Last night was our seventh annual Savor the Avenue in Delray Beach —and it was spectacular—1,200 people at a five-block long dining table sampling food from Delray’s best restaurants. The weather was cool and spring-like and sparkling, and the tables were decorated to the nines. There was music, there was wine, there were new friends and old friends—all sharing a dinner that drifted into twilight, then that deep blue darkness that always comes up at the beach.
Most people didn’t know that $3 of each reservation was donated to Delray’s Campaign for Grade Level Reading, to assist in funding books and tutoring programs. (More 45 percent of the children in Delray Beach do not read on a grade level in third grade.) Maybe they didn’t know how hard all the people worked behind the scenes, the DDA stars, the Delray magazine staff, all the city workers. Not to mention the chefs, who outdid themselves. I got to have dinner at 50 Ocean, which went all out decorating its tables, then fed us like we were the sultans of Brunei—lobster, a steaming seafood pot of clams and mussels and crab legs and shrimp, a shrimp pot pie, a “truffle garden” for dessert. Chef Blake Malatesta came out to say hello afterward (he got hearty applause) and when we told him he had gone overboard, he said he wouldn’t have considered doing anything less.
That’s the spirit of this event. You want to put the world’s longest dining table down the center of Atlantic Avenue? With 19 different restaurants? 1,200 diners? Hand-crafted cocktails? No problem. You want to have a champagne toast from the top of a cherry picker? Check. You want music and fine wines and gourmet dining? Easy.
That’s what makes Delray a great town. It doesn’t know it can’t do these things; it just does them.
Thanks to all for another great event.
