For chef Sam Hayward, co-owner of Fore Street restaurant in Portland, Maine, serving local food contains an element of education.
It’s about introducing people to Maine’s foodways and “the traditions and history of farming, fishing and foraging in this northernmost corner of the East Coast of the United States,” he says. That means showing diners there’s more to New England food than chowder, beans, lobster and blueberries.
The education of Hayward himself goes back to his days as a classical musician in Ithaca, N.Y., where cookbooks began to take over his personal reading list. One day in the winter of 1974, a music student enrolled at the Cornell Hotel Restaurant School said to Hayward: “Hey, you like to cook for a hobby. How would you like to chuck all this music business and come spend a summer on an island off the coast of Maine?”
The student was scheduled to be the head chef in the kitchens of the Shoals Marine laboratory there.
“So I took the job,” Hayward says, “and fell in love with cooking and ... with the Gulf of Maine.”
Hayward gained hands-on experience working his way up in a series of restaurant kitchens and made Maine his permanent home in 1977. From 1981 to 1991, he owned and operated a 90-seat restaurant in Brunswick called 22 Lincoln, which he says was “culinarily successful, but a financial disaster.” He later worked at the Harraseeket Inn in Freeport before opening Fore Street in 1996 with partners Victor Leon and Dana Street.
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Nancy English, restaurant reviewer for the Maine Sunday Telegram, who gave the venue the highest rating of five stars last summer, says “Fore Street was one of the first great restaurants in Maine to focus so passionately on local and fresh produce and meat and fish.”
Russell Libby, executive director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, or MOFGA, also compliments Hayward’s high sourcing standards.
“I’ve known Sam for 20 years through several different restaurants,” he says, “and all the way through, his philosophy has been to find really good sources of local food.”
Even the huge, glass-fronted produce cooler near the restaurant’s entrance gives guests “a really clear picture that this is a business built around what’s available in season,” Libby says.
Hayward currently is vice president of MOFGA’s board.
Wood fuels fire, adds flavor Besides highlighting local from day one, the signature element of Fore Street’s cuisine is wood-fired cooking. While soups, pasta and some side vegetable dishes come off of a gas-fired sauté range, most foods cook in the restaurant’s wood-fired brick oven, wood-fired grill or wood-fired turnspit, located in full view of diners. “We knew that we wanted to burn wood and use that as a primary fuel for cooking most of our food,” Hayward says. “We really loved the flavors and thought that that sort of primitive cooking technology would be of interest to the public. So we actually built our kitchen right out in the middle of the dining room. “We had this idea for a fairly rustic kind of food that was direct, simple, straightforward—trying to make the food as good as it could possibly be without adding so much extraneous stuff for the sake of creativity that we began to interfere with the quality of the raw materials that we were buying.” Supporting suppliers Libby notes that Hayward has maintained relationships with some of his growers and suppliers for more than two decades and calls Fore Street cuisine “real food.” “There’s no transforming the food into something else and then making it look like it originally was,” he says. “It’s very simply presented.” In the years between Hayward’s arrival in Maine and the opening of Fore Street, the small group of artisanal and organic food producers he had relied on to supply his Brunswick restaurant grew to the point that he could meet nearly all the restaurant’s needs with local growers. But that wasn’t always the case. “When I first came to Maine,” Hayward says, “I could get all the seafood I wanted in incredible variety, but it was very difficult to get meats, and in some cases it was difficult to get good produce. It was hard to get herbs, for example. I had to get all of my herbs from away. I had to get most of my green vegetables from away.” He credits “back-to-the-landers,” people coming to Maine in the 1970s to pursue organic farming, with helping to promote a resurgence in locally produced, sustainable agricultural products. Unpretentious ambience Although some customers may come to Fore Street in jacket and tie, there’s no dress code, and you’re as likely to see guests in blue jeans. “[The atmosphere] is upbeat and casual enough so you can feel comfortable coming in from the farm, as I do,” Libby says, “but you can have a fancy dinner there or you can have a family dinner. It’s the full range.” Hayward believes that the restaurant’s relaxed atmosphere and the drama of the centrally located kitchen encourage guests to try new foods. Turnspit-roasted pork loin is the restaurant’s best-selling entrée. Hayward has even been pleasantly surprised by the popularity of roasted, whole rabbits. “It’s not the type of thing that Portland restaurants have typically served,” he says, “but seeing it [prepared] in that kind of primitive way gave people a sense of comfort, a sense of security that it was going to be interesting.” Menu Sampler Wood-oven-roasted Maine mussels with roasted almond garlic butter $10Chilled Bagaduce River oysters with verjuice, Maine sea salt and peppercorns $12 Lamb’s lettuce and rocket salad, radishes, radish seedlings, goat cheese, cider vinaigrette $8 Wood-grilled marinated butler’s steak $23Turnspit-roasted marinated chicken $19 Turnspit-roasted pork loin $22 Wood-oven-roasted Atlantic monkfish tail with roasted young carrots $23 Pan-seared day-boat Maine scallops with herbs and English peas $25 Turnspit-roasted marinated Maine rabbit with ramps $25 Warm chocolate soufflé cake with vanilla bean ice cream, dark chocolate sauce $8Fresh goat cheese cheesecake with beet and orange sorbet $8 Hayward has also witnessed changes in diners’ tastes over the years.“I remember when I first came to Maine, I had a hard time selling any kind of fish other than grilled swordfish or maybe a flatfish like flounder or plaice,” he says. “I might have been able to sell some halibut, I certainly could sell haddock, which is New Englander’s typical favorite fish special, but it was really difficult to sell wallfish, or monkfish, or mackerel except in ethnic enclaves.“[Now] people really are buying more flavorful, much more interesting kinds of fish when we can get them. And part of that is because the preparations are incredibly simple. Nobody’s afraid of them. The thing that I keep hearing is, ‘I always have a hard time when I come to Fore Street, because I know everything’s going to be really delicious, even if I don’t know what it is.’ ”Evolving “Chow Maine”Chef-owner Sam Hayward says the relaxed atmosphere and the presence of a centrally located kitchen complete with wood-burning spits and ovens, encourage guests to try new, different dishes like whole Atlantic blue fish with roasted shallots and artichokes, pictured.Libby says Fore Street has had a big influence on Maine restaurants. The restaurant, he says, “has turned out a whole group of people who have cooked with Sam and have gone on to create what could be seen as competing restaurants in the greater Portland area. The reality is, they’re just building critical mass for this whole idea of local organic, seasonal foods.”English of the Maine Sunday Telegram, who also wrote “Chow Maine,” a guidebook to Maine’s restaurants and lobster shacks, describes Fore Street this way: “The bustling atmosphere, the showcase of fresh produce, the excitement of the busy open kitchen with its visible flames of the wood-burning oven and the pork and chicken on turning spits, all throw glamour on dining here.“The meals remain inventive and fresh after 11 years in business, while the few standards, the peach tarte tatin or the lobster BLT, rise up again in memory when each season returns. It’s almost instinctive to migrate back to our seats along the windows overlooking the ferry docks and Commercial Street, and taste them again.”