RALEIGH \u2014 The BugFest Critter Cook-off, the official start to BugFest, will be held on Friday, September 18 at 11 a.m. in the main building of the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in the N.C. Treasures Hall (first floor.) The competition pits two local chefs against each other \u201cIron-Chef\u201d style to vie for the chance at being named \u201cBugFest Critter Cook-off Champ!\u201d The contenders this year are Sam Bradford from Plates Kitchen and Matt Lowery from Mura North Hills.<\/p>\n
Both chefs have 50 minutes to prepare an appetizer, entr\u00e9e and dessert using mealworms, superworms (both a species of darkling beetle larvae), crickets and the mystery ingredient this year\u2014cicadas\u2014which is also the theme arthropod for this year\u2019s BugFest on Saturday, September 19 from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Admission is free.<\/p>\n
Each dish will be judged on originality, taste and presentation by a celebrity panel of judges. This year\u2019s panel consists of Debra Morgan, WRAL-TV, Sean Maroney, WNCN-TV, Karen Clark, Foxy 107\/104 and Zack Lemman, Chief Entomologist, Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium, New Orleans. The chef whose creative concoctions stimulate the judges’ taste buds the most will be bestowed with the title of BugFest Critter Cook-off Champion 2015!<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s preview will last about an hour, with opportunities for the media to interview the guest chefs and celebrity judges. Parking is available in the visitor parking lot at the corner of Jones and Wilmington streets. Call 919.707.9837 for more information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2878,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2871"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}