Seafood boil puts Pass in national spotlight

PASS CHRISTIAN -- Andrew Zimmern -- TV host, author and award-winning chef -- peeked into a box of crawfish that were about to go for a swim in a well-seasoned pot of boiling water.

“They’re frisky,” he said. “Frisky is good.”

Zimmern, host of Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Food” and “Bizarre Food America,” was the special guest at the first Gulf Coast Seafood Boil on the Beach, hosted Friday by Chefs of the Coast, the Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association and the Pass Christian Harbor Festival Commission.

Zimmern was here filming for his series “Appetite for Life” for MSN’s website. The webisode should be online by mid-February.

For the first three hours of the event, diners lined up holding trays the size of garbage-can lids to sample shrimp, crawfish and crab from at least a dozen area restaurants.

In the second half, some of the same chefs were joined by other restaurants to show off their oyster dishes during the Pass Christian Oyster Festival Patron party.

All the while, local bands entertained as diners turned mounds of boiled seafood into heaps of empty shells and messy paper towels.

Stephanie Dahl and her 14-year-old son Wyatt McLendon of Montana were visiting family in Bay St. Louis when they heard Zimmern would be at the seafood boil. Wyatt is a big fan of the TV chef, so Dahl cooked dinner for her family and headed to the harbor.

“I made lasagna. We left everybody there,” she said, waiting for another scoop of steaming shrimp.

At the Half Shell Oyster House tent, owner Bob Taylor char-grilled oysters on the half shell and boiled spicy crawfish while Zimmern prepared poached shrimp in a lemon sauce with marjoram, dill and fresh corn. The two ribbed each other good-naturedly as they offered samples of their dishes to the crowd in an unofficial competition.

Taylor said it was an honor to work beside the James Beard Award–winning chef. “We had a great time. We kidded around a lot,” he said. “He showed us how to make his shrimp dish. We taught him how to boil some crawfish.”

Zimmern enjoyed his first visit to South Mississippi, where he said everyone learns to cook at an early age. “In this part of the world, food is in everybody’s DNA,” he said. “You can’t say this in a lot of places.”

Organizers planned for about 500 people at the seafood boil and most who stayed for the Oyster Fest patron party were joined by newcomers.

“This was great exposure for us on the Gulf Coast,” MHRA’s Bridgette Varrone said.

She said the producers and crew filming Zimmern’s webisode loved the Southern hospitality they experienced here. “They left with Chefs of the Coast cookbooks,” she said. “They know who we are now.”

The fundraising event will help the MHRA promote area restaurants and spread the culinary tourism message, she said.

Mary Paul Bahm, who recently moved to Pass Christian, brought her sister Maggie Beem of Baton Rouge to try the Mississippi seafood. Bahm had come to the first patron party in 2011. “It was wonderful, so here we are again,” she said.

The sisters had enjoyed their share of shrimp and stopped by the Blow Fly Inn’s booth to ask about their butter sauce.

The two waited for the next restaurants to lay out the half shells for the patron party.

“Oysters, music and a little more beer,” Bahm said.

The two events Friday were a warm-up for the Pass Christian Oyster Fest, which opens today at the Pass Christian Harbor. The festival runs through Sunday.