The field behind Bay Village fills the same way every October. Folding tables. A stage at one end. A line that snakes past the parking lot toward Taylor Avenue, everyone holding a cup and waiting for a spoonful of red or white. If you've lived in Beach Haven for more than a season, you've probably stood in that line without giving much thought to who put it there.
That's worth a second look this year, because the answer changed in 2024, and most of what makes the weekend work now runs on a different engine than it did before.
Thirty-four years, then a step back
For 34 years, the event known as Chowderfest belonged to the Southern Ocean County Chamber of Commerce. It started as a single day in 1989 and grew into a two-day weekend that pulled competing restaurants from across the state, and at its peak drew as many as 19 kitchens into the red and white categories, including one entrant from Ireland. The chamber ran it entirely on volunteers, funneled proceeds into scholarships at Southern Regional, Barnegat, and Pinelands high schools, and used the money to keep a year-round visitor center staffed for the whole island and mainland at no cost to any of the towns.
Then, in 2024, the county chamber stepped aside. The borough of Beach Haven fielded a new application for the same October weekend and the same location, this time from the Beach Haven Chamber of Commerce and a nonprofit called the Hunger Foundation of Southern Ocean County. Jeremy DeFilippis, the foundation's treasurer and CEO of the apparel brand Jetty, put it plainly at the time.
"It's LBI's largest, longest-running event and it has always done what the founders intended it to do, lengthen the fall season and spark the local economy, but it's time to give it a facelift as we come out of a very tough few years."
Matt Freed, president of the Beach Haven Chamber, described the moment as one where the alternative was watching the weekend disappear altogether.
Same chowder, a narrower owner
What replaced the county-wide Chowderfest isn't a rebrand of the same organization. It's a smaller, more local one. The Beach Haven Chamber of Commerce, a volunteer group founded in 2017 that also runs the borough's Art Walk and Fourth of July fireworks, now organizes the event directly, with the Hunger Foundation of Southern Ocean County as its charity partner. The county chamber that built the tradition over three decades is no longer part of it.
The proceeds model shifted along with the ownership. Where the old Chowderfest spread its funding across scholarships, a visitor center, and regional tourism campaigns, the current Beach Haven Chowder Cook-Off sends its money in one direction: straight to food banks. In its first year back, the event donated at least $100,000 to ten local food banks, with each participating restaurant also receiving a share of the proceeds. Organizers describe the current structure as returning 100 percent of proceeds to local causes.
The turnout in that first year outran expectations. Early estimates ahead of the event put attendance at around 6,000 across the weekend. What actually showed up was closer to 7,500 people at the Sunday cook-off alone, with a comparable crowd at Saturday's merchant mart the day before. A tradition that organizers worried might not survive the transition ended up drawing more people than the county chamber's own projections.
Who's cooked it, year over year
This year's cook-off returns to the same ground behind Bay Village on October 3 and 4. The Chamber had not yet published a full 2026 competitor list as of this writing, but the two years since the changeover show a pattern worth knowing before you start picking favorites.
In 2024, the first year under the new organizers, the white category ran Country Kettle Chowda, Mud City Crab House, Delaware Avenue Oyster House, and The Chicken Or The Egg, with Joe Pop's Shore Bar and Restaurant competing for the first time. The red category featured La Bamba Mexican Restaurant, Buckalew's Restaurant & Tavern, Wally's, Panzone's Pizza, and Lefty's Tavern. Wally's, out of Surf City, took the red title that year, and Country Kettle Chowda won white.
In 2025, the red field held close to the same names, Buckalew's, La Bamba, Lefty's Tavern, and Panzone's, with Lighthouse Restaurant & Grill joining the lineup. The white category brought in three newcomers, Dolce Liberta, Element Restaurant & Bar, and Isola Italian Trattoria, alongside holdovers Country Kettle Chowda, Mud City Crab House, and The Chicken Or The Egg. Lefty's Tavern won red that year, and Country Kettle Chowda repeated as white champion, its second straight win since the event changed hands.
That's a smaller field than the county event's 19-restaurant peak, but a more consistent one. Country Kettle Chowda has taken white honors in both years since the changeover. Red has gone to a different kitchen each time. Whichever restaurants show up on this year's list, that back-and-forth is part of what makes the vote worth showing up for.
The weekend, laid out
Here's what the two days actually look like this year, based on the event's own listing:
- Saturday, October 3: Merchant Mart, free admission, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., roughly 80 to 100 vendors plus food and drink from local businesses
- Sunday, October 4: Chowder Cook-Off, ticketed, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., unlimited tasting across red and white categories
- Tickets: $35 in advance, $40 at the gate, free for children 10 and under
- Location: Taylor Avenue, behind Bay Village
- Parking: free street parking around the borough, plus a paid fundraiser lot at Beach Haven Elementary School
Payment on the beverage tents runs cashless, so bring a card or a phone if you're planning to grab a beer or seltzer between tastings.
Bay Village was already there
The venue itself has its own backstory, and it's one most people walking through it never hear. Bay Village opened in 1966 when local entrepreneur John Maschal built a single storefront, Country Kettle Fudge, across from Schooner's Wharf. Within a year, he'd added a second building next to the old sailing ship Lucy Evelyn and started filling it with shops designed to look like a 19th-century waterfront village, Windmill Belgian Waffles, a nickelodeon-style ice cream parlor, Crust & Crumb Bakery. Today the complex holds more than 20 shops and eateries, and the fudge counter Maschal opened sixty years ago is still there.
That history matters for one reason. The chowder weekend's new organizers didn't invent a location. They inherited a spot that was already a fixture of Beach Haven's commercial identity long before either chamber got involved, which may be part of why the borough was willing to hand the permit to a hyper-local group instead of letting the tradition lapse entirely.
What actually changed
None of this changes what the weekend feels like from the folding chairs. There's still a merchant mart, still a ticketed tasting, still a stage and a vote for red and white champions. But the institution behind it is fundamentally different than it was two years ago. It's smaller in scope, countywide marketing dollars and cross-district scholarships gave way to a straight line from ticket sales to food banks. It's more concentrated in ownership, one borough chamber and one hunger relief nonprofit instead of a county association with three decades of infrastructure behind it. And its survival, at least so far, has depended on a handful of volunteers deciding the alternative wasn't acceptable.
If you've been going every October assuming it's the same event it always was, it isn't, not in any way that matters for who benefits from your ticket. The chowder's the same. The kitchens are mostly the same. The people who make it happen, and where your $35 actually goes, changed in ways worth knowing before you show up behind Bay Village this year.
For details on tickets, participating restaurants, and parking, the official Chowder Cook-Off site keeps its listings current through the weekend.
Long Beach Island's calendar is full of moments like this, small institutional shifts that reshape how a familiar weekend actually works. If you're weighing what else is changing in the neighborhoods around Beach Haven, or thinking about where you'd want to be for the next one, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Zack Shore, REALTORS® has been paying attention to this stretch of coastline since 1925. Find Your Dream Home.
