Tortilla Flats wins Chowder Contest at Avalon Seafood Fest
AVALON – Linda Schwartz has entered a soup in the
Avalon Seafood Festival’s Chowder Contest every year since the
competition began 17 years ago. Every year she’d enter a clam chowder.
Makes sense, right? Jersey Shore. Cape May fisheries. Commercial boats
in the harbors and inlets. Clammers all over the place.
“I mean when you think chowder contest, you think clam chowder, right?
Either New England or Manhattan, but clam chowder,” said Schwartz,
owner/chef of Tortilla Flats in Avalon. “When I was asked to be in the
new Wings ‘N Water chowder contest, I was asked to make a corn chowder.”
What, are we in Iowa?
“Exactly! I was hysterical,” she said. “I was like, what is this?”
Schwartz’s clam chowder was good enough to win a couple of the Avalon
cookoffs, where festival-goes pay a couple bucks to sample all the
entrees and then cast their vote. But when she got tired of seeing her
clam chowder finish just off the pace the past several years, she
switched gears.
“All the other soups that were winning were never clam chowder. I think
last year’s winner, Marabella’s, was a crab soup,” she said. “I was
like, why do I keep making clam chowder when no one else is making it
and we don’t win?”
On Sunday, she pulled out an old favorite, a roasted red pepper bisque
with shrimp, scallops and crabmeat.
“I make it at home all the time and everyone always tells me how much
they love it, so I went with that,” she said.
She roasts the peppers and peels off some of the charred skin but leaves
some of it to add a smoky flavor. After pureeing and mixing it with
cream, she adds it to the water she used to cook the seafood. She also
adds some bottled clam juice. Later, after seasoning, she works in the
seafood. When the soup is served at Tortilla Flats, as it will be this
week for as long as it last, it is presented with a big chili pepper
crouton for dipping.
“People love it. And who wouldn’t take (shrimp, scallops and crabmeat)
over a clam?” she said.
When the votes were tallied, Schwartz had won the cup—or the silver
chowder bowl, to be precise. This was the first year the chamber has
awarded a trophy with a chowder bowl on top. Tortilla Flats and Linda
Schwartz will be the first entry engraved in the Previous Winners
section of the trophy and she will display it proudly at her restaurant
until next year’s cookoff, which is held annually in mid-October at
Community Hall, 30th and the beach.
“Dave Coskey of the Seven Mile Times was taking pictures of the event
and he came over to me and said he needed to take my picture with the
trophy. They hadn’t announced the winner yet and I thought Dave was
just, you know, busting on me,” she said. “I said, ‘Dave, you’re being
brutal here. This is not a nice thing to do to me.’ But he said, ‘Just
wait, they’re about to announce it.’ And they did. It was very nice, and
so is the trophy. It’s a great idea because then we get to pass it on to
each year’s winner.”
If she decides to stay away from a basic New England Clam Chowder again,
she just might be able to hang onto it for another year or so.
(Tortilla Flats (2540 Dune Drive, Avalon, 967-5658)
remains open
Wednesday through Sunday for dinner through the end of October, and
Wednesday through Saturday the first week in November.)
Rob Seitzinger can be e-mailed at
seitz[at]catamaranmedia.com or you can comment on this story by calling
624-8900, ext. 250.
Tortilla Flats
2540 Dune Drive, Avalon,
967-5658
17th annual Avalon Seafood Festival and Chowder Contest
Chowder contest winners
(entry number in parenthesis)
First Place -- Tortilla Flats (No. 2)
Second Place -- Maggie’s (No.3)
Third Place -- Sylvester’s
(No. 5)
Avalon Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Joan Hunter reports 171
people paid to judge the contest, and 168 votes were cast, the most
ever. Also competing in the cookoff were Back Bay Seafood (No. 1),
Marabella’s (No. 4), Brian’s Waffle House (No. 6), Alkita Café (No. 7)
and Henny’s (No. 8).
Rob Seitzinger can be e-mailed
at seitz[at]catamaranmedia.com or you can comment on this story by
calling 624-8900, ext. 250.
Check out his Cape Cuisine food blog