Just when you thought people in other parts of the country might be beginning to suspect Arkansans actually wear shoes and have air conditioning, last weekend’s World Championship Squirrel Cook Off in Bentonville got play in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.
Festival founder Joe Wilson told the paper that he started the event to try to help the town — home to both Walmart and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art — remember their hillbilly heritage. According to the festival website, over 5,000 fans came to town September 7 to watch teams from seven states compete for all the nuts. The treerat-cooking carpetbaggers were bested once again, however, by locals: them Estes boys from Rogers, Brandon and Blayne, who are clearly starting a rodent-frying dynasty, repeating their 2012 win with a blue-ribbon squirrel sausage on soft roll, paired with squirrel gumbo. (YUM!)
Still, Brandon Estes admitted the obvious to the WSJ: “I don’t think people like eating food that looks like a rat.”