Barometer Waterfront Grille in Orange Beach claimed the golden ticket to the World Food Championship in Indianapolis this fall — along with local bragging rights for the next 12 months — at the Coastal Alabama Chamber of Commerce Coastal Tailgate Cook-Off Challenge at the Wharf Marina Green.
Barometer also won the People’s Choice Award, sweeping both the judged competition and the crowd vote at the same event.
The Winning Dish
Barometer’s entry was a grilled cheese sandwich built on brioche bread with peppered bacon, blackberry jam, Gruyere and Brie, served with bacon-infused lobster mac and cheese.
It is a dish constructed for exactly this kind of competition. The sandwich itself is a familiar tailgate form, which gives judges and voters an immediate reference point, while the components — brioche, a two-cheese blend of Gruyere and Brie, a fruit preserve cutting the salt of the bacon — push it well past what the format usually delivers. The lobster mac on the side supplies the luxury element that competition plates typically need to separate themselves.
Winning both the judges’ golden ticket and the People’s Choice Award is notable, because those two awards frequently go to different entries. Judged competitions reward technical execution and balance; crowd votes reward immediate appeal. A dish that takes both has managed to satisfy two audiences that often want different things.
Second Place: The Pig and Preserve
Brad Johnson and Trail Boss Standard of Orange Beach placed second with an entry they called “The Pig and Preserve.”
The team described it as “a decadent study in sweet and savory, built on our hand-stretched artisan dough, layered with velvety 4-cheese Alfredo reduction, crowned with crispy bacon, pancetta, and elevated by a caramelized bacon jam.”
The construction runs on a similar axis to the winning plate — cured pork against something sweet — but built on a hand-stretched dough base with a four-cheese Alfredo reduction rather than a sandwich format.
Third Place: Bacon My Lollipop
Chef Fletch of Island House Hotel in Orange Beach placed third with “Bacon My Lollipop.”
The dish consisted of a smoked chicken lollipop wrapped in Bill E’s Bacon and brushed with a light umami glaze, sprinkled with Bill E’s bacon crumble and double sauced with Sriracha aioli and sweet chili. It was served with farm-fresh corn relish, cowboy candied jalapenos and pickled red onion.
A chicken lollipop — a drumstick with the meat pushed down the bone to form a handle — is a competition staple precisely because it is easy to eat standing up, which matters at an outdoor tailgate-format event. The accompaniments, particularly the corn relish and pickled onion, supply the acidity needed to keep a heavily glazed and bacon-wrapped protein from reading as one-note.
A Bacon-Forward Podium
All three placing dishes leaned on cured pork in some form: peppered bacon in the winner, bacon and pancetta with a bacon jam in second, and a bacon wrap plus bacon crumble in third. Two of the three paired that pork with something sweet — blackberry jam and caramelized bacon jam respectively.
That convergence says something about the brief. A tailgate cook-off rewards food that reads as indulgent and travels well from a competition tent to a judging table, and bacon delivers on both counts while giving chefs a familiar anchor to build unfamiliar things around.
What the Golden Ticket Means
The golden ticket sends Barometer to the World Food Championship in Indianapolis this fall. The championship draws qualifying teams and restaurants from competitions across the country, which makes a regional cook-off like this one a qualifying event rather than a standalone contest.
For a Gulf Coast restaurant, the national stage is also a marketing opportunity that extends well past the competition itself — the kind of credential that follows a kitchen back home and shows up in how a restaurant is described for years afterward.
The Event
The Coastal Alabama Chamber of Commerce hosted the Coastal Tailgate Cook-Off Challenge at the Wharf Marina Green. The chamber’s events calendar regularly pairs local hospitality businesses with public-facing competitions, which serve the dual purpose of showcasing area kitchens and drawing visitors to the Wharf during the shoulder season between summer and the fall tourist calendar.
For the restaurants involved, the competition offers direct exposure to a local audience heading into football season — the period when tailgate-style menus have the most immediate commercial relevance on the Alabama Gulf Coast.