The Chatham Sponsorship includes two tickets with reserved seating, a library wine selected by winemaker, Jon Wehner, and recognition in various event materials and signage. Proceeds from sponsorship will support a scholarship in the name of Bernie Herman and educational programs in the culinary arts offered in the Eastern Shore of Virginia schools, through the Crop Foundation, and the Barrier Islands Center.
At the end of the day, most folks want two things – a great meal and a good story to share. A South You Never Ate intends to provide just that by uniting the vision and passion of twelve chefs with Eastern Shore of Virginia growers, aquaculturalists, and culinary historians in a collaborative celebration of the foodways of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The Eastern Shore and the lower Chesapeake Bay stand as one of the great Southern coastal cuisines along with Charleston’s Low Country and New Orleans’s bayou country.
Raiding the Eastern Shore of Virginia larder, using ingredients that make up those recipes and others that include Hayman sweet potatoes, preserved figs, Seaside oysters and clams and seasonings such as smoked fig leaves, dried wild oyster mushrooms, and fennel seed, each chef will create two or three original small plate dishes during Chatham Vineyards’ fourth iteration of a “A South You Never Ate” on the evening of Oct. 24.
Each ticket includes a progressive dinner of at least twenty small plates, oysters on the half shell, an open bar with Eastern Shore beer and Chatham wine and a signature surprise cocktail. Guests will be able to circulate around the Chatham Vineyard “crush pad kitchen” and follow the preparation of the dishes as they come to fruition.
The dinner is an endeavor of the Eastern Shore of Virginia Foodways, a group to sustainable and culturally meaningful economic development on the Eastern Shore. The group’s mission is “One Job for one person so one family doesn’t have to leave.” Our path forward is through the realization of the Eastern Shore of Virginia and the lower Chesapeake as a great southern coastal cuisine.