Celebrating the Oyster and Oyster Lover at Taste of the Beach 2014!
Like wine and cheese, oysters owe much of their flavor to terroir, the specific environment in which they grow—indeed, oysters are the food that tastes most like the sea. Today, there are at least two hundred unique oyster appellations in North America, each producing oysters with a distinct and often dazzling flavor.
Eastern North Carolina enjoys a wealth of our own special and tasty species of oyster, that largely come out of the waters just off Stumpy Point. During the local season this is the variety of oyster you will mainly find restaurants here serving, but Coastal Provisions Market (now Wine Café & Oyster Bar too) has about a dozen different species for you to enjoy, taste, explore, and learn about on any given day you visit.
In Coastal provisions Market event on Friday, March 14th during Taste of the Beach 2014, enjoy a truly special foodie experience with a variety of oysters in a variety of preparations, each paired with select wines in their six course wine dinner. The dining experience will also feature special guest, James Beard Award winning author and oyster connoisseur Rowan Jacobsen. Rowan’s book A Geography of Oysters is just one his several books that have garnered him accolades as one of the top food writers today. Guests will be sure to leave with a greater appreciation and knowledge of oysters as a culinary delight, but also as a crucial part of the ecosystem of our waters.
Rowan will also be on hand at the Coastal Provisions Market Annual Taste of the Beach Chowder Cookoff on Saturday, March 15th. Rowan will be available to talk food, sign books, and perhaps help us serve up some oysters at our new Oyster Bar!
Rowan Jacobsen is the author of A Geography of Oysters, Fruitless Fall, The Living Shore, American Terroir, and Shadows on the Gulf. He has written for the New York Times, Harper’s, Outside, Mother Jones, Orion, and others, and his work has been anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing and Best Food Writing collections. Whether visiting endangered oystermen in Louisiana or cacao-gathering tribes in the Bolivian Amazon, his subject is how to maintain a sense of place in a world of increasing placelessness. He has won a couple of James Beard Awards, an IACP award, and some others. His 2010 book, American Terroir, was named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by Library Journal. His Outside Magazine piece “Heart of Dark Chocolate” received the 2011 Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers for best adventure story of the year. He was a 2012 Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow, writing about endangered diversity on the borderlands between India, Myanmar, and China. His new book, Apples of Uncommon Character, will be out in September 2014.
