Cast Iron Chef competitiors storm Port Royal's Piggly Wiggly
On Wednesday morning, local chefs participating in this weekend’s Southern Living-inspired Bottles & Barrels event at Habersham Marketplace took over the Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Port Royal to pick up all of their ingredients for the Cast Iron Chef competition. And, if today”s fervor is a sign of things to come this weekend,, we’re all in for a fantastically fun event.
Saturday’s Cast Iron Chef competition is a 30-minute timed competition with one common factor – BACON, Southern Living’s 2014 ingredient of the year, must be used in all three presented dishes.
The mood was energetic and quite jovial as store manager Robert Averill assisted everyone in finding what they needed. Local chefs Richard Wilson from Maggie’s Pub, Brian Waters of Saltus, Paul Hinsley of the Spaghetti Club, Victoria Nellen of Sweet Vivi’s, Elizabeth Shaw from Breakwater, Brenna Chiaviello of Brenna’s Bakery and Christopher Hewitt from Southern Graces all went on a timed shopping spree with a 30 minute limit to grab all of their goodies needed to try and win the coveted competition, which will be judged by Southern Living magazine’s test kitchen chef Robby Melvin.
Chef Melvin will judge on presentation, use of ingredient of the year, and creativity. The winner is our official Southern Living “Cast Iron Chef 2014.”
“I love bacon. This was my calling, and I’ve trained all of my life for this moment” said Christopher Hewitt, quite comically. Victoria Nellen said that she is “looking forward to having some fun at the event” and is “really excited about seeing some of the fine chefs of Beaufort do their thing.”
As are we all! Bottles & Barrels has three fun components; a wine & beer tasting, a live culinary competition, and jazz brunch. Saturday features a tasting of boutique wines and craft beers and the Cast Iron Chef culinary competition. A traditional Southern Sunday Jazz Brunch will be held on Saturday, June 15th from 11am-2pm hosted by chef Robby Melvin.
Full event details are listed and tickets can be pre-purchased on the event website: www.bottlesandbarrelssc.com. The event is organized by the talented and tireless team over at Plum Productions.
For more photos of today’s fun at the Port Royal Piggly Wiggly, visit our Photo Gallery here.
Photos by Ryan Smith.
