Wrightsville Beach chefs combined signature flavors with local ingredients Saturday, Oct. 11 to give hundreds of hungry guests a taste of Wrightsville Beach.
Fourteen restaurants were represented during the third annual Taste of Wrightsville Beach food and beverage festival at MarineMax. Guests mingled on the docks, watching the sun set over Motts Channel and sampling the culinary creations of each restaurant.
Event co-founder Lisa Weeks said all proceeds from the popular event benefitted the Weekend Meals on Wheels Program and the nonprofit Wrightsville Beach Foundation’s beautification projects.
Guests were given the task of tasting the wide variety of dishes and voting on a favorite. In addition to the People’s Choice Award, the restaurants were also competing to impress a panel of five celebrity judges.
Choosing the right menu was key, and each chef had a different strategy.
Sweet and Savory gave diners a miniature three-course meal, with an elegantly plated spoonful of autumn squash bisque beside barbecue duck confit on a sweet potato biscuit and a caramel sea salt brownie topped with bacon.
“We went a little overboard,” chef Josh Petty admitted. “That brownie, that was the winner right there. I just wanted to do some fall kinds of things, like some cinnamon and nutmeg and pumpkin seeds [on the bisque].”
22 North head chef Brent Poteat incorporated seasonal flavors into his dish as well, serving sweet potato hominy grits, mixed greens with smoky moonshine and seared pork belly with Vidalia onion jam.
“It’s really nice for this time of year,” Poteat said. “All these things are at their peak right now, and it’s all local.”
Danny McPhearson of King Neptune Restaurant also highlighted local ingredients with his smoked mahi-mahi served with fresh Great Harvest Bread Co. rolls.
“People just love good, fresh, local food,” he said. “The mahi is caught right here off the shores of North Carolina.”
Both Bluewater Waterfront Grill and the Oceanic Restaurant used the event as an opportunity to call attention to dishes served in their restaurants. Bluewater unveiled a new menu item while Oceanic chef Matt Wivell said he hoped his peach crumb cheesecake with North Carolina honey crème fraiche would help promote the restaurant’s updated dessert menu.
Banks Channel Pub and Grille’s chefs used two years’ experience competing in Taste of Wrightsville Beach to craft a dish specifically for the event. Owner Damon Scarpelli said the goal was to incorporate a variety of flavors into one bite-sized item.
“We wanted to make it convenient to be served,” Scarpelli said. “So the thought was to give everyone a little pocket of flavor. We’re a pub and grille, and we bang out burgers and fish and chips, but for something like this we wanted to do something more creative.”
After the sun sank over the marsh and all the votes were tallied, the winners were announced. Several first-time entrants fared well in the awards.
Sweet and Savory chefs were rewarded for their efforts with a third place Judge’s Award and a second place People’s Choice Award. For Hunter Tiblier, owner of Ceviche’s Panamanian Restaurant placing third in the People’s Choice Award capped off an eventful few weeks for him and his restaurant.
“We opened the restaurant, I got married [to wife Laura], and we got ready for this,” he said.
22 North’s Brent Poteat was able to translate his passion for cooking into a first-place finish in both the People’s Choice Award and the Judge’s Award.
“I’m probably one of the luckiest guys in the world because I can get up and thoroughly enjoy what I do,” he said. “If you stop trying to evolve and create and make something new, you might as well hang it up. You never know, sometimes a dish flops, and that’s all right, we’ll start over.”
While the winners inevitably earned bragging rights until next year’s event, co-founder Lisa Weeks said the main purpose of the event is to bring together the Wrightsville Beach community and give each restaurant an increase in patronage going into the off-season.
“It’s just a great community event for us to come break bread together and celebrate our restaurants,” she said. “When I talk to some of the restaurants that either win or get recognized, they say they see a bump in their patronage right after Taste so I think that’s mission accomplished.”
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