VENTNOR – The Downbeach Seafood Festival draws thousands of visitors during the shoulder season each year and this year was no different. Crowds flowed into the entrance to enjoy an afternoon of seafood, beer and great entertainment, including the Pacific Island Dancers.
Peggy Gannon of Egg Harbor Township was attending the seafood festival for the first time although her daughter Ann Idzinski and her husband have attended for the last three years.
“There’s lots of good food choices and lots of beer,” said Gannon who said she enjoyed a plate of u-peel shrimp.
Idzinski said she especially enjoyed the lobster roll offered by a food vendor where there were long lines of people waiting patiently for their turn to plop down $20-25 for a soft bun filled with succulent lobster meat.
“I’ve been coming here for the last three years,” she said. “It’s nice and clean and the entertainment is great,” she said. “And the prices are not as bad as I thought they’d be.”
A special part of the seafood festival is the Clam Chowder Tasting Contest held under a series of tents at the front of the park. The contest featured 20 restaurants all vying for bragging rights and a pretty big trophy that was on display at the main tent. The event benefits the FoodBank of New Jersey Southern Branch, which distributes food to those who need it.
Participants offered a $10 donation for the right to taste the chowders, some made with special ingredients, and cast their vote for the best one. The chowder contest will be held again on Sunday with the winners announced at the end of the festival – around 5 p.m.
The Downbeach Seafood Festival was held Sept. 14-15 at Ski Beach in Ventnor.Even the vendors were having fun Saturday afternoon. Vendor Michael Clineman of Brigantine, an artist and avid surfer and scuba diver, was hoping to sell some of his Surfboard Taxidermy creations.
Clineman takes old broken and no longer repairable surfboards and turns them into imaginative artworks. He said his favorite work on display was one fashioned into a British flag octopus.
He said he decided to upcycle discarded surfboards in artwork to keep the polystyrene and resin they are made of out of the landfill.
“It’s a great way to recycle and help the environment,” he said.
His talents breathe new life into surfboards that are too old and ragged to be of any use, he said.
There’s lots to see and do at the Downbeach Seafood Festival, which continues on Sunday at Ski Beach in Ventnor.
There are 25 regional restaurants and food trucks offering the bounty of the sea, and many other vendors offering handcrafted items, jewelry and more.
Entry fee is $15 at the gate. Free parking is available at the lot at 4800 Wellington Ave. with complimentary Jitney service to and from the festival.
For more information, check out www.downbeachseafoodfest.com.
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