Michael's Seafood world winning seafood chowder sold nationally: 'Put us in the hall of fame'
CAROLINA BEACH, N.C. (WTVD) -- If you think great seafood chowder only comes out of New England, think again.
A North Carolina restaurant is beating the competition and are doing what few homegrown restaurants ever will -- going national.
Michael's Seafood first opened in 1998 on Carolina Beach -- a lifelong dream for Michael and Shelly McGowan. It was a small spot in a strip mall with an even smaller kitchen for Michael, who is a classically trained chef. There wasn't even enough space for a fryer.
"We don't have a fryer. I'm going to make the chowder I always wanted to make," Michael McGowan said.
Kurt Vanscoy who is the chief operating officer of Michael's Seafood, says McGowan did exactly that. "He made chowder the way he learned how to make in Rhode Island and he brought it to Carolina Beach, and the rest is history."
Today, the restaurant is no longer in a strip mall, but still making chowder.
"To this day, we still make it in single-hand small batch containers. We just make it in multitudes of hundreds now," Vanscoy said.
Those batches are even earning three world championships.
"So, we are a little restaurant in Carolina Beach going up I-95 to Rhode Island to compete with the big boys in their backyard, and we won. Then, we went back in 2010 and won again. Then we went back in 2011 and we won again. They retired us, put us in the hall of fame, sent us back down 95 and said don't come back," Vanscoy said.
Michael sadly passed away from cystic fibrosis in 2012.
His family not only carries on his dream, they are expanding it. His famous seafood chowder has gone national.
"We got into Harris Teeter, 280 across the country, butchers markets, seafood markets," he said.
It's also carried by Sysco, the world's largest food distributor.
This unprecedented success is not taken for granted.
"It's highly unusual," Vanscoy said. "I say this in jest, but we shouldn't be here. We are a small company that is growing like crazy we just happen to have the best chowder in the world."
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