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THE EATER: Eat Fall

by Kirk Ross

Pepperfest
Get ready for an event that’s way up there on the Scoville scale. The 4th Annual Pittsboro Pepper Festival has moved to Briar Chapel Community Park this year, promising more room, more heat and more variety, with 24 chefs and plenty of pepper events along with green workshops courtesy of the Abundance Foundation and Piedmont Biofuels.

Peppers (and corn) on the grill. Photo by Kirk Ross

Pepper providers for the Oct. 2 event include Dog Day Farm, Dutch Buffalo, Fiddlehead Farm, Granite Springs, Okfuskee Farm, Bennett Farming, Edible Earthscapes, Screech Owl’s Greenhouses, Hope Garden, Cane Creek Farm and Everlaughter.

The festival menu includes dishes such as Chile Shack John’s famous poblano Frito pie from Angelina’s Kitchen, the General Store Café’s pepper and okra étouffée, Crook Corner’s Tobago pepper jelly and crackers, Chicken Bridge Bakery’s yeasted corn bread with roasted peppers and Glasshalfull’s smoked-pepper soup.

In addition to checking out the flavors and testing their capsaicin capacities, visitors will be treated to the tunes of Lonnie Walker and Justin Robinson and the Mary Annettes. A $25 donation goes to support the Abundance Foundation.

Close of season
Speaking of peppers, if you missed the annual pepper-roasting exhibition by Alex Hitt at Carrboro Farmers’ Market, you’ve got to wait another year. Throughout the region, the markets are making their transition to fall, with midweek markets shutting down in Hillsborough, Carrboro and Chapel Hill at the end of the month.

That said, the markets are anything but slowing down with the fall vegetables pouring in. Seems like a particularly good year for various late beans. And don’t forget that it is shitake mushroom season, with several growers hopeful of a good harvest.

Another hat tip
A Huffington Post writer has informed the rest of the world that this place is one of the best college towns for food, in an article entitled “10 College Towns with the Best Food.”

The rather uninspired headline, typical of 10 Best pieces everywhere, notes the highly inspired offerings at Neal’s Deli, Sandwhich and The Pig. The article also namedrops Farmer’s Daughter for “provisions.”

A nice nod to the places mentioned, but the sentence that says Chapel Hill “conjures images of biscuits, gravy and endless green lawns” does not instill a lot of confidence in the research.

The Eater suggests you try the aforementioned establishments (you’ll have to pick up your Farmer’s Daughter provisions at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market) and draw your own conclusions.

The bounty of our wonderful coast
A couple of recent trips out east of here, including one to the disaster area on the north end of Hatteras Island, has once again brought home just how many people on our coast still engage in bringing in fresh wild-caught seafood. This year, storms and fires have made making a living on the water even rougher. (Even the good news of an unusually successful year for the endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle had consequences, as it delayed the start of commercial flounder fishing in Pamlico Sound.)

We’re coming into the season for cooler waters, and the shops should be plentiful with bluefish, flounder, speckled trout and other fall fish, making it a fine time to support your local fisheries.