Think your shrimp and grits recipe has what it takes to be crowned a 2008 Shrimp & Grits Festival favorite? You can enter the amateur or professional cook-off and prepare your favorite shrimp-and-grits meal. The amateur cook-offs will be held on Saturday, September 20th beginning at 10 a.m and 3:30 p.m. There are two seperate rounds and each round will have a first, second, and third place winner.

Amateur prizes: First Place: $500; Second Place: $300; Third Place: $100.

Professional chefs will compete on Sunday, September 21st beginning at 12:00 p.m.

Professional prizes: First Place: $1000; Second Place $800, Third Place: $500

For more information or to enter, fill out an entry form online at www.jekyllisland.com/shrimpandgrits.

Tags: chef competition, family festivals, jekyll island shrimp and grits festival, shrimp and grits, shrimp cooking competition, Wild Georgia Shrimp Festival
Posted in Beachscape, September 2008 | No Comments »

Christopher Hewitt, professional chef at the Olde Pink House in Savannah, Georgia will be a tough act to follow this year.

Falling in love with cooking came to Hewitt at the age of 12-years-old. Though he was not allowed to cook in the kitchen in his youth, Christopher was exposed to cooking through his family’s restaurant business. His dad, also a chef, caught him cooking eggs on the radiator in his room and his career began.

Graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, he has been working at the Olde Pink House for a little over two years. Hewitt was featured on two Iron Chef episodes on the Food Network, in which he cooked with world-renowned top chef Bobby Flay in New York and Japan.
Enjoying the relaxation that Jekyll Island offers, Mr. Hewitt is preparing for the upcoming competition where he wowed the taste buds of judges with his impeccable Southern Sushi in 2007. Judges can begin salivating again as Hewitt plans something spectacular to reclaim his title.

For more information on Shrimp and Grits: The Wild Georgia Shrimp Festival, visit www.jekyllisland.com/shrimpandgrits or call the Jekyll Island Visitors’ Information
Center at 1-877-4JEKYLL.

Tags: chef competition, jekyll island shrimp and grits festival, shrimp and grits, shrimp cooking competition, tim hewitt, Wild Georgia Shrimp Festival
Posted in August 2008, Beachscape | No Comments »

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvJl7-WcYSc[/youtube]

Tags: 2007, feedback, fun, Shrimp & Grits Festival, Wild Georgia Shrimp Festival
Posted in Festivalgoer | No Comments »

I hope all of you had a chance to enjoy Shrimp & Grits: The Wild Georgia Shrimp Festival this past weekend. If you did not, you missed out on some great food, great fun and, for me, a great team in action. I can’t say enough about our team, and about our event leader Beth Burnsed.

We also have a great partner is this event, the Georgia Shrimp Association. With GSA’s help, we were able to secure our celebrity chef Uncle Bubba. Bubba was a big hit, selling out autograph books in less that two hours.

And our other partners - Georgia Tourism, Coca-Cola, Michelob/Budweiser, Jim Dandy, Brunswick Toyota, AT&T, Golden Isles Nissan, Ameris Bank, Stratton Hall, Jekyll Island Club Hotel, Latitude 31/Rah Bar - made an event of this size possible.

We also appreciate the work of Monkey Love Media and GCI Group for getting the word out, we had some great event coverage.

Our visitation numbers put the crowd for the weekend event at 11,800. We’ll be getting a full report together soon - and begin work on next year’s festival!

Tags: Ameris Bank, AT&T, Brunswick Toyota, Coca-Cola, Georgia Shrimp Association, Georgia Tourism, Golden Isles Nissan, Jekyll Island Club Hotel, Jim Dandy, Latitude 31/Rah Bar, Michelob/Budweiser, Shrimp & Grits Festival, sponsors, Stratton Hall, Uncle Bubba, Wild Georgia Shrimp Festival
Posted in In the News, Press Releases | No Comments »

We need Seafood Vendors! Last year we had over 13,000 people over 3 days at Shrimp and Grits: The Wild Georgia Shrimp Festival. This year we hope for more. We want plenty of food to feed these folks, so if you can cook some good fish or shrimp, let us know. Check out www.jekyllisland.com/shrimpandgrits for an application.

Tags: 2007, seafood, Shrimp & Grits Festival, vendors, Wild Georgia Shrimp Festival
Posted in Festivalgoer | No Comments »

We are well underway in our planning for the 2007 Shrimp and Grits: The Wild Georgia Shrimp Festival. This year’s dates are September 14-16. The website should be up in the next couple of weeks. Any suggestions, please feel free to post on the blog!

Tags: 2007, september, Shrimp & Grits Festival, Wild Georgia Shrimp Festival
Posted in Festivalgoer | No Comments »