*Crowds wait patiently to try Corner House BBQ, a new Staten Island BBQ joint opening April 20, at the 2018 NYC BBQ Cookoff. Corner House later won the people's choice award for its pulled pork.*

This past Saturday, thousands of residents from Staten Island and the surrounding areas braved chilly temperatures to attend to the 2018 NYC BBQ Cookoff in Historic Richmond Town in Staten Island.

The Cookoff, now in its seventh year and the only BBQ competition in the NYC area each year that is officially sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbecue Society, featured more than 30 BBQ teams gathered to see who could smoke the best chicken, pork, and brisket. Some teams also competed in a people's choice competition and gave out samples of their BBQ to the crowds. Attendees also could buy food and drinks from more than 20 vendors.

The biggest story at this year's NYC BBQ Cookoff was the emergence of Corner House BBQ, a hotshot new BBQ joint that is opening April 20 in Staten Island. The Corner House smartly used the event as a public debut of sorts, to let all of the carnivore-centric crowds know about the upcoming opening of the restaurant. Corner House pitmaster Anthony Valois says he plans to sell both traditional BBQ and experiment with traditional southern dishes like fried chicken.

The Corner House team served copious amounts of pulled pork samples, which were much larger samples than the typical team gives out at the event. So not only was the pork well-smoked and tasty, you were also getting a lot of it. This led to Corner House garnering the longest lines and winning the coveted People's Choice award.

On the KCBS competition side of things, the Smokin' Hoggz BBQ team took first place overall. Smokin' Hoggz won the Jack Daniels World BBQ Championship in 2011, won the American Royal in 2014, and has been grand champion at more than 15 events overall. Special shoutouts to the Beerbecue team for placing first in chicken, the Wally BBQ team for placing first in pork ribs, the Backdraft BBQ team for placing first in pork shoulder, and the Ribs Within team for winning first place in brisket.

I was also fortunate to spend a little time with Staten Island's Top Gun BBQ team, who I shadowed during last year's American Royal. Pitmaster and chef Daniel Jacobellis, who previously worked at Manhattan's Blue Smoke, leads the team and makes some mean chicken and brisket.

One of the final events of the day was the wing eating contest hosted by Buffalo Wild Wings. One group went to town on mild wings and one group suffered through blazin' hot wings, which uses BWW's hottest sauce. As usual with these things, the group that took on the hot wings was not ready for how hard the challenge was, except the orange-hatted winner who looked like a pro. (See photos at the end of the slideshow below.)

Here are the winners in every category:

Overall
1st - Smokin' Hoggz BBQ
2nd - Pat BBQ
3rd - Weekend Smokers

People's Choice
1st - Corner House BBQ
2nd - Big Dogz BBQ
3rd - Richmond County Pit Brothers

Chicken
1st - Beerbeque
2nd - Backdraft Bar BQ (CT)
3rd - Smokin' Hoggz BBQ

Pork Ribs
1st - Wally BBQ
2nd - Humphrey's BBQ
3rd - Smokin' Hoggz BBQ

Pork Shoulder
1st - Backdraft BBQ (CT)
2nd - Moon River BBQ
3rd - Reed Boyz BBQ

Brisket
1st - Ribs Within
2nd - Piggin' Whiskey
3rd - Weekend Smokers

Check out more photos from the 2018 NYC BBQ Cookoff below.