A Rising Tide
Chefs/co-owners of Eventide Oyster Co. Andrew Taylor, 36, and Mike Wiley, 35, recently won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast for their wildly popular eatery in Portland, Maine and they’re set to open a Boston outpost in Fenway in August. The pair met as colleagues at Hugo’s in Portland, which they jointly purchased in 2012. Their company, Big Tree Hospitality, also operates the Honey Paw, an Asian-inflected restaurant, as well as a commissary, Big Tree Foods, in Biddeford, Maine.
Sweet + Savory
Kim Rodgers, executive pastry chef at Hugo’s in Portland, Maine, sought to re-envision Waldorf salad for a dessert application. With lemon olive oil cake and cucumber ice cream as the foundation, she considered how she could work in the common Waldorf salad ingredients. Her conclusion was to add torn pieces of red butter lettuce, candied walnuts, shaved apple slices twisted into a cone, almost like a flower, and local green grapes juiced and turned into a foam. She also added Earl Grey mousse line, cucumber blossoms, lemon balm and Ruby Moon bean blossoms.
Three is a Magic Number: Winning James Beard
With the restaurants Hugo’s, Eventide and Honey Paw, the partners of Big Tree Hospitality have achieved remarkable success. This week we speak with Arlin Smith, Mike Wiley and Andrew Taylor about their own stories, winning the 2017 James Beard Award, and what life is like as they expand their business outside of Portland.
20 Memorial Day Weekend Getaways and Day Trips Across the Country
The Rule Of Claw
At the top of Ms. French’s list of must-visit restaurants was Eventide Oyster Co. in Portland. We grabbed two seats at one end of the concrete bar; an imposing block of granite loaded with oysters on ice occupied the other. The lobster roll, served on steamed bun, diverted us deliciously, but the real star that day were the oysters served on the half shell, accompanied by kimchi, horseradish and Tabasco ices. We tried a half dozen, including the Basket Island and Glidden Point varieties and could have happily whiled away the afternoon at that sunny counter, sipping white wine and slurping up more oysters, but Bar Harbor waited.
Now a James Beard Award-Winning Seafood Spot Is Opening in Boston
“Weekends” Warrior
One of our most dramatic days of shooting happened in Acadia National Park on blesser-known strip of the northern coast, between Eastern Bay and Frenchman Bay. We set up a traditional beachside clambake among the rock formations known as the Ovens, which are accessible only at low tide and mostly only by kayak. There is no public parking in this corner of the park, but we were guests of Andrew Taylor, whose family has a house here and who, with partners Arlin Smith and Mike Wiley, owns two of Maine’s most acclaimed restaurants, Eventide Oyster and Hugo’s both in Portland.