One way of deciding what’s local is to use the 100-Mile Diet. Not surprisingly, a good deal of the Seacoast’s radius includes the ocean as part of our foodshed. To celebrate our long tradition of local seafood, the NH Fish & Lobster Festival will be featuring a wide range of fun activities and events this Saturday:
Walk the decks of a local fishing boat, taste freshly-landed local seafood prepared by Seacoast chefs, learn to identify and prepare local fish, watch an on-location cook-off competition between chefs, investigate the Gulf of Maine ecosystem, sing a song and hear a tale or two.
13 chefs and restaurants will serve up fresh and delicious seafood tastings. Each were assigned a different locally-caught fish species at random (via lottery) to prepare at the event. The restaurants and their catch of the day are:
Little Bay Oyster: fresh shucked oysters
Fresh Local: mackerel
Jumpin’ Jays Fish Cafe: monk fish
Philbrick’s Fresh Market: squid
Robert’s Maine Grill: skate
Seaport Fish: hake
Portsmouth Lobster Co.: whole steamed lobster
Blue Mermaid: lobster
Portsmouth Brewery: flounder
Green Monkey & Brazo: cod
River House Restaurant: pollock
Portsmouth High School Culinary Arts: haddock
Old Salt Restaurant: bluefish
“Iron Chef” fans will also love the chef cook-off competition between chefs Ben Hasty of the Exeter Inn and Alec Maxon, a professional chef and fisherman from Newburyport. For this Seafood Throwdown, the chefs will be asked to prepare on-site an undisclosed locally-caught fish species with a limited amount of time to travel to the Portsmouth Farmers’ Market to collect supplies, return to the park and prepare, cook, and plate samples for the judges!
Prescott Park, Portsmouth
Admission – FREE, with Seafood tastings for $3
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Noon – 4:00 PM
Coinciding with the Fairy House Tour
Enjoy free parking at nearby City Hall or 75¢/hour at the downtown parking garage!