In Short: The BBQ Food Fest is a 3 day event held at The Australian Brewery at Rouse HIll, Sydney celebrating the great Australian tradition of BBQ meat and fire with Aussie craft beer, live music and kids entertainment. Its an event that is guaranteed a good time with family and friends and not to be missed. In addition, $1 from every $5 ticket cost will go to the Hills Charitable Trust.
There’s few aromas as alluring as burning wood with the fat of the meat dripping onto the fire. With more than just a few bbqs fired up, all noses lead to The Australian Hotel and Brewery for the Bbq Food Fest. This is not our first food fest experience at The Australian Hotel and Brewery in Rouse Hill in Sydney’s north west. We had a great time just over a year ago at the inaugural Hills Food Fest. When we heard that another food fest was brewing there that will feature Australia’s richest BBQ competition, the Kingsford invitational competition, with $40,000 in cash and prizes that is officially sanctioned by the Australasian Barbecue Alliance (ABA) governing body, we knew we had to crammed it into our already busy weekend calendar somehow. We could only fit in a couple hours on Saturday evening, but we probably chose the best day, because not long after walking in Thirsty Merc started playing.
An iconic Australian band, they had everyone rocking as they belted out their classic hits from the 15 years that they have been playing around Australia.
While we were enjoying the music, on the food front, we did miss out on trying food from one of Sydney’s best bbq venues in Bovine and Swine, as they had run out of their signature ribs dish. Our tip if you are reading this on Sunday November 26, is to head out for lunch so you don’t miss out.
Luckily with a number of food trucks and stands on offer, we weren’t going to miss out on ribs. Several food trucks served their own version of barbeque ribs, some marinating their ribs with a sticky smoky sauce, while other marinated their ribs with a dry spiced rub marinate. After a couple of walk arounds, we decided to try Smokin’ Grill Barbeque’s Angus beef ribs.
Their method involved a dry rub marinate method to cook their ribs and the end result is 2 generous pieces of flavourful, tender fall-off-the-bone meat. The meat was infused with smoky flavours found not just on the outside but it had evenly permeated right through to the bone. We were provided with a fork and knife, but it is not really needed as you can easily pull it apart with your fingers. The creamy slaw serves as a great vegetable side to cut through the richness of the ribs. To go with the ribs and slaw, the ribs is served salty crispy nacho chips. It was a generous serving that could easily feed two.
Keeping with the smoked theme was a pork belly box from Blackbear BBQ. Again, generosity was the name of the game with three long pieces of meat.
There was a spiced rub on the skin that gave the pork a golden colour and crispy texture. The meat was tender and easy to chew through and there was caramelised sweetness emanating in the meat. A delightful contrasting flavour to the more robust Angus beef. It was served with slaw salad and pickles that sliced through richness of the pork, and potato crisps.
It’s not all smoke and fire at the bbq fest. To finish off our visit, we headed to Loaded Magnum for a sweet time! We had a choice of 3 Magnum Ice Cream flavours, a choice of three sauces and a choice of three toppings.
Because we had chosen the mains, we decided to let Little Coco and Viner Sammi choose the dessert and she settle for a Cookies and Cream magnum, sitting in a bed of soft serve ice cream, topped with chocolate sauce and sprinkles.
You would already know that a Magnum is always too good to resist, with luscious cookie flavour ice cream covered with white chocolate coating and sprinkled with crunchy chocolate cookie crumbs. To pimp it up, the guys at Loaded Magnum added more creamy smooth soft serve, chocolate sauce and sprinkles. Our little Sammi enjoyed the dessert so much, she proceeded to lick the bowl clean.
Hats off to The Australian Hotel and Brewery for hosting the bbq fest. We are really loving the food themed festivals that they do put on each year and hope that it becomes an annual event. It is family friendly and from the crowds that assembled, truly loved by those living in north western Sydney.
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