Wednesday, May 17, 7:00 pm
Members $125, guests $155

Will Rogers once said, “Did you ever see a place that looked like it was built to enjoy? Well, this whole state of Maine looks that way.” While the rocky coastline, sandy beaches, and hardwood forests are certainly something to behold, what we enjoy most are the sweet lobster, juicy blueberries, and peekytoe crab that come from the state’s majestic land and sea. And we’re not alone. For this special Maine Event, we are welcoming chefs and purveyors from the Down East State—and those who are inspired by it—to celebrate the region’s unique food culture.

Clark Frasier and Mark Gaier may have made a name for themselves as the innovative chefs of Arrows, but the two first teamed up on the West Coast at Jeremiah Tower’s Stars Restaurant. Frasier’s food career had begun years earlier in Beijing, where he mastered Chinese cooking while studying the language. He originally went to California to start an import-export business, but instead began working his way up the ladder at Stars. Meanwhile, Mark Gaier, who had been working in publishing, also decided to pursue a career in food. He cooked at Maine’s Whistling Oyster restaurant before joining the Stars kitchen in the mid-1980s, where he met Frasier. The pair left California together to open Arrows in an eighteenth-century farmhouse near Ogunquit. There, they work like culinary pioneers, cooking with produce from their extensive organic garden, curing their own ham, and baking fresh bread. Named one of America’s 50 Best Restaurants by Gourmet in 2001, Arrows continues to rack up the accolades. “Elegant and refreshingly subtle,” wrote Town & Country, “Arrows does not assault the senses. It coaxes them quietly, casting a spell on the unsuspecting dinner guest.” In 2006 Clark and Gaier were nominated for the James Beard Foundation award for Best Chef: Northeast for the third year in a row.

With its famous lobster roll, Rebecca Charles’s Pearl Oyster Bar offers a little taste of Down East right here in New York City. Charles spent summers on the coast of Maine as a child, and she looked to childhood memories of straightforward beach food—Atlantic steamers, fried oysters, clam chowder—as inspiration when opening her Greenwich Village restaurant in 1997. “ Pearl is the city’s most neighborly place to find top-notch seafood,” wrote Time Out New York. “Everything in this tiny spot…is as delicious as it is unpretentious.”

Jonathan King and Jim Scott originally set up Stonewall Kitchen as a table at the local farmers’ market where they sold their homemade jams and vinegars. Today, the company has over 6,000 wholesale accounts nationwide, six company stores, and a thriving web and catalog business. In 2003 King and Scott opened Stonewall Kitchen Cafe, a casual bistro in York, Maine, where they showcase their own products as well as those from premier businesses in the state.

After graduating from the CIA, Melissa Kelly worked in some of the top restaurant kitchens in the country, including An American Place, Beekman 1766, Chez Panisse, and the Old Chatham Sheepherding Company Inn. In 2000 Kelly and her then fiancé (now husband) Price Kushner had an opportunity to open their own place in Maine, and Primo was born. With Kelly preparing the Mediterranean menu and self-taught pastry chef Kushner overseeing the baking and running the front of the house, Primo has received enormous acclaim, such as its recognition from Food & Wine as “one of the best restaurants on the Maine coast.”

Maine native Rod Mitchell first combined his love of the sea with gourmet cuisine as the owner of Winemporium, a wine and cheese shop in Camden, Maine. It was there, in the early 1980s, that he met renowned chef Jean-Louis Palladin, who enlisted Mitchell to help him locate items like diver scallops, sea urchins, and peekytoe crab. As demand for Mitchell’s expertise grew, he moved on from the shop and opened Caspian Caviar, his first wholesale business, and later Browne Trading Company. Since opening Browne Trading in 1991, Mitchell has become the purveyor all top chefs turn to for the highest quality seafood and caviar.

Jason Kennedy serves as corporate chef for Browne Trading Company and its onsite retail market. A graduate of the New England Culinary Institute, Kennedy’s 15 years of culinary experience includes executive chef posts at New England eateries such as J’s Restaurant in Bolton, Massachusetts, the Common Man in Sugarbush, Vermont, and the Cliff House in Stowe, Vermont.