Wisconsin Made Michelle Wallace a 'Top Chef' Fan Favorite. Now the Houston Pitmaster Is Bringing the State Its First Fire and Smoke Barbecue Festival.

On the banks of the Sugar River, in a Wisconsin village most barbecue fans could not find on a map, a Houston pitmaster is about to throw the state a party built entirely around smoke. Michelle Wallace, the Texas cook who became a fan favorite when Top Chef filmed its Wisconsin season, is bringing the first Sugar River Fire and Smoke BBQ Festival to Paoli on September 19 and 20, and she has stacked it with some of the most decorated pitmasters in the country.

The arc is the part worth sitting with. Wisconsin is not a barbecue state, and Wallace is the first to say so. She arrived as a stranger cooking on a competition show, the state adopted her, and now she is repaying it with a festival, a teaching weekend, and a whole hog cooked over coals in front of a crowd.

The Houston Cook Wisconsin Claimed as Its Own

Michelle Wallace grew up in St. Louis and now runs B'tween Sandwich Co. in Houston, the barbecue-leaning sandwich shop she opened in 2023. She went to culinary school and spent years in barbecue before she ever stood in front of a camera, so her food comes from the pit first and the plate second.

Then came the show. Wallace was a breakout of Top Chef Season 21, the fan favorite of a cast full of polished chefs, and she did it while looking like she was having the best time in the room. She won a croquette-off early in the run, a small moment that fans still bring up, and she has kept the momentum going since, most recently battling three chefs on Bobby Flay's Triple Threat on Food Network.

What set her apart was not a chip on her shoulder. It was the opposite. To simply be selected, she has said, felt like she had already won, so she cooked loose and grateful while the room around her tightened up. That is a hard thing to fake on a show built to rattle people, and it is why the state took to her the way it did. That warmth is the same thing she is now building a festival around.

How Wisconsin Became Her Second Kitchen

Wallace's first impression of Wisconsin was all sports. A cousin played football for the Badgers, and she had been to a game at Camp Randall, so the state meant the Brewers and Green Bay and not much else. Then Top Chef shot its 21st season in and around Milwaukee and Madison in 2023, and the place got under her skin.

She kept coming back. In late 2025 she cooked two dinners at Seven Acre Dairy Co. in Paoli, the same spot that now hosts her festival, turning out smoked goat with greens and white beans for a series spotlighting women chefs. The relationship deepened with every visit, until building something permanent in the state started to make sense.

The festival is that something permanent. Wallace wants a guest to feel like they are walking into her home, she has said, welcomed the way her grandmother would welcome them, and that is the register she is setting for the whole weekend on the Sugar River.

The Lineup She Assembled

For a first-year festival in a state with no barbecue reputation, the roster is startling. Wallace pulled in national names who agreed to haul their pits to a dairy in Paoli, and several are building their rigs on site. A thousand-gallon pit here, a cinderblock pit there, a spit for a suckling pig, all fired through the night before Sunday's tasting.

The Day Two lineup at the Big Sugar BBQ Party runs deep:

• Rodney Scott: James Beard Best Chef winner and a New York Times bestselling author, cooking his South Carolina whole hog on a cinderblock pit built in front of the crowd 🇺🇸
• Ali Clem: chef-owner of Michelin-starred la Barbecue in Austin, and the first woman pitmaster ever awarded a Michelin star, bringing a thousand-gallon pit 🇺🇸
• David Bancroft: the Auburn, Alabama chef behind Acre and Bow & Arrow Barbecue, a five-time James Beard semifinalist and Iron Chef winner 🇺🇸
• Brian Jupiter: Chicago's Ina Mae Tavern and Frontier, a six-time James Beard semifinalist, three-time Michelin Bib Gourmand, and Chopped champion 🇺🇸
• Don Nguyen: Houston's Khói Barbecue, blending Texas smoke with Vietnamese flavor, and a runner-up on Food Network's BBQ Brawl 🇺🇸
• Dan Fox: Fox Heritage Farms and Heritage Tavern, a three-time James Beard finalist and Chopped champion, roasting a suckling pig on a live-fire spit 🇺🇸

Saturday adds its own draw. Former NFL Hall of Famer Joe Thomas, now behind Hall of Fame Beef, and L'Etoile chef Tory Miller are set to run demos for the Local Smoke crowd, the day that hands the stage to Wisconsin's own pitmasters and joints.

