OUT TO SEA: Celebrating the People, Stories and Traditions Behind North Carolina Seafood
For Chef Dean Neff, seafood has always been about more than what lands on the plate. It’s about the people who harvest it, the traditions that shape coastal cuisine, and the connection between a community and the waters that sustain it. Now in its second year, Out to Sea has grown from the NC Oyster & Seafood Celebration into a three-day festival celebrating North Carolina’s rich seafood heritage. Rooted in a spirit of curiosity, collaboration and community, the event brings together oyster farmers, fishers, foragers and an exceptional lineup of chefs to explore the stories behind the state’s coastal bounty.
From conversations about seasonality and sustainability to Saltwater Stories, a dinner exploring the profound influence of African American foodways on North Carolina’s coastal culinary traditions, the festival offers a deeper understanding of the people and history behind every ingredient. Visiting chefs, including Ricky Moore, Vivian Howard, Nicole Cabrera Mills and Adé Carenna, will add their own perspectives to the conversation, celebrating the diversity and creativity of the region’s seafood culture.
For Neff, the mission is both simple and far-reaching: to help people understand where their food comes from, appreciate those who bring it to the table, and recognize what stands to be lost if these traditions and livelihoods are not supported. More than an annual gathering, Out to Sea is an evolving movement to champion North Carolina’s coastal foodways, strengthen local economies and bring the seafood community together—one meaningful meal at a time.
Out to Sea began last year as the NC Oyster & Seafood Celebration and has now grown into a three-day festival. What inspired you to expand the event, and what do you hope people take away from this year’s celebration?
We’ve seen so much interest and curiosity about the work behind seafood in North Carolina at both Zora’s Market & Kitchen and Seabird. As a chef working with people who grow food, fish and forage, we get to share all the information we learn about their work with our guests. It’s always inspiring to see how interested our guests are in understanding these local ingredients better.
Seafood is a complicated conversation, even on a local level. But it becomes much simpler when we think about it in terms of where we live and start there. Right here, we have economies built around clamming, shrimping, crabbing, finfish, oysters, whelk and squid, depending on the season. It goes on and on, and each comes with its own seasonality and sustainability issues.
I think people are interested because it empowers them to be more conscious consumers. It’s a learning experience and a community experience. It’s fun. You’re connecting with others, enjoying delicious food and meeting the people who bring it to the table.
This year’s festival places a strong emphasis on the people behind North Carolina’s seafood, from oyster farmers and fishers to chefs and foragers. Why is it important to you to tell those stories and bring these voices together?
It’s important for people to understand why we should support the local people doing this work and what’s lost if we don’t. If we always think of food in terms of convenience, if we only buy fish at the grocery store instead of going to a fish market, we miss something.
There’s a lot of value in meeting the people who bring you your ingredients. Whether you’re buying fish at a market, buying oysters straight from a farmer or going out on a boat to taste oysters right from the farm, those experiences help you understand the ingredient, the process and the people doing the work.
That’s better for local economies, better for sustainability and hopefully better for policymaking, too, when more people understand the process. So, it’s about bringing all those voices together and gathering as a community to share the joy of what we have here on the North Carolina coast. I think it helps people savor their food more and respect it more. As a chef, I know we respect our ingredients most when we know and care about the people bringing them to us straight from their farms.
One of the highlights is the “Saltwater Stories” dinner, exploring the impact of African American foodways on North Carolina’s coast. Why was it important to make this history and these culinary traditions part of the festival?
It means everything. If you’re talking about seafood in North Carolina and Southern coastal cuisine, you have to highlight African American influence on the cooking culture and on all things seafood in this area. It’s too important to overlook.
Representing seafood as a whole in a festival is a huge undertaking, but I knew the first thing I needed to do was reach out to Chef Keith Rhodes. I wanted him to be a big part of the festival and create an experience that really shines a light on the African American impact on seafood and cooking here.
He’s been doing something really cool with Saltwater Stories. It’s all about sitting down, having conversations and learning the history of food and seafood in the area. You immerse yourself in an experience where you eat, learn the history of the ingredients and see how African American food culture connects to seafood here.
This year, the festival’s Saltwater Stories dinner will take place at the Brooklyn Arts Center. Jon Mellette will be doing a demo focused on the Nixon family, who have a rich history of oyster harvesting and packing in this area. Members of the Nixon family will be there to share their history and stories. It’s going to be an incredible evening.
You’ve brought together an impressive group of visiting chefs, including Ricky Moore, Vivian Howard, Nicole Cabrera Mills and Adé Carenna. What excites you most about having these chefs cook together and interpret North Carolina seafood in their own way?
Just being able to cook with that group and be inspired by everything we’ll learn from each other. It’s a dream lineup, for sure. Again, it’s about curiosity, collaboration and learning from others. That’s what cooking is all about: human connection. These folks are all dear friends and so talented. It’ll be an honor and an incredible experience for our team and the community, and I’m grateful they’re coming to cook.
You’ve described Out to Sea as an ongoing conversation rather than simply an annual festival, with plans for an Out to Sea Series at Little Bird. What do you envision for the future of Out to Sea and your broader mission to champion North Carolina’s seafood and coastal foodways?
I want to find ways for it to grow, expand and become more inclusive. This is only our second year, and we’ve been so fortunate to have incredibly talented, passionate people who want to be part of it and collaborate. My hope is that it grows exponentially, with other people taking the lead and a team coming together so that next year there are more dinners and more restaurants around town. Hopefully, we’ll find bigger ways to reach people, too, whether through video content or larger venues.
It’s about education in a lot of ways, but education through a really lovely community experience. We all get to learn more about the food and the work behind the seafood industry in this area. Connecting with chefs and their passions, and seeing how their relationships with farmers and fishers influence their cooking, is a powerful message, too. Ultimately, it’s about lifting people up throughout the entire seafood community here in North Carolina.
Visit Seabird for tickets and details.
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