TIFTON — There will be a taste of Tifton at the Jekyll Island Shrimp and Grits Festival this weekend as The LOCAL heads into the Georgia’s Best Shrimp & Grits competition.

And after seeing last year’s festival cancelled due to Hurricane Irma, The LOCAL owner and cook David Scarbrough is ready.

He can still remember the first time he had shrimp and grits.

It was the late 1990s and he was eating at Greens on Green Street in Roswell, Georgia.

“They had amazing shrimp and grits there,” said Scarbrough. “They were fantastic. I remember I immediately wanted to start making that dish, over and over.”

He’s done just that in the last two decades, preparing the dish countless times and developing a philosophy about it.

“I think simplicity is key,” said Scarbrough. “There’s a hundred things you could put in your shrimp and grits, whatever you like: tomatoes, baked corn, onions, mushrooms, sausage. You could do whatever you want. It’s one of those dishes. It’s kind of like an omelette. Whatever flavors you like, you can kinda put it in there.

“When you do too much, you get an inferior product. If you keep it simple, it’s easy to do. It’s very hard to mess it up.”

Though there are a few must have ingredients for Scarbrough beyond the requisite shrimp and grits.

“I think pork is a pretty natural component,” he said. “And to me, there needs to be a few vegetables that make sense — tomatoes, scallions.”

The competition starts 11 a.m., Sept. 15, and Scarbrough and his team will have two hours to prep before a 3-minute timed section to cook the shrimp and present the dish.

“First thing you want to do is get your grits going,” said Scarbrough. “The last thing you want to do is serve hard grits.”

Scarbrough uses Gayla’s Grits, slow-cooking grits from just outside of Lakeland that can take upwards of an hour to get ready.

“If you make a mistake and mess your grits up, you want to be able to get some more going.”

Once that’s started, he’ll focus his attention on the sauce.

“It takes a little bit of time,” said Scarbrough. “I’m trying to make sure I’ve got my flavors concentrated.”

The contest requires chefs to use at least five Georgia Grown ingredients.

Along with Gayla’s Grits, Scarbrough plans to use dairy products from Sparkman’s Cream Valley in Moultrie.

“You get everything done, then you just constantly start tasting,” said Scarbrough. “How are my green onions? How are my tomatoes? It’s a back and forth — taste the grits, taste the sauce.”

This won’t be Scarbrough’s first time in the competition.

He competed at the 2016 festival, the first year the competition brought in chefs from throughout Georgia.

It was Scarbrough’s first timed cooking competition and it came with challenges.

Scarbrough lost a minute of his three-minute cooking time due to a miscommunication, costing him 60 precious seconds.

But that hasn’t dulled his enthusiasm for the versatile dish.

“That’s the great thing about the dish,” said Scarbrough. “It’s breakfast, lunch, dinner, midnight snack. It fits all the bills. It’s one of my favorite dishes in the whole wide world.”