Two businesses from Columbia and one from Washington County will be featured in a Sept. 13 Taste of Edenton Event.

“The event is a fundraiser for the Barker House here,” said Gregg Nathan, Executive Director of the Edenton Historical Commission. Nathan has been organizing the event for about three years.

Nathan mentioned the Old Salt Oyster Bar and Vineyards on the Scuppernong in Columbia and the Main Street Eatery in Creswell as the three area businesses.

Nathan mentioned that the state-organized Edenton Historical Commission manages the Barker House. The Commission does not get any funding from the State or the County.

“We rely on events and different programs that we have to raise money to keep up the Barker House and keep it open to the public,” said Nathan.

The Taste of Edenton event will be entering its fifth year. The idea behind it was to get local businesses together and help them promote themselves while at the same time making it a fundraiser for the Barker House.

Nathan said that the Commission tries to include restaurants and food establishments in the region.

“Last year we did invite a restaurant in Columbia, but they did not end up showing up. The Garden Spot in Plymouth has participated before. We are really happy to have Columbia and Creswell represented this year,” he explained.

Each restaurant is asked to provide up to 600 tastes of something from their menu.

“The taste is basically like a little cup that gives people an idea of what the restaurant is doing and what their menu is like,” said Nathan.

People are free to go around from table to table and they can get a sample from the sixteen restaurants and caterers represented.

This year will have a fun twist as Big Daddy Wilson, a blues man with roots in Germany, asked to perform at the Taste of Edenton.

Wilson’s online biography explains that he was born in Edenton, but moved away when he grew up.

“I met the blues in Germany when I went for the first time to a real blues concert. In Edenton we used to listen to gospel and to the country music played at the local radio station. I didn’t know what
the blues was before”, Wilson says. “It was in Germany where I found a part of me that was missing for so long, the blues.”

Wilson performs with a trio and will play at the Durham Blues Festival the week before the Taste of Edenton event.

Nathan mentioned the event itself is also a collective effort.

“What we do is we have a volunteer that comes in as the chairman of the event. She brings in other volunteers to help with different facets of it. Getting the restaurants, and organizing the tent layout are just some of the things needed to bring the event together,” said Nathan.

Nathan estimated that fifteen to twenty volunteers help out at the event.

“Plus all of the restaurants are all volunteering their time,” he said.

Usually five to six hundred people attend the event. The first year had an estimated two hundred and fifty to three hundred people. The last few years have had around five hundred people in attendance.

For further coverage of this event read future editions of The Scuppernong Reminder.