Smoked Meat Festival will return for one day in February 2019

The Louisiana Smoked Meat Festival, after taking a year off, will return in February 2019 at the Chauncey Pitre Barn and will have a revamped look to it in order to cut back on the costs.
While the exact date of the festival is still to be determined, one thing for sure, according to Chairman Renee Brown, is that the festival will address major concerns that people had in years past.
“One of the biggest complaints people have when they come to the Smoked Meat Festival is that there is no smoked meat to eat because the teams don’t cook anything to sell to the public,” Brown said. “If the teams do cook food to sell, then there is nobody at the booth to sell it.”
To address the issue, there will be a requirement for each team to provide so many pounds of one dish to be sold as plate lunches. The idea is based on how it was done at the Belaire Cove Crawfish Etoufee Cookoff where a certain amount food was judged and where the rest was sold to the public.
At next year’s Smoked Meat Festival, two to three dishes per team will be sold as plate lunches depending on how many teams are competing in the cookoff. For the cookoff, there will still be the same amount of categories and the same professional and amateur divisions.
As far as entertainment, Brown said that she is looking for a mixture of bands that people can dance to and of some local Louisiana bands. She is looking at maybe bringing in Dustin Sonnier and Junior LaCrosse. She stated that she had seen LaCrosse “at the Cracklin Festival, and he brought in a fantastic crowd. He’s a big person on KBON in Eunice, and they always have him talking live on the radio.”
Brown also said that advance admission bracelets will be sold before the festival at a discounted price.