{"id":11733,"date":"2016-07-21T18:25:41","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T22:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=11733"},"modified":"2016-07-21T18:25:41","modified_gmt":"2016-07-21T22:25:41","slug":"oyster-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/oyster-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Oyster Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

July\/August 2016 | view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

With Spat, Rebecca Charles returns to Kennebunk after nearly 20 years spent showing New Yorkers what a real Maine lobster roll is all about.<\/span><\/h3>\n

By Claire Z. Cramer<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Hungry-Eye-JA16\"Rebecca Charles, chef\/owner of the wildly successful Pearl Oyster Bar in Manhattan since 1997, stands in sweatshirt and sneakers in the middle of a vast, empty, cathedral-ceilinged room on Western Avenue in Kennebunk. The floors are wide planks, covered in dusty footprints. Overhead, garish, wacky chandeliers hang forlornly. The walls, all of them, and the ceiling, are painted a grim chalkboard black.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIsn\u2019t it awful?\u201d she asks. Her smile is huge. \u201cYou can see we\u2019ve got a lot of work to do.\u201d In three days, the renovation team will descend to transform the cavernous room into a bustling seasonal restaurant and, downstairs, into the pubby Spat Oyster Cellar. \u201cSpat is a \u2018baby\u2019 oyster,\u201d she explains.<\/span><\/p>\n

This restaurant, which has upstairs\/downstairs dining areas, was most recently a short-lived enterprise called Table intended for \u201ccooking classes, pop-up dinners, mixology classes, [and] wine tastings,\u201d according to its promotional literature. When Table folded, Charles pounced and bought the building and the little \u201cbakehouse\u201d cottage on the same property. Before Table, 27 Western Avenue housed the restaurant Abbondante, and before that Grissini (pictured next page), an Italian restaurant remembered affectionately by all of us who ever dined there.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGrissini was a great place to have dinner\u2013it was fun to be there,\u201d says Charles. She wants to bring back that feeling. Ironically, although the premises are now gutted, two of Grissini\u2019s most memorable features remain: The big stone fireplace in the dining room and an impossibly long, lovely pine harvest table that Grissini used for bounteous baskets of bouquets, bread, and cutting boards. When you came for dinner, the flickering fire and display of peasant breads seductively whispered Under the Tuscan Sun.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSpat Oyster Cellar\u2019s menu will be very similar to Pearl Oyster Bar,\u201d says Rebecca (pictured right). She plans to open it this month. The larger restaurant upstairs, tentatively named Pearl North, will offer non-seafood items as well and opens\u00a0 <\/span>this fall (bottom right). <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI have a brasserie template\u201d in mind for the big restaurant. \u201cI actually don\u2019t like to work with interior designers too much, because that\u2019s the fun part. I\u2019m going with classic French bistro Thonet bentwood chairs, but padded. And my menu\u2013you\u2019ll see French elements, but it\u2019s American food.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Downstairs in the low-ceilinged snug that will become Spat Oyster Cellar, visitors are drawn to the long carrara marble bar and the small fireplace even before the restoration has begun. It will seat \u201capproximately 35 at the bar and on the floor\u201d and will be open year-round. It feels like just the intimate spot to stop for oysters and ale in a snowstorm.<\/span><\/p>\n

KENNEBUNK CONNECTION<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Rebecca Charles