Heather Denise Felder, Andrew Felder, Alex Abdo (Photos: Michael Donahue)

Rain didn’t stop the annual meatball eating contest at the 17th Bardog Alley Party, which was held September 21st Downtown at Bardog Tavern.

  • John Haley with Spyjoe
  • Avneet Cheema, Laura Pate

  • Darrell “Night Hawk” Bratcher

The contest kicked off at 6 p.m. and the rain hit at 6:05, says Eric Bourgeois, Packed House hospitality group marketing and events director. There was “a poor kid eating meatballs in the rain, but he just would not give up,” Bourgeois says.


  • Nicholas DuBoise, Kaitlin Caldwell, Elizabeth Shearon

  • Eric Bourgeois, Hannah Herring, Aldo Dean

The party, which began at 9 a.m., officially ended after the contest, but that was “just the end of the outside space. It moved inside and just kept going through the night.”

  • Stone Pannell
  • Rowdy Franks

Rowdy & the Strays, Andy Jones & Austin Varner, and deejay Michael “BLKMR” Blackmer provided the entertainment. 

Michael Donahue began his career in 1975 at the now-defunct Memphis Press-Scimitar and moved to The Commercial Appeal in 1984, where he wrote about food and dining, music, and covered social events until...