It started with a request from a friend and ended with… a really big trophy. Lee Ann Whippen has her own competition BBQ team, Wood Chicks BBQ, which she started in Virginia before she moved to Chicago to open Chicago Q. But the Safeway National BBQ Battle in D.C. is not one of her team’s regular events. She had met Mike Skahill, a retired D.C. firefighter who leads the Firefighting BBQ Team, at a competition in 2006 and they had remained friends. When she told Skahill that she was coming back east to bring her competition rig to Chicago, he suggested that she help out his team at the Safeway event. It certainly paid off for Skahill; Whippen, with her restaurant experience, was a key figure in taking the Firefighting BBQ team to the Grand Champion title as well as placing third in brisket. Because of their differing styles, she and Skahill actually cooked his and hers briskets for the competition, but they both agreed to submit Whippen’s. Skahill told the Washington Post a teammate’s reaction was “’Oh my god…You have got to taste this.’ When I heard that reaction, I knew which one we had to enter.” [Washington Post]
