Proper spelling should be “phrij”
I have lived in the Midwestern US the entire 58 years of my life. This is, honest to God, the first time I have seen the spelling “barbecue.” It looks ridiculous.
The word is spelled barbeque. I will die on this hill.
Here in Chicago and its environs, it’s varied, but when it’s comletely written out, “barbecue” does appear to be significantly more popular than “barbeque” (which I honestly want to say as “barbeck.” Perhaps my high school French is influencing me.)
Mostly, you just see “BBQ” or “Bar-B-Q” or even “Bar-B-Que” in restaurant names, at least, and even in their literature.
Or here’s a fun one where they use both spellings!
But our locally originated barbecue sauce spells it with a “c”:
In my experience “cue” is the preferred ending, but it’s not at all universal across America, and you have all those abbreviated forms for it, as well. But “barbeque” is common enough, as well.
I choose not to acknowledge those. 
There are very few English words that end in -ige, and none that end in -rige. “vestige” is the only one with the same i sound as fridge. “Frige” just would not be scanned as “frij” by most people, because of the r. So we use a letter included in several words with same sound ending in -ridge.
There are a very large number of answers to English spelling inquiries. When there isn’t, it’s not because there was no reason for it but because the reason has been lost to time. Listen to 100 or so episodes of this podcast to find things like why an e at the end of the word “like” signals a long i in the word. https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/
How about we decide that barbeque is the cooking style that Americans seem to like a lot, and barbecue is the outdoor grill that the rest of the English speaking world calls it.
Except that most of the English-speaking world calls it “barbecue”. The “Q” spelling is isolated to Australia/New Zealand.
(I know you’re in Australia, but I assure you there are other places that speak English.)
I don’t mind which is which, my suggestion is to differentiate through application.
Fair enough.
Though I’ll say, here in the US we are very inconsistent with it. Real barbecue is something that you cook for a very long time at a low temperature, to the point where meat is falling apart, and usually a ton of smoke flavor is imparted to it. But we also use the same term to describe anything you cook on an outdoor grill.
Trivia note about ‘barbecue:’
In the late 1800s, the dictionary defined the word as a)" a hog, ox, or other large animal roasted whole" and b) a large social entertainment, usually in open air, at which animals are roasted whole, and other provisions of all kinds are consumed."
The latter definition was the most common usage in press accounts in the 1800s, a barbecue being a large public event.
Mandela Effect?
And why people called Mike are not formally named Micycle
They’re more like what you’d call guidelines than actual rules.
In icelandic it means ‘fresh’ and is the name of a popular washing up liquid. I brought a bottle back with me and it lived in my kitchen for years just to scandalise people.
I’m going to start trying to make this happen.
Wish me luck, fellas.
Decimating the word ‘vegetables’ would leave just one of the 10 letters out…
You misspelled “improved”.
Beck! That’s just two - what’s the third bad?
And that’s how you get “Vegetales”.