and help feed hungry children

Whispers filled the room at the 100 Club in Portsmouth when it was announced that general admission tickets for this year’s Taste of the Nation event had already sold out by June 4.

The chefs at the meeting, many wearing white jackets and checkered pants, represented some of the nearly 80 local restaurants, brewers, wine distributors and other purveyors of fine food and drink that will gather at Strawbery Banke Museum for the annual event on Wednesday, June 18.

The general admission tickets that went on sale on May 5 for $75 sold out, but there were about 50 VIP tickets left as of last week. These include early admittance, a champagne reception and special parking privileges for $150. Tickets are available at www.strength.org/portsmouth.

The entire ticket price goes to fighting hunger and poverty by giving directly to anti-hunger organizations and advocacy groups, thanks to national and local sponsorship.

Share Our Strength Seacoast, an all-volunteer hunger-relief group, joins the area’s finest restaurants as they serve samples from their menus under big white tents by the museum gardens. The gala will also include a silent auction and live music from Boston’s Soul City, a 10-piece R&B dance band. Share Our Strength has hosted the event for the past 13 years and has raised more than $600,000 for charity.

The event now sells out consistently. This year, 750 tickets went on sale—100 more than were available last year. More vendors were invited to participate to balance the ratio. 

The local and state hunger relief agencies receiving this year’s proceeds are Footprints Food Pantry, Seacoast Family Food Pantry, Rockingham Community Action’s WIC program, Strafford County Community Action’s Meals on Wheels program, The N.H. Center for a Food Secure Future, The Children’s Alliance of N.H. and Nesenkeag Cooperative Farm.

This year, the Portsmouth Taste of the Nation gala will be more environmentally friendly, according to Jay McSharry, Share Our Strength Seacoast co-chair. The cutlery is sugarcane-based, the plates are 100 percent post-consumer and the trash bags are corn-based and compostable. He said the intention is to have no waste.

The event is the area’s largest culinary benefit. It is part of a national effort every spring, when thousands of the best chefs and restaurants throughout the United States and Canada donate their time, talent and cuisine to help fight hunger. Since 1987, Taste of the Nation events have raised more than $70 million nationwide. The goal of the nation-wide group is to end childhood hunger by 2026.

Nearly one in 10 New Hampshire households lack access to enough food for an active, healthy life, according to Share Our Strength.