Sky burger free

CJ's Bar and Grill's burger featured slaw and pulled pork. JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette In 2020, Magic City’s Best ranked all sorts of dishes, from best chicken fried steak (that went to the High Horse Saloon) to best milkshake (Candy Town USA) to best mac n cheese (Bistro Enzo). Buffalo Block's Big Sky Burger Bonanza contribution. JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette Once 2021 hit and the world started to reemerge, Magic City’s Best just kept expanding. They judged club sandwiches (Yellowstone Country Club), drunken noodles (Lemongrass Thai) and street tacos (Tacos Locos).Magic City’s Best haven’t been ranking foods at the quick clip they started out at, but that’s because they decided to get bigger instead of busier. Why keep these contest shut inside when you can invite everyone and turn it into a party? Red Lodge's Black Canyon Bistro contributed this burger to the Big Sky Burger Bonanza. JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette So that’s how Magic City’s Best got in the event hosting game. This year has already seen the third annual Chili Cook Off (the Pop’s Tots food truck won that one) and the fourth annual Tacos and Tequilla showdown (La Taqueria took home both people and judge’s choice). Later on we’ve got the second Wicked Wing Fling (the logo features a drawing of O’Daniel dressed as the KFC colonel) and the second Pizza Palooza. Levity Bar and Grill took home third place from the judge's at the Big Sky Burger Bonanza. JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette And last Sunday, June 23, they had the second Big Sky Burger Bonanza, and O’Daniel invited me to be one of the guests. I accepted it faster than I’ve done for any other story pitch.The Burger Bonanza was at the Billings Depot, home to most of Magic City’s Best’s bigger events. As one of

Toppings. Fruit and hot peppers seem to have burgerdom in a death grip, but the patty always needs to take center stage here. Copper Onion's burger won the judge's choice at the Big Sky Burger Bonanza. JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette It did on the best ones. The judges named Copper Onion’s offering, which featured two mammoth patties topped with pepper covered bacon, as the top burger, with several calling it the best they’d ever had. Last Chance Pub and Cider Mill's burger was my personal favorite and claimed the people's choice crown. JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette My personal favorite came from Last Chance Pub and Cider Mill, which combined jammy onions with bacon to amazing results. It took second in the judge’s scoring, but won the people’s choice. Call it the vox burguli.CJ’s Bar and Grill contributed an offering that had slaw and pulled pork, and would have been a sandwich unto itself without any beef. The High Horse Saloon's entry into the Big Sky Burger Bonanza. JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette The one from the High Horse Saloon — who, per Magic City’s Best’s previous rulings, already boast the second-best chili and the third-best Philly cheesesteak — had some sort of fish element. Opinions among judges were divided between whether it was a crab cake or some sort of a salmon salad.But the real way to enjoy the Big Sky Burger Bonanza was to get outside. And that’s really saying something, since it was almost 100 degrees out there and the Bonanza was held in the Depot parking lot, since they’ve outgrown the indoor space. The Big Sky Burger Bonanza attracted a crowd in downtown Billings. JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette Despite the heat, it was packed, full of people who had paid $30 to get seven “Taste Tokens,” which let

15 judges, I had to arrive early and mercifully got to avoid the sun by doing the taste test inside The Post, an air conditioned multi-use space. The Big Sky Burger Bonanza included a game of beef pong. JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette The judges were sat around tables shaped like a big horseshoe and ate nine burgers in about an hour. Some of them were in halves, a few even cut into quarters, but that’s still a lot of beef in a very short amount of time.We were told to judge the burgers according to something called the E.A.T. Model, which stands for execution, appearance and taste. You give each one a score out of five, broken down into decimal points like a Pitchfork score. To keep everything close, the highest and lowest scores of each burger are thrown out and then all scores are averaged and ranked accordingly. MAC's Food Truck tried to have it all with their entrant into the Big Sky Burger Bonanza, which had bbq meat and caramelized onions on one side, with pineapple on the other. JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette I’m sworn to secrecy on most of the results, and truly I have no desire to tear anyone down here. Any food creation, especially one that’s unique and trying something new, is a miracle. It’s taking something used for survival and elevating it to a sort of art form.But I will say this: we have gotten too busy in the burger world. Almost every burger would be better with fewer toppings. There’s a reason that the masterclass is still just lettuce, onion, tomato, pickle and some sort of sauce (and every burger place seem to believe they invented thousand island dressing). We would all be served by fully dressing our burgers and pulling away two