THE TOURNAMENT

Can we agree that one of the best things about Cantonese food is the fantastic array of roasted meats? Nothing says Chinatown like a BBQ meat shop, where glistening ducks and chickens dangle next to ruddy slabs of pork – all within arm’s reach of the butcher who will roughly dismantle them with a few expert chops.

To properly celebrate these glorious meats, The Cleaver Quarterly hosted the World Cup of Cantonese BBQ to determine which juicy, savory meat was truly king.

All matchups were conducted via Twitter poll, with one vote per Twitter user; each poll remained open 24 hours. Our 16 meaty contenders were randomly assigned into four groups of four. The group stages were contested in four-way polls, with ties decided by a byzantine cross-channel point-based index. The quarterfinals pitted the victors against runners-up from neighboring groups, with winners advancing into the semifinals, and from there to a thrilling final contest where the two meats deemed most popular by our audience battled it out for supremacy.

Below, you’ll find a handy wallchart that displays tournament results at a glance, but for a spoiler-free experience, scroll past and start reading from the group stage previews, which give a sense of how the meats stacked up against each other at the outset. Our in-house football pundit assessed all 16 contenders, telling us which World Cup soccer team each meat most resembles. Then we broke down the edge-of-your-seat action as it unfolded into a tournament for the ages.