On Saturday, I volunteered my services at the annual Island Creek Oyster Festival, held in Duxbury Beach, located about 45 minutes south of Boston. The event served as a fundraiser for the Island Creek Oysters Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports numerous local charities and sustainable aquaculture projects. With some 3,000 expected attendees and a promise of all-you-can-eat fresh oysters, it sounded like it could be a fun (and busy) way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Almost 20 of Boston’s top chefs were invited to the event, with each chef serving 1 or 2 dishes featuring a variety of locally-sourced ingredients. Each culinary school student that volunteered would be assigned to assist one of these chefs throughout the day. My assignment was to assist Chris Schlesinger, chef and owner of the East Coast Grill, in the VIP tent, a separate and somewhat more intimate facility than the festival’s main event tent. Chis and his head chef Eric prepared a peking-style whole roasted pig, which was served in a tortilla along with some pickled cabbage slaw, green onions, hoisin sauce and various other condiments.
The festival ran all day Saturday, with doors opening at 3pm, meal service running from 5pm until about 8pm, followed by music and additional festivities running until about 11pm. The wife and I arrived a little before 1pm to help set-up Chris’ station for dinner.
Making myself useful by disposing of some aluminum foil:
The roasting box was the center of attention up until service time:
Even the police can’t help but check out the contents of the box:
I totally want one of these roasting boxes. The food to be cooked, in this case a nearly whole, butterflied pig goes into the box. Then, a few sheets of foil are laid over the top of the pig to prevent its skin from burning. Then, the metal plate containing the actual heat source goes on top, allowing the food inside to be cooked via convection heat.
The whole pig took about 7 hours to cook, with the foil coming off during the last 45 min of cooking, allowing the pig’s skin to crisp up. Eric and Chris carefully remove the 100+ lbs of hot and tender goodness from the roasting box:
The pig used was specially raised for this event. His name was Gourmet and from what I was told, he was very well taken care of and also somewhat of a local celebrity…I can’t tell you how many times people asked about him during dinner service.
The rack that held Gourmet in place during cooking had to be disassembled before he could portioned out for dinner service:
Eric masterfully making quick work of breaking down the whole hog:
Chris and I hard at work, right at the beginning of dinner service:
I am a plating machine:
I really have no idea how many servings of pork Chris and I plated. Service started at about 5pm and we faced a relentless stream of diners until we ran out of pork somewhere around 7:15pm or so. I looked up a few times to make conversation with people that visited the booth and every time I looked up, I saw a huge line of people waiting to be served…I guess it’s hard to resist the tasty spectacle that is a whole roasted pig. If I had to make a fairly uneducated guess, I’d say I assembled at least 250 plates of food. I finally got to sample a small piece of the pork right at the very end of service and it was really good…moist and tender with just a slight whiff of smoky goodness.
Since I was busy setting up and serving, I handed over my camera to the wife, who was thoughtful enough to come along and support me during the day and also serve as photographer…she took all of the pictures in this post. While I was working, she walked around and checked out the rest of the festival, including some of the offerings from the other chefs in attendance. Here are some of the other food items for the day, including our peking roasted pig (minus tortilla) and a razor clam ceviche (top right corner):
The festival’s namesake, Island Creek Oysters, was easily one of the crowd favorites. There were a few of these stations set up throughout the festival grounds, providing fresh-from-the-bay oysters to hungry festival attendees. These shuckers were busting their collective asses all day long to meet the demands of the crowd:
The wife has a few more pictures, plus an excellent write-up of the festival from a sustainability point of view, over at her blog.
The torrential downpours during the day did nothing to dampen the spirit of the event or the festivities. You’d be hard-pressed to tell that anyone even minded the rain, aside from everyone being totally soaked through and the festival grounds eventually turning into something resembling a primordial swamp. The only inconvenience we encountered was when we had to move the smoking box inside during an early afternoon downpour, a task that resulted in Chris and I nearly burning our faces to a crisp. Overall, I had a blast and was really glad that I volunteered to help…dinner service was intense, but it was also a lot of fun and much more enjoyable than a typical day for me in the office. I enjoyed working with Chris and Eric, who rightfully so, harassed me when I accidentally knocked over one of their beers while setting up and questioned my sanity when I told them of my intentions of giving up my desk job and trading it in for a career in the restaurant industry.
