After four days of filling downtown Penticton with mouthwatering smell of grilling ribs and sauce, the Penticton Rotary Club’s Ribfest has wrapped up for another year.
The people’s choice award went to Boss Hogg, with best ribs going to Prairie Smoke and Spice, and Gator snapping up the best sauce award. The Western News, sadly, didn’t manage to win the media sauce competition. For that, we’re tipping our hat to SunFM.
Barb Hoolaeff, chair of the Ribfest committee, said it was a great long weekend, even if the weather didn’t always co-operate.
“Saturday and Sunday were awesome, there were way more people than last year,” she said. “Monday was a little bit slow with the rain. Dinner was pretty good, but the rain came down again and people cleared out, but we still did well.”
Hoolaeff doesn’t have a final count of visitors yet but is sure more people were making their way down to Okanagan Lake Park than previous years.
“In past years we’ve had 35,000 and I know that we had more than that this year,” she said. “I would say it was our best year all the way around.
“We had to close the beverage garden on Friday night because it was full to capacity, and that is 1,000 seats.”
Hoolaeff said there was at least one other time Ribfest managed to get four days, explaining that Canada Day fell on a Sunday this year made the difference.
“We figured people would be off work Monday as well, so that’s why we went the extra day,” said Hoolaeff, who added they couldn’t have accomplished the weekend without the volunteer help.
“Our volunteers rock. I think we have the best volunteers of anything,” she said.
Steve Kidd Senior reporter, Penticton Western News Email me or message me on Facebook Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
