Sunday morning and the event only takes up a small footprint on the lawn. I have been to many "rib" festivals and I can't get over the fact that hardly any of them (including Big Red) feature any rib dudes who grill up Baby back ribs. The rib cookers always say it's too expensive - well some of us want to pay extra to eat those. All eight booths only had St. Louis style, among other BBQ items. Prices ranged from the 3 bone sampler at 7 bucks, all the way to about $20 for a full rack. This was not an impressive display of rib cooking power either. One of the vendors was local, so that left about three from Texas, two from Chicago and one from Arkansas. The bigger and better festivals have at least 20 rib cookers and Reno/Sparks has almost 50, but that is the granddaddy of them all.
More of a family thing too as there were lots of kids stuff and why was one rib place from Texas blasting Spanish music on their speakers? Rib fest takes place in USA, not in Mexico. Best ribs I sampled were from the Chicago BBQ company. The local entry "The BBQ company" ribs were good, but not fall off the bone. They also had no music or bands (but a massive stage) playing for the first two hours of the festival on Sunday. Overall, there is plenty of room for improvement. The photo booth at the front offering free photos was a nice touch, but more choices are needed and please get somebody to make baby backs because true fans know that these are the best tasting ribs.