Slow Food Meets Seafood
March 5-6, 2011

Slow Food returned to Newport for one of our most unique and popular events–a weekend of education, clamming, and, of course, eating.   Slow Food Corvallis joined Slow Food Eugene to host this year’s event.
 There were tours of fishing boats, the Yaquina Bay Oyster Farm, education programs featuring marine biologists and fishermen, wine tasting, clamming, and a fabulous dungeness crab dinner. On the menu this year were oysters, clams, and, of course, dungeness crab. The crab dinner was prepared by Local Oceans Seafood restaurant.

The Department of Oregon Fish and Wildlife and the OSU Sea Grant Office experts spoke on the following topics during the educational portion of the evening: 

• Pros and cons of marine reserves;

• Update on crab tagging;

• Report on a Fishery CSA

The introduction to Saturday night’s dinner started with Zach Wahl of Nye Beach Gallery http://www.nyebeach.org/wine.html discussing wines to pair with crab and oysters. The wines were available for sale.

Our appetizer were oysters served by Liu Xin of the Oyster Farm.

The stars of the evening, live crabs, arrive dockside delivered by one of Newport’s local fishing vessels. Local Oceans staff will do a cooking/cracking demonstration. Fennel coleslaw, garlic bread and dessert accompany the freshly cooked crab.  

On Sunday morning some of us woke early to catch the low tide and go clamming with Bill Lackner.