---

Asbury Park’s sixth annual Oysterfest hit a milestone this year, attracting over 20,000 people throughout the course of the three-day food and music festival.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Jackie Pappas, executive director of the Asbury Park Chamber of Commerce. “All three days were up and over our normal average.”

Last year’s total attendance of 9,996 was less than half of this year’s, which by the chamber’s final count was 21,101, she said. The number far surpassed all five of the previous Oysterfest attendance counts.

During the 2012 festival, “half of Saturday was lost to a big storm,” said Pappas.

Over 85 food and craft vendors had a presence at the 2013 festival, including local bar The Anchor’s Bend and Brando’s Restaurant.

In addition, Chef David Syminiuk of Asbury Park’s downtown restaurant Fish Urban Dining gave a cooking demonstration on Saturday. His recipes for malt mignonette and cucumber relish can now be found on the Fish website.

The Food Network’s “Extreme Chef” champion Terry French and musician Eddie Berner of the British new-wave group “A Flock of Seagulls” also drew crowds as they contributed to the live cooking demonstrations.

Along with a plethora of food and craft vendors and favorable weather, this year’s relocation of the festival to the carousel lot proved to be a big success for event organizers.

“The location was amazing,” said Mike Hollemans, logistics director for The Passion Group, co-sponsors of the festival along with the chamber and waterfront redeveloper iStar Residential. “I want to start securing this location for next year starting next week.”

The lot’s close proximity to both the downtown and the beachfront was part of what drew Hollemans to choose the location in the first place, he said.

“It’s already paved and striped, it’s one the water, it’s beautifully landscaped – and you can see the beautiful historic carousel building,” he said.

“By far, we heard the best feedback on this location so far,” said Pappas. “This space is where the downtown meets the waterfront and it’s incredibly important to showcase Asbury Park as open and doing well.”

Representatives from iStar Residential’s Asbury Park Waterfront campaign were on-hand to assist with whatever was asked of them, including greeting the public, offering directions and even assisting festival patrons with rides between the lot and the downtown, according to Hollemans.

The “collective teamwork between The Passion Group, the chamber and iStar Residential was awesome,” Hollemans said. “They helped to ensure the consumers had a great experience.”

“Eight out of 10 people said it was their first time at Oysterfest,” said Pappas, who was most pleased to see members from all over the Asbury community attend the festival.

“It was really nice to see most of the city council over the course of the 3 days,” she said. “I felt this year, more than ever before, that the whole community was represented.”

[Photos of the 2013 Asbury Park Oysterfest were provided by The Passion Group.]

————————————————————

Follow the Asbury Park Sun on Facebook and Twitter.

---