Nineteen restaurants have been selected to compete this summer for Best Dish in North Carolina honors through a competition sponsored by the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ Goodness Grows in North Carolina program and Our State magazine. The restaurants are divided to compete in either the fine or casual dining categories and each category will be judged by an anonymous three-member panel.

The finalists for this year’s competition are:

Fine Dining:

• 18 Seaboard, Raleigh
• Ashten’s, Southern Pines
• Crippen’s Country Inn & Restaurant, Blowing Rock
• Four Square Restaurant, Durham
• Gallery Restaurant at the Ballantyne Resort, Charlotte
• Il Palio Ristorante at the Siena Hotel, Chapel Hill
• Indigo Marsh, Surf City
• The Table at Crestwood, Blowing Rock
• Weathervane at A Southern Season, Chapel Hill

Casual Dining:

• Bistro Forty-Two, Asheboro
• Catch, Wilmington
• The Flat Rock Back Room, Flat Rock
• Ganache Restaurant & Bakery, Greensboro
• Inn on Church, Hendersonville
• Papa Mojo’s Roadhouse, Durham
• The Purple Onion, Saluda
• Storie Street Grille, Blowing Rock
• WS Prime, Winston-Salem
• Yancey House Restaurant, Yanceyville

The Best Dish in N.C. competition is a statewide contest to determine North Carolina’s top restaurants that use and promote N.C. food products on their menus. The competition aims to recognize and reward the efforts of restaurants and chefs who use N.C. products regularly in their menus and to increase awareness of the quality of local foods, restaurants and chefs.

“I encourage everyone to support state food producers, growers and restaurants by visiting these restaurants and experiencing the best local recipes in North Carolina for themselves,” said Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler. “Taste the difference North Carolina products bring to the table.”

The 20 finalists were chosen based on their proposed menus and their marketing plan for promoting the menu. Chefs were allowed to enter a combination of dishes (for example, an appetizer with an entrée and dessert), but each was judged as a single entry.

Competition finalists are required to feature the dish or combination of courses in their restaurant for at least a four-week period in May, June or July. During this time, the judges will visit each finalist to sample the entries and judge each restaurant on its use of N.C. products, creativity, presentation, taste and promotion. First-, second- and third-place winners will be announced in August.

Visit www.bestdishnc.com for a complete list of finalists, restaurant information, entered menus with pictures, chef bios, judging criteria and contest information.