An ambitious Peninsula seafood and farm-fresh spot, from classically trained Coast Guard chef

A decade ago in San Pedro, California, Barry Wildman was perhaps the fanciest Coast Guard chef in America — the rare food service officer to get a full profile in the Los Angeles Times.

“The spartan chow house in the middle of the nation’s largest port complex has been transformed into a gastronomic destination,” wrote the Times in 2010.

Wildman, a veteran of fine-dining restaurants in Napa Valley and a graduate of the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, was serving fresh-formed tagliatelle with local herbs to Coasties and the local prison guards. He foraged local herbs to make food for the Ice Breaker Mackinaw on the Great Lakes, made Creole catfish while stationed on the Mississippi River.

And this summer, he’ll be bringing that fresh and local focus to a new restaurant in Poquoson, devoted to the bounty of the Chesapeake Bay.

Opening as soon as June, the Blue Crab and Purple Pig Bistro will be a raw bar and restaurant with broad-ranging fare from crab cakes to herb-and-gorgonzola chicken to crab ravioli with fresh-made pasta.

“It’s going to be mostly local, a little bit Southern, upscale comfort food,” Wildman said. “And with our specials, we’ll play around with whatever we want.”

The restaurant is a shared project between Wildman and his wife, Mundia Chitambala, who comes from a career in corporate project management and will run the business side of the restaurant. The pair first met over their shared love of food: Chitambala is a longtime denizen of the Chesapeake Bay who spent years running a culinary blog and will be a vital part of the restaurant.

Chef Barry Wildman (left) and Mundia Chitambala met over a shared love of food. This summer, they'll be opening the Blue Crab and Purple Pig Bistro, devoted to the culinary bounty of Virginia's land and sea. (Courtesy Mundia Chitambala)

Wildman has been in Hampton Roads since 2016 and said he’s fallen in love with the local bounty — Virginia’s hot-but-not-too-hot climate and its mix of sea and land.

“It’s like the Goldilocks of the country — it’s just perfect,” he said. “I love the bay. I love the farms. When you get inland, there’s great ingredients. There’s shellfish up in the east, fish down a little bit in the south. You can source everything within a day, which means everything’s pretty fresh.”

He’ll bring in fish whole, right off the boats — and break it down himself at the restaurant. The Blue Crab will also bring in Virginia ham and other local pork, tomatoes when in season, wild mushrooms, oysters fresh from the bay, and of course the Chesapeake blue crab that gave the restaurant half its name.

As for why the pig is purple?

“The crab had a color,” Wildman said, laughing. “We thought it would be mean not to give the pig a color.”

The couple’s restaurant will be a mix of upscale and approachable, Wildman said, the sort of place where you could come in for either a casual lunch or an anniversary dinner — with décor that’s less stuffy white tablecloth than exposed rafters, Edison light bulbs and a brick wall behind the wine racks.

The opening menu will include some casual whimsy as well, including a dad-jokey “flight of the pig” featuring variations on hog: flat bacon, pork belly and pork cheek, with accoutrements from bourbon-maple butter to pickled veggies.

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“One of my soups is called ‘Chessie’ because apparently there’s a Loch Ness Monster-type legend on the Chesapeake Bay,” Wildman said.

The pandemic has significantly delayed the restaurant’s buildout, and they’re still trying to hire enough employees to get up and running by June. If need be, they’ll open with limited seating or a limited menu.

But Wildman hopes to be open during the early summer growing season that’s also a peak period for local crab. And the seasons will matter quite a bit here.

Rather than add lots of heat and seasoning, Wildman is much more interested in the full, rich, walloping flavors you can only really get from good ingredients at peak freshness.

“If you’ve ever eaten a fresh, ripe peach and then one from the grocery store, you know the difference,” he said. “And you know, that might just be just one ingredient out of 10. … The difference between good and bad is that drastic.”

The Blue Crab and Purple Pig Bistro hopes to open in early June at 8 Victory Boulevard, Poquoson. Follow the restaurant’s progress at facebook.com/bluecrabandpurplepig.

The Blue Crab and Purple Pig will open in the space briefly home to R&R Seafood in Poquoson. (Google Street View)

Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-2318, matthew.korfhage@pilotonline.com