Three Women Holding It Down

There is a thread running through the banner that Wallace points to herself. For most of her career, she has said, the only other women at a barbecue event were the pitmaster's wife or somebody's guest, not the person tending the fire. At many events, she is the only woman whose name is on the banner.

Her festival has three. Wallace headlines, Ali Clem brings the first Michelin star ever earned by a woman pitmaster, and Elena Terry, a live-fire chef who competed on BBQ Brawl and is opening the restaurant Tall Grass at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, rounds out the trio. Wallace's read on it is simple. These women are starting to get more recognition, and she loves to see it.

A Barbecue University, and a Reason Beyond the Smoke

The weekend is not only a tasting. Wallace is teaching a three-day BBQ University for home cooks, a behind-the-scenes crash course that runs $850 and promises to turn a backyard griller into what she calls a junior pitmaster. Students get a welcome cookout with the chefs, a two-hour class on fire and smoke and wood and meat, and a walk of the grounds to grill the pros while their pits run.

There is a cause under it too. A portion of ticket sales goes to the Badger Prairie Needs Network and the Madison College Foundation, and volunteers from both groups help run the event. One feeds neighbors in need, the other backs students at the local college, and the festival folds them into the weekend rather than treating charity as an afterthought. The party leaves something behind in the community that adopted its host.

Why a Festival in a Non-Barbecue State Matters

Put a plate of Wisconsin barbecue in front of most people and they could not name the style, and Wallace knows it. That is the opening, not the problem. She built the festival to be inclusive, she has said, so local cooks can show what they are doing, even when it borrows from somewhere else and folds in something of its own.

That looks like smoked walleye, a fish pulled from Wisconsin water and cooked in a Texas style. It looks like the three sisters of corn, beans, and squash on a barbecue menu, and collard greens pulled a little sweeter than the South would serve them. Barbecue keeps traveling, and it keeps picking up the accent of wherever it lands.

The bigger picture is the one worth ending on. A Houston pitmaster who learned the craft in Texas can draw Rodney Scott and his whole hog north to a Wisconsin dairy, teach a room of strangers how to read white smoke from black, and turn a place with no barbecue tradition into one for a weekend. That is what a growing culture looks like when it is doing well, generous and portable and glad to make room for whoever wants to tend the fire.

Sources

• Top Chef's Michelle Wallace holds it down at Wisconsin BBQ bash (The Cap Times, Sept 12 2026: the first Sugar River Fire and Smoke BBQ Festival Sept 19-20 at Seven Acre Dairy Co. in Paoli, the full pitmaster lineup, women pitmasters, BBQ University at $850, prices, on-site pit builds, Joe Thomas and Tory Miller demos)

• Top Chef Wisconsin fan favorite Michelle Wallace returns (The Cap Times, Nov 11 2025: Wallace's St. Louis roots, B'tween Sandwich Co. in Houston, Top Chef Season 21 filmed around Milwaukee and Madison in 2023, the croquette-off, Bobby Flay's Triple Threat, the Seven Acre dinners)

• The Pitmasters, Sugar River Fire & Smoke BBQ Festival (festival site: full bios and credentials for Rodney Scott, Ali Clem, David Bancroft, Brian Jupiter, Don Nguyen, Dan Fox, and Elena Terry)

• Sugar River Fire & Smoke BBQ Festival (festival site: Sept 19-20 in Paoli, Wisconsin, presented by Michelle Wallace, benefiting Badger Prairie Needs Network and the Madison College Foundation)

Images courtesy the Sugar River Fire & Smoke BBQ Festival and Michelle Wallace.