Peat & Pearls

Peat & Pearls, a new regional supper club with chapters in eight cities across the South, is hosting two farm-to-table dinners this fall in Northwest Arkansas. The first will be at Conifer, chef Matthew Cooper’s new restaurant in Bentonville on September 12. The second will be with chef Tyler Scott Rogers of Springdale’s Hail Fellow Well Met.

Peat & Pearls is founded by T.S. Strickland, a former journalist from the Florida Gulf Coast who spent time working in Carroll County before moving back to the Gulf Coast. Strickland wrote a lot about the ecological fallout from the BP oil spill and the subsequent boom in the Gulf’s oyster aquaculture industry.

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“I got excited about telling those stories because it was a rare hopeful narrative in an otherwise oblique landscape because oyster farming offered not only the promise of helping to restore battered ecosystems but also to give the next generation of seafood workers a reason to stay close to the water and those traditions.”

That’s how he got into the event planning business, he said.

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“It came out of a desire to connect more of my oyster farming friends with more chefs because it seemed like that was the best way to help them.”

What started in 2017 with a single celebration of oysters and food culture and has spread to eight cities, with more than 20 events planned for the fall.

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“A narrative sensibility, a focus on storytelling and relationship building and really a desire to reconnect people with the sources of their sustenance is at the heart of what we do,” Strickland said.

The fall series will highlight the southern oyster as well as southern oyster farmers. The idea is to continue to pop up seasonally and rotate the theme from season to season moving into the winter and on into spring, Strickland said.

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“This kind of experience that we’re trying to create — it’s one thing to go to a restaurant that has sort of a farm to table ethos and you can see the name of the farms on the menu, but the format is kind of constraining,” Strickland said. “For chefs who care about that kind of storytelling there’s only so much you can do in the course of regular dinner service. Our hope is to create an opportunity for some more sustained storytelling and our events really focus on the storytelling piece and relationship building.”

You can see the full fall lineup at Peat & Pearl’s website. More information about tickets and memberships can be found there as well. Members get early access to the sales period for all of the events. Members also get a 20% discount off of standard ticket prices and VIP treatment at our larger quarterly events.  Memberships ranges between $55-$75 a year. Tickets range between $125-175. Ticket sales for chef Matthew Cooper’s dinner start on August 29 for non members. Tickets for Tyler Scott Roger’s dinner go on sale for non members on Oct. 24.

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