Jan/Feb 08 | Talk of the South

Foraging the Forgotten Coast

Preparing a seaside feast in Apalachicola

Chris Hastings didn't grow up here among the dense forests of slash pines that ring the sugar-white beaches of the Forgotten Coast, along Florida’s Panhandle. But it’s here that this Birmingham, Alabama, chef, who was raised on summers foraging for seafood in the South Carolina Lowcountry, feels most at home.

“We’re water people, and when it’s time to get away from the restaurant and relax, this is where we bring our family… It’s what Florida used to be,” says Hastings as he prepares to lead a three-day chautauqua — a talking, walking, eating blitz — through the Forgotten Coast, which some say derives its name from being omitted from a state tourism map.

On our trip south from the Tallahassee airport to Alligator Point, on the Gulf, and then to Port St. Joe, Hastings is part travel guide and part evangelist for his beloved Apalachicola Bay oysters, known worldwide for their sweet briny succulence, and for the amber-colored nectar gathered from the banks of the Apalachicola River to make tupelo honey.

After three days of pre-dawn fishing; visiting seafood shacks for soft-shell crabs, Florida “hopper” shrimp and oysters; climbing aboard a fishing barge to help harvest Alligator Point clams; and driving down winding sandy paths through cabbage palm woods to Eden-like organic farms, Hastings will have the food he needs for beachside bonfires and bacchanalia.

He will fill his coolers and rental car trunk with freshly shot plum-colored dove breasts; buckets of oysters still dripping with seawater; cheese platters with toasted pecans and fresh chèvre with opal basil from the Sweet Grass Dairy on the Florida-Georgia border; local tupelo honey; green tomato chutney; heirloom tomatoes, roasted eggplant, baby lettuces, arugula, and mizuna from Crescent Moon Organic Farm in nearby Sopchoppy; fresh sourdough bread with rouille; locally caught snapper and redfish; Alma figs; and lemon verbena for ice cream.

Along the way, Hastings will introduce me to the often overlooked purveyors of this coastline’s horn of plenty — among them the white-booted oyster tongers who tote the eighty-pound burlap sacks of bivalves to the docks, and the scruffy-bearded organic farmers who deliver woven baskets of buckwheat sprouts and peppery arugula to the back doors of restaurants. I had been eager to make this trip since folklorist Amy Evans of the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA) posted on the SFA Web site twenty-five oral histories and myriad photographs of the people who work the water and land here, and I learned just how exceptional Apalachicola is.

Hastings is quick to acknowledge what he thinks is a much-needed shift in emphasis in the food industry: chefs sharing credit with farmers and fishermen as the new rock stars of American food. “You can leave all the self-important chefs behind,” he says. “It’s about people who put their hands in the dirt. Because at the end of the day, that’s what really matters.”