Call it a New England foodie’s paradise, a scavenger hunt for the perfect comfort food, or a quest for something fishy that sticks to your ribs — even in popsicle weather. The 97.5 WOKQ Chowder Festival at Prescott Park in Portsmouth on Saturday, in its 37th year, was a gastronome’s soup-a-palooza of chowders made from the usual suspects — clams, assorted fish and shellfish, potatoes, celery and onions plus a couple of breakthrough ingredients, including bacon, sausage and beef.
A question circled the crowd of roughly 1,100 registered taste testers, most from New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine, some from as far away as Philadelphia, even Colorado. Is the sky the limit when it comes to chowder ingredients — or are the timeless favorites still king? Here at the chowder epicenter, three generations of the Noucas family of Portsmouth came to sample seafood chowder from seven coastal restaurants. New England clam chowder “is history.
It’s been here forever,” said Mary Noucas, who comes to the festival every year. It’s the unofficial start of summer for chowder fans. Back in the early days of Strawbery Banke — Portsmouth’s first Colonial settlement, now a museum — “You had strawberries.
But you could also get fish and make chowder,” said Noucas’s husband, Jim. If he could add a special ingredient today, what would it be? “Feta cheese,” he said. “I’m Greek.
” Hot chowder is not what you automatically reach for on a warm, sunny day, but that.