Fall for Foodies

As much as I welcome the advent of fall, I’m not in as much of a rush this year, mainly because the summer weather has been so much to my liking. But it’s still nice to look ahead to sunny days and cool nights, because fall is when things really heat up for us here in Cape May at the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts & Humanities (MAC).
Many of my early years as a South Jersey resident followed the more typical resort calendar of lots to do in the summer months, less in spring and fall and nothing November through April. So I had to make some adjustments when I joined MAC more than a decade ago, because here we flip the calendar pages around somewhat. While we still offer plenty to do in the summer, fall is when we begin to ramp up.
We start with the annual Food & Wine Celebration, Sept. 13-21, when we find a different sort of visitor coming to Cape May, the foodies and wine aficionados. For them, we beef up our menu of offerings. Instead of our trolleys just bopping around the Historic District, we load them up and deliver the riders to a variety of prime Cape May restaurants on Chefs’ Dine-Arounds or out to Cape May Point’s Red Store for the new Farm to Table, where you’ll get to visit Fincas del Mar, their farm which provides lots of ingredients for a unique dining experience.
Kicking off the celebration and new this year is the Cape May Lobster Bake at Hawk Haven Vineyard on Sept. 13. You can’t ask for a prettier place to spend an early fall afternoon, complete with live music, and lobster, too? Sign me up!
Of course, much as I love the savory side of our menu, I can’t resist the sweet, and also new this year is an event near and dear to my heart, the Chocolate Lover’s Feast. The nice folks at the Blue Rose Inn stepped up to the plate, so to speak, to help us reinvent our popular Chocolate Fantasy Buffet of years ago, so I can’t wait for Sept. 20 to roll around to dip into that chocolate.
Another new event that I’m looking forward to experiencing hands-on is Grape Picking at Natali Vineyards Sept. 16. I just hope I’m not going to be held to a quota in order to enjoy the delicious lunch the owners promise in return for helping to bring in the harvest.
That lovable ball of energy Chef Joseph Poon returns, slicing and dicing for a special lunch and learn demonstration of his unique talents Sept. 14 here at the Carriage House Café & Tearoom at the Physick Estate.
Wrapping things up Sept. 21, ‘A Taste of Cape May’ returns for its second year in the new Convention Hall with plenty of food and wine tastings, plus vendors with food and drink-related merchandise.
That’s just the highlights (or at least my favorite things), so toss your flip-flops and beach umbrella in the closet and tickle your grown-up taste buds with us this September.
This is way better than Happy Meals for grown-ups. Check it out at www.capemaymac.org.
Barraclough is director of publications and website at MAC.