ShrimpFest
A few years ago, I started hearing about something called Shrimpfeast. Then my legendary LEAD classmate Mike Rock insisted that I come to it—he was one of the chairs of the event.
Now I get it! I wanted to know more about how this all happens, so Kiwanis past presidents Rock and his co-chair Geoff Suter gave me some behind-the-scenes details of this hugely popular event.
Shrimpfeast has a long history. Back in 1979, members Mike Sternberg and the late Joel Sheppard founded the event, looking to do an event to get people out in the community. (The Kiwanis used to sell brooms door to door to raise money.) So they started Shrimpfeast, an “all you can eat” shrimp event.
Over the last three decades it’s grown, and last year Kiwanians served more than 1,600 pounds of shrimp to nearly 2,000 people. That’s a lot of shrimp!
I heard that the Shrimpfeast seasoning is a secret special recipe only the cooks know. But I was able to persuade Suter into telling me it’s a combination of “Old Bay seasoning, love and beer.” So, there you have it!
“Getting a good-sized fresh shrimp, and getting it hot to people’s mouths is the real secret. We used to do a boil bag but the shells were still on, which made more work for the customer, Now that we have easy peel shrimp, they take the seasoning better, and we can turn them out to the customer faster,” Suter said.
I imagined people in aprons staying up all night to season and boil the shrimp. But that’s not the case.
The shrimp comes in about a week before the event, and waits in theSecond Street Bistros coolers. Kiwanians spend the week slacking the shrimp (thawing them out) in giant tubs and they arrive to the campground the morning of the event in a freezer truck. The Kiwanians get the huge boiling pots going a few hours before guests arrive—but no shrimp are cooked until just 5 minutes before the event starts at 4 p.m. Each of the 12 pots is assigned a team of four cookers, and all the pots get shrimp constantly for the next three hours. It comes right out of the pot to be plated for the customer: hot shrimp!
“The event is now a main staple of the end of the summer—everyone comes back together,” said Suter. And, it all happens at the 4-H campground, which is an exquisite gem on the James River.
Although the specific benefactors rotate each year, all of the money raised goes to community charities.
“We calculate we’ve netted over the last 37 years just shy of $1million that goes directly back into our local community benefiting kids,” said Rock.
According to Rock, planning for the next Shrimpfeast starts…the day after Shrimpfeast! The Kiwanians meet up to review how the event went, and tie up all the loose ends. (But, there’s never any leftover shrimp.)
The 38th Annual Kiwanis Shrimp Feast will be September 9, 2017, rain or shine. I’ll see you there!
Got to williamsburgkiwanis.org/2017-shrimp-feast for additional information.
