{"id":119157,"date":"2022-02-14T09:19:05","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T14:19:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=119157"},"modified":"2024-01-04T14:43:12","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T19:43:12","slug":"ddn-wright-state-alumna-rockets-to-fame-as-barbecue-pitmaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2022\/02\/14\/ddn-wright-state-alumna-rockets-to-fame-as-barbecue-pitmaster\/","title":{"rendered":"Dayton Daily News: Wright State alumna rockets to fame as barbecue pitmaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpt<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Wright State psychology graduate Erica Blaire Roby was named “Master of ‘Cue” in “BBQ Brawl,” a competition among barbecue greats hosted by the Food Network. (Video by Kris Sproles \/ photos by Erin Pence)<\/p><\/div>\n

In the bedroom of her Yellow Springs home is a blackened ember from a fire set by renowned barbecue pitmaster Rodney Scott. It\u2019s a good luck charm for Erica Blaire Roby, who looks at it every day as an inspiration and a reminder of how far she\u2019s come.<\/p>\n

A Wright State University\u00a0psychology graduate, Roby has had a career as a criminal defense attorney, a sought-after wine expert and most recently as a television barbecue champion.<\/p>\n

She was named \u201cMaster of \u2018Cue\u201d after a grueling two-month \u201cBBQ Brawl,\u201d a competition among barbecue greats hosted by the Food Network.<\/p>\n

Roby won the competition in April 2021, but the episode didn\u2019t air until August. She said it was a challenge to keep the outcome from her family and friends for four months.<\/p>\n

\u201cI basically hid here in this house,\u201d she said. \u201cI did not drink around people. And I stashed the Master of \u2018Cue banner away and never took it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since her victory, Roby has been doing a lot of recipe writing and working with barbecue companies. She filmed a digital series on backyard grilling with the Food Network and filmed a documentary called \u201cThe Pit Stop w\/Blue Smoke Blaire\u201d in which she toured the country in an RV and went behind the scenes at barbecue restaurants.<\/p>\n

Locally, Roby organizes popup barbecue events, has plans to launch a food truck business and is contemplating opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant.<\/p>\n

Roby is planning to do a popup at Miami Township Fire-Rescue in Yellow Springs because the firefighters had to be on hand when she filmed the grilling series in her backyard. She said the firefighters almost had to be called into service for the flaming coffee drink.<\/p>\n

Roby says she chose to live in Yellow Springs because her best moments have always been there \u2014 from going there to have heart-to-heart talks with her mother to taking her college friends to the village\u2019s bars and restaurants.<\/p>\n

Roby moved to Dayton in 1988 when she was 5 after her parents, who were both in the U.S. Air Force, were transferred from Nebraska to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Her mother enrolled Roby in a summer enrichment program at Wright State.<\/p>\n

Roby remembers the first day lining up in front of Rike Hall to go to class.<\/p>\n

After graduating from Hawaii Prep Academy on the Big Island of Hawaii in 2002, Roby returned to Dayton to attend Wright State and major in psychology.<\/p>\n

She had accumulated college credits in high school and was \u201cpretty much a sophomore\u201d when she arrived. She took up to 20 credit hours a quarter, enrolled in summer classes and graduated in 2005 with a\u00a0bachelor\u2019s degree in psychology\u00a0in less than two and a half years.<\/p>\n

After graduating from Wright State, Roby went to law school at Rutgers University, graduating in 2008. Then she began interning at the public defender\u2019s office in Miami, Florida, and working a document-review job in the evenings. She remembers nights sleeping in her car and reporting back to the public defender\u2019s office in the mornings to avoid what was a long commute.<\/p>\n

After passing the bar exam, Roby applied for a job at the public defender\u2019s office and got it over 270 other applicants.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter working so hard at Wright State and taking crazy courseloads, the workload didn\u2019t deter me,\u201d she said. \u201cMy favorite was doing juvenile cases because I really want to help kids.\u201d (To this day she represents juveniles pro bono.)<\/p>\n

A few years later, Roby started her own law firm but sold it after getting married and moving to Tampa. She then took what would be a major shift in careers when she landed a job at a wine and cheese bar, where she learned about wine and running a restaurant.<\/p>\n

That led her in 2013 to a culinary school in the San Francisco area. After winning certification as a sommelier, she started working at the Durant and Booth winery in Napa, then was hired as the assistant wine director at the Marriott Hotel in San Diego. There, she was able to study the recipes and techniques of the Marriott chefs and would practice at home.<\/p>\n

After getting remarried, Roby moved to Yellow Springs in 2020 with the idea of starting a barbecue restaurant with her father.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to grill a lot with my dad,\u201d she said. \u201cWe used to throw down when I was younger.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Roby started honing her barbecue skills, watching pitmaster barbecue shows on television and enrolled in celebrity pitmaster Harry Soo\u2019s barbecue class in California.<\/p>\n

Then she rented an Enterprise truck, loaded it up with her grilling equipment and set out for a barbecue competition in Hazzard, Kentucky, under the name Blue Smoke Blaire.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first said the name out loud, I felt like I breathed life into something,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was visceral. I knew I had just said for the first time who I am and who I\u2019m going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the competition, Roby worked alone and competed against 44 other teams. She finished last.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I didn\u2019t get disqualified, I finished, and I had my first competition under my belt,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Roby continued to enter competitions, posted photos of her dishes on Instagram and connected with the barbecue community online.<\/p>\n

One day she received an email from a casting director inviting her to apply to compete on a barbecue television show and to send in her recipes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a new kid on the scene and I got looked at,\u201d she said. \u201cThat motivated me.\u201d<\/p>\n

In January, she received a phone call from the casting director, who told her she was invited to the competition in Austin, Texas, in February that would last up to two months. When she arrived on the set, she learned it was a Food Network competition called the \u201cBBQ Brawl\u201d pitting some of the nation\u2019s top barbecue chefs against each other. Television celebrities Bobby Flay, Michael Symon and Eddie Jackson were all there to oversee the action.<\/p>\n

During her first challenge, still star-struck by all the celebs, Roby badly cut her finger.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was blood everywhere,\u201d she said, adding that she shouted for a medic. Although she survived the cut and the first few challenges, she never unpacked her suitcase at her hotel because she feared the end would come at any moment.<\/p>\n

But in the sixth week of the competition, Roby suddenly became fearless after talking to her father, who reminded her that she was there not just for herself but to represent people of her gender, her race and the citizens of Ohio.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said to myself, I\u2019m not cooking with fear anymore, I\u2019m going to show my personality and the chips will fall as they fall,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m going to cook from my culture, I\u2019m going to cook from my heart, I\u2019m going to cook what I know. I started bringing in my cumin flair. I started bringing in New Orleans, I started bringing stuff over from Morocco.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the penultimate challenge, Roby took the ember from the fire that Scott had made on the set and kept it in her pocket as a good luck charm. Scott is a barbecue pitmaster from South Carolina who began barbecuing at age 11 and in 2018 became only the second pitmaster to win a James Beard chef award.<\/p>\n

Roby meant to show it to Scott after she was eliminated but never had to. Her winning dish in the finale were ribs swabbed with a Moroccan and Cuban sauce.<\/p>\n

Roby describes her barbecue as Louisiana-style.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe bring a lot of Louisiana because that\u2019s just the way I was taught to cook,\u201d she said. \u201cEverything has a Creole flair to it. It\u2019s not that spicy. We\u2019re more herb-based, using dry, savory herbs. Lot of paprika. And we do tons of different sauces on the side.\u201d<\/p>\n

View the original story at daytondailynews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the bedroom of her Yellow Springs home is a blackened ember from a fire set by renowned barbecue pitmaster Rodney Scott. It\u2019s a good luck charm for Erica Blaire Roby, who looks at it every day as an inspiration and a reminder of how far she\u2019s come. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":117825,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[730],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wright-state-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119157"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145225,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119157\/revisions\/145225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}