Cornucopia culinary scholarship gala rescheduled for Sept. 24

The RehobothFoodie.com/Touch of Italy Culinary Scholarship Foundation has rescheduled its annual fundraising event for Thursday, Sept. 24.

For the past four years, the annual Carnevale! Street Fair event has been held at the Rehoboth Beach Touch of Italy restaurant. Every year the event has sold out, and ticket holders feasted on unlimited food, wine and beer. Chef demonstrations, Italian music and auctions resulted in scholarships for high school ProStart graduates and other qualified applicants.

In order to help ease the critical shortage of skilled kitchen, front-of-house and management personnel available to Cape Region restaurants, Touch of Italy and RehobothFoodie.com teamed up to provide tuition assistance to qualified Delaware and Maryland high school graduates who wish to further their education at accredited culinary schools. Scholarships are also extended to other qualified applicants on a case-by-case basis.

For 2020, Carnevale! is now Cornucopia! The concept is simple and delicious: Many top-notch restaurants feature a chef’s table with private, intimate seating, generally in the kitchen. It’s almost always reserved for VIPs who enjoy a themed menu prepared and served by the executive chef. Cornucopia picks up where Carnevale left off, bringing that chef’s table experience to loyal friends and supporters. This September, 20 top-notch chefs from Milton to Ocean City, Md., will bring their tableside skills to the Lighthouse Cove Event Center at the Hyatt Place in Dewey Beach, each one presenting a 3-course feast to a table of 10 guests. A huge cocktail-hour antipasto and Italian desserts will be provided by Touch of Italy. And it all goes to benefit a great cause.

Only 200 seats are available, and before the event was postponed a few weeks ago, almost half of the tables had already sold out. Live music, auctions and other surprises will punctuate this year’s fundraiser to benefit the nonprofit RehobothFoodie.com/Touch of Italy Culinary Scholarship Fund, a component fund of the Greater Lewes Foundation.

Watch and listen for newspaper and radio ads for the new Cornucopia. It will be a great way to not only help local culinary students, but also to celebrate what organizers hope will be a return to normalcy for currently distressed local restaurants.