Its official, Montana Q in Frenchtown makes the best tasting ribs in America, according to the ‘Best in the West Nugget Rib Cookoff’ in Sparks Nevada.

Pit Master Tom Moua and his wife came home with a check for $10,000 after winning the competition over the Labor Day weekend.

Moua started his barbeque catering and food truck business in 2009 with their Asian fusion barbecue sauce, and was competing in his fourth Nugget Rib Cookoff.

Moua described how the contest was conducted.

“Everybody cooks ribs from the same supplier and we turned in four slabs of our pork ribs and runners come and take it into the judges,” said Moua. “It’s a triple blind system and there’s two sets of judges and the top five out of each set will go to the final judging and then they choose the grand champion.”

Moua had no idea where his ribs stood in the competition until the very last moment when the winners were announced.

“Everybody is assigned a number and they put the numbers in a box,” he said. “They rip the tape off and they just call the numbers starting with fifth place and ending with the grand champion. They started calling the numbers one by one and I was saying, ‘I don’t know if they’re even going to call our number at all’. We were just shooting for the top five, and when they called second place, I looked at my wife and said ‘Honey, I don’t know if our ribs are that good’, but then they called the last number and my wife looked down and said ‘Honey, honey that’s us!!’ We were just so excited we started jumping and running up to the stage and the feeling was just unbelievable to be an underdog and be the winner after just four years.”

Montana Q's Food Truck can be spotted throughout western Montana at various events.

 

 

 

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