Red Clay Brewing Company and The Depot are teaming up once again to present the second annual Oyster Fest to benefit the Alabama Coastal Foundation.
The event will feature craft beers and oyster dishes for guests to sample while listening to live music. After moving the event to a larger location, organizers expect the event to be bigger and better than the previous event.
“We were expecting 50 [people], we ended up with about 200,” said Josh Corbin, co-founder of Red Clay Brewing. “Now we’re close to passing our 200 mark, and we still have a few weeks to go before the event.”
The idea for this event came when Corbin and his partner and co-founder of Red Clay, Kerry McGinnis, were enjoying a meal of oysters and other seafood at The Depot. They wanted to create an event that matched their love of The Depot’s seafood with their passion for brewing.
They also wanted to give back. They both agreed the best organization to benefit with their seafood event was the Alabama Coastal Foundation, which works to improve and protect Alabama’s coast environment.
“We were thinking why not partner with a restaurant that we love to eat at that sort of utilizes the water and the seafood, oysters, things like that to create an event that we can raise some funds for the Alabama Coastal Foundation,” Corbin said.
Proceeds from the event will go to the foundation. They will also take the used oyster shells from the half-shell oysters to place in their oyster shell recycling program.
“They give the shells to us, and we try to get them back into the Alabama waters,” said Alabama Coastal Foundation Executive Director Mike Berte. “The outside of an oyster shell is the favorite place for a new oyster to latch onto. It helps to improve our environment and, for our oyster reefs, provide a habitat.”
The Depot’s Executive Chef Scott Simpson said he hopes to not only feature good food and beer, but also raise awareness of the difficulties the Alabama Gulf Coast faces and how to help.
Simpson has created the menu for this year’s event which will include some favorites from last year’s event such as Oysters Rockefeller and Michelada Oyster Shooters.
The menu also features several new dishes and entrées that Simpson hasn’t prepared since last year’s event. He said he has made some modifications to dishes so they can be more easily prepared since Simpson and his team from The Depot will be preparing the food in the kitchen at Red Clay.
“Knowing that audience, we had the fun of making a menu that is specialized and featuring these great oyster products in a number of different ways that we don’t always have the opportunity to do in the restaurant, certainly not in one night,” Simpson said.
Tickets are still on sale for the event, which will take place Tuesday, Sept. 24, from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at Red Clay Brewing in Opelika, Alabama.
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Elizabeth, senior in journalism and political science, is the community editor for The Plainsman
