January/February 2006

Pizza, Chocolate and Eel

Winner finds an interesting combination to make the signature chefs auction a success.

By Patrick Evans-Hylton

Jerry Weihbrecht is like many chefs—he has a secret food vice.

Open the menu at Weihbrecht’s tiny, Virginia Beach oceanfront eatery, Zoe’s, and you will find gourmet delights like fresh catch beautifully prepared with an Asian twist or a thick porterhouse steak grilled to perfection in the classic style.

But you won’t find Weihbrecht’s favorite food.

“I’m a pizza freak,” he says. “I will do pizza like there is no tomorrow.”

Perhaps it’s the Italian-American upbringing in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. that draws the chef to the tomato sauce-and-cheese-laden flatbread. Weihbrecht, 31, still looks forward to the family’s homemade ravioli dinner held each December. “We do a big Christmas,” he says. “Aunts and uncles and my grandmother; we cook a giant Italian feast. Even when we [he and his partner, Saree Mulhern] traveled, we had them get out dry ice and ship some of it to Hawaii and Denver.”

But the spread doesn’t stop with ravioli: there is also Italian sausage, meatballs, chicken braised in tomato sauce and braciole. “I remember this from before I could even walk,” says Weihbrecht.

In his family, food means love, which is probably one reason he is such an outstanding chef on his own. Outstanding enough to win the Dish of Hampton Roads at the 2005 Sysco Hampton Roads & March of Dimes Signature Chefs Auction held in October at The Founders Inn in Virginia Beach.

The Dish of Hampton Roads, selected by a panel of culinary experts at the Signature Chefs event each year, is a dish that captures the unique regional flavor of Hampton Roads through ingredients, preparation and/or imagination.

Weihbrecht won with his entry of Citrus Unagi Cones with Chocolate Covered Sedley Virginia Oyster Mushrooms. The offering was three delicate cones, each opening dipped in an array of pastel-hued white chocolate, overflowing with citrus-infused unagi (eel) and garnished with earthy, flavorful mushrooms from Western Hampton Roads playfully dipped in chocolate.

“I like to be bold and experimental,” says Weihbrecht, who began playing off this year’s Signature Chefs theme of “Under the Big Top.”

For the rest of this story, see the January/February 2006 issue of Hampton Roads Magazine, currently available on newsstands.