Headed to the Pensacola Seafood Festival? You need to try these 4 dishes
Pensacola's Seafood Festival has a reputation for merging the world of fried fair foods with chef-driven, locally sourced cuisine. Where else can you find a deep-fried Oreo and grilled salmon within steps of one another?
This year, we scoured all the festival's menus far and wide to find the standouts with some options that you don't have a be a fresh fish lover to enjoy. Here's what made our top four.
The Pensacola Seafood Festival takes place in Seville Square, located at 301 S. Alcaniz St., during the last weekend of September. On Saturday, the festival will be held from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Sunday the festival will kick off at 11 a.m. and wrap up at 5 p.m.
Andouille-crusted grouper
Cajun andouille sausage and fresh catch flounder don't typically collide, but Fisherman's Corner brought them together and brought out their best in this Seafood Festival special. You can still get your deep-fried fair fix with this dish, but when you cut in you get a perfectly tender, flaky center. The stars of this dish are the andouille sausage and the house-made, gravy-like sauce smothered over-top. This dish feels like Southern-comfort food and will be a dish even seafood haters can get behind.
"All of the andouille was cut and ground this morning," said Fisherman's Corner Manager Joshua Burriss. "Hand-breaded to order, everything is done that way, even in the restaurant ... I think the most unique thing is the andouille crust itself. A lot of people are not familiar with what Andouille is in the first place, and sausage tends to scare them because they might think it's spicy, but blended with the Panko and the light flavor of the flounder is quite excellent."
Hot sauce dusted cotton candy
You know Pensacola's Whim Cotton Candy, a Palafox Market regular, is close by when the bubbles float past you from their kiosk. This husband-wife duo of Ryan Seeley and Michaela Rodriguez has done the mind-blowing feat of creating over 75 unique flavors of cotton candy, with one unexpected special for Seafood Festival weekend as a collab with Pensacola's The Sealey Sauce Company. Drumroll please ... "Spicy Peachy Mango Tango."
The fluffy cloud of sweet mango peach cotton candy is dusted with a hot sauce powder, giving it the perfect punch of heat. Instead of hurting your mouth after, it will have you licking your lips. Plus, who doesn't want to feel like a little kid eating it off the cone?
"I'll say (it's) a very peach and mango-forward cotton candy, which is a favorite combination of ours, and then Mango Habenero is going to be the powdered hot sauce that's on top. So, it's honestly a match made in Heaven," Seeley said. "Little spicy, little sweet, very savory, very tasty."
Rodriguez added, "A perfect combination of sweet and heat."
Your full guide to the fest: Pensacola Seafood Festival 2023: From restaurant rosters to parking - find the info here.
French-Asian fusion teriyaki mussels
Drift Modern Coastal's newest executive chef Andrew Suthers is bringing the heat to Seafood Festival - literally- by whipping up a teriyaki mussel special over an open flame. This dish takes inspiration from his background working for a French chef in Minneapolis and the dish will be landing on Drift's permanent menu mid-October. Not only is it visually entertaining to look on as Suthers pulls the mussels out of the cooler and prepares them in front of you from start-to-finish, but its also an aromatic experience you catch whiffs of the brown ale beer he pumps into the pan, tossed with garlic, shallots, ginger, lemongrass, purple basil, ponzu sauce, teriyaki glaze and heavy cream. You will want to drink the sauce pooled up in the bottom of the bowl that the mussels are served in.
"I thought it would be fun to do some live cooking, interacting with people, talking about the restaurant," Suthers said. "It has been kind of fun teaching people about that process, and I've been telling people about how to store muscles properly, how to care for them, how to pick out and know which ones you don't want to serve. A little educational purpose."
Prime rib on a hoagie
If there is one sandwich that will lure you to the Seafood Festival without even liking seafood – it will be this prime rib hoagie Seafood Festival special from Pensacola's Fin & Fork. Prime rib is typically thought of as a sit-down, steakhouse, special occasion meal. But Fin & Fork has converted into handheld, elevated street food.
Nestled into a soft hoagie roll, the juicy prime rib has been thinly sliced and topped with a dressed arugula, parmesan and fresh red onion. The prime rib is slow roasted, and it shows, with its tender texture and rich flavor.
"I think what stands out about it is the way that we cook our prime rib," Fin & Fork Manager Kamila Shipp said. "So, it's a really juicy, tender meat, then we shave it on a meat slicer. It's really thin and packed full of flavor. Then the mustard sauce that the arugula is tossed in, that's something we've been doing for a while and it's simple. It's just grain mustard with parmesan cheese, but those simple flavors with a really good, slow-roasted meat: that is what I really think makes it stand out."
Visit the Pensacola Seafood Festival website for more information.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola Seafood Festival 2023: Our top 4 must-try food picks
