The Bright Star restaurant is hosting its first Seafood Fest later this month, featuring guest chef Chris Sherrill of the Flora-Bama Yacht Club in Perdido Key.
Sherrill will prepare a four-course wine dinner at the Bright Star on Wed., Oct. 29, and he will serve an a la carte menu on Thur., Oct. 30.
Bright Star general manager Andreas Anastassakis met Sherrill on a deep-sea fishing trip to Gulf Shores this summer, and after they got to talking, Sherrill said he was a big fan of the 107-year-old Bessemer restaurant.
“He said, ‘That’s my mother-in-law’s favorite restaurant; when we used to live in Birmingham, we used to eat there every Sunday,'” Anastassakis recalls their conversation. “Then he said, ‘I’d love to come and cook and be a guest chef at the Bright Star one day.'”
After exchanging a few text messages, Anastassakis and Sherrill put the Bright Star Seafood Fest together.
“He has a great knowledge for Alabama’s Gulf seafood,” Anastassakis says. “I think he’ll bring some of that Gulf flair up to the Bright Star. It’s a real exciting menu.”
An Alabama native, Sherrill was born and raised in Eufaula, where his interest in cooking was kindled on camping trips with the Boy Scouts. After winning a national high school contest for his recipe for fruit-stuffed quail with orange-cranberry sauce, he earned a culinary scholarship to Johnson & Wales University in Charleston, S.C.
In 2012, Sherrill was part of a delegation of eight Gulf Coast chefs who cooked for U.S. athletes and their families during the Summer Olympics in London.
Sherrill is the executive chef and co-owner of the Flora-Bama Yacht Club, an open-air waterfront restaurant located across the street from the legendary Flora-Bama Lounge & Oyster Bar.
The Bright Star is at 304 19th St. North in Bessemer, and the website is www.thebrightstar.com.
To read the entire article and see the menus, go to: http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2014/10/flora-bama_yacht_club_chef_wil.html