ASPA Chef Advocate Wins Annual Seafood Competition

The new King of Mississippi Seafood was crowned recently during the eighth annual Mississippi Seafood Cookoff, sponsored by the MS Department of Marine Resources. The American Shrimp Processors Association Chef Advocate, Chef David Dickensauge of Corks and Cleavers restaurant, located in Gulfport, Mississippi, and Bay St. Louis won the competition.

Chef David’s unique Mississippi Seafood Pho dish won the night. “The inspiration behind the dish was for me to pay tribute to the Coast’s Vietnamese community,” Chef David says. This seafood pho included large, head-on shrimp, jumbo lump crabmeat, and crawfish. Chef David also made his own kimchi, fish sauce and hoisin sauce.

Chef David has over 23 years of experience in creating dishes that incorporate local, sustainable seafood and produce and credits chefs that have helped in teaching him the right way to use local seafood.

“Here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, we have an abundance of local seafood and products that we should pull from,” Chef David says.  “It is my job as a chef, and my integrity that will only allow me to use products that I know where they come from.”

Twelve chefs from around the state competed in the annual competition. Chef David will now represent Mississippi in the Great American Seafood Cookoff in New Orleans, and at the World Food Championships in Orange Beach, Alabama, in November.