2022 Ocracoke Fig Festival to host Chef Ricky Moore

The Ocracoke community will celebrate the summer’s fig bounty with special guest Ricky Moore. Chef Ricky Moore – the self-professed evangelist of North Carolina seafood – is the owner of the popular Saltbox Seafood Joint restaurants in Durham, North Carolina – praised by Saveur as “a tiny but mighty seafood shack.”

Taking inspiration from the famous wet markets in Singapore, Moore focuses purely on the food inspired by his native Carolina coast, and its traditional roadside fish shacks and camps. Moore opened the original Saltbox Seafood Joint in Durham, NC in 2012, and a second location, also in Durham, in 2017. Accolades in Garden & Gun, Our State, and Travel + Leisure followed, and in 2019, Moore debuted the Saltbox Seafood Joint Cookbook, with 60 recipes celebrating his coastal culinary heritage.

In 2020, as one of the region’s most admired chefs, Moore received a nomination from the James Beard Foundation for “Best Chef” in the Southeast and Discover awarded Saltbox Seafood Joint $25,000 as part of its #EatItForward campaign for black-owned restaurateurs.

Ricky Moore was born and raised in New Bern, NC, where catching and eating fresh fish and shellfish is a way of life. He draws inspiration from his Eastern North Carolina culinary background, as well as from culinary experiences across the globe. Moore was introduced to German cooking at a young age as a “Military Brat,” growing up in Germany, and from his German Mother-in-law, and he served as a cook in the US Army for a decade before attending and graduating from the esteemed Culinary Institute of America.

The 9th annual Fig Festival will take place at the Berkley Barn and on the grounds of the Ocracoke Preservation Society Museum on August 4-6, 2022.

The festival features live music and storytelling, traditional Ocracoke square dancing, children’s crafts, talks by local fig experts, and vendor booths offering fig preserves, fig cakes, fig trees, local cookbooks, and other fig-tastic items. The weekend’s finale will be a dance with the Ocracoke Rockers.

Chef Ricky Moore will be the Fig Festival’s special guest at the Savory Side of Figs Dinner on Thursday evening. This popular event features savory fig dishes from local chefs; this year’s focus will be pairing figs with fresh local seafood, cooked on-site by Chef Ricky! Tickets for this evening will go on sale on July 1, 2022.

Other events with Chef Ricky include a book signing on Friday afternoon and a public Q & A on Saturday. Chef Ricky will also serve as a guest judge at the Fig Cake Bake-Off, the showpiece of the Fig Festival on Saturday at noon. All are welcome to submit a cake in one or all categories, Traditional, Innovative, Youth (15 and younger), or the special category for 2022: Fishy Figs – any dish that combines figs with local seafood. The Traditional category is limited to the old-fashioned recipe, available in local cookbooks. Even using the same recipe, there are subtle differences: the type of fig preserves used, the delicate balance of spices, or the cook’s magic touch. Innovative entries must be desserts; anything goes in the Youth category as long as there are figs.

During the week of the Fig Festival, island restaurants and eateries will offer fig-infused menu items both savory and sweet. Local shops will stock this year’s selection of fig preserves, so you can take some Ocracoke sweetness home with you. The Ocracoke Fig Festival is sponsored by the Ocracoke Preservation Society. For more information, contact Sundae Horn (252-921-0283), Andrea Powers (252-928-7375), or visit www.ocracokepreseervation.org. The Ocracoke Preservation Society is a 501c-3 non-profit, community-based organization dedicated to the preservation of Ocracoke Island’s rich historical and cultural heritage.