Sunday, May 16, 7:00 pm
Members $150, guests $200

For reservations or more information, please call 757.622.3210.

Event Location:
Todd Jurich’s Bistro
150 W. Main St.

Pacific Rim this, Gulf that. When will the Atlantic get its due on menus and press releases at restaurants around the country? Okay, so this is probably not the thinking behind Todd Jurich’s Centennial Celebration, which has deemed its event a celebration of Atlantic Coast chefs. But as sure as a cool breeze and fresh seafood issue from the ocean, you can bet a meal prepared by a collection of the best chefs cooking along the southeastern American coast of the Atlantic would have been welcomed by James Beard for his birthday celebration.

The self-taught Jurich has become a “local treasure,” according to Mayor Paul Fraim of Norfolk, Virginia, who officiated over the February 2003 reopening of Jurich’s Bistro. Jurich and his wife and business partner, Barbara, moved the restaurant from its more modest beginnings into a shiny new office building, a striking backdrop for Norfolk’s “most ambitious” restaurant, according to Travel + Leisure. It’s also the city’s best, take the word of Tammy Jaxtheimer, restaurant critic of The Virginian-Pilot, who collected the opinions of eight local chef/owners and restaurateurs to inform her decision.

Jurich has invited one of his Atlantic Coast comrades, Walter Bundy—of Lemaire, at the historic Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia—to join him in the kitchen for this centennial celebration. The only AAA Five-Diamond restaurant in the state, Lemaire is known for Bundy’s modern twist on Southern favorites like Virginia peanut soup and Smithfield ham. “While live alligators used to slither around a pit in the lobby,” remarked Bon Appétit magazine, “the best current attraction is the hotel’s Lemaire restaurant.”

Sam McGann graduated from Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, before opening Oyster Bar & Grill in Duck, North Carolina, in 1989 with his high school buddy/business partner John Power. In no time the restaurant morphed into The Blue Point, a more ambitious establishment without an oyster bar but with a wider menu, which helped expand the duo’s repertoire and keep them motivated. Overlooking as it does the Currituck Sound, there’s no better place to enjoy what McGann has dubbed Southern Coastal Cuisine.

Over in Southern Shores, North Carolina, Chip Smith is cooking a coastal cuisine all his own. A graduate of the CIA, he worked with Larry Forgione at the venerable, An American Place in New York City. From there it was on to the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., where Smith cooked under Jean-Louis Palladin. To complete his work with a triarchy of great American chefs, Smith held a position in Patrick O’Connell’s kitchens at the Inn at Little Washington. In 1998 he and his partner, Tina Vaughn, opened the charmingly tiny Carolina Blue, named for the color of Smith’s eyes (The two are partners in and out of the restaurant).

The last Atlantic Coast chef to wash up in Jurich’s kitchen will be Tom Power, chef of the Fat Canary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Also a graduate of the CIA, Power opened his elegant but casual New American eatery last June. Only a few months later the managing editor of the local Flat Hat newspaper, Dan Schumacher, wrote, “If The Flat Hat still had a star system, the Fat Canary would get a solid five.”

We don’t give stars either, but we know this centennial celebration of Atlantic Coast chefs will be stellar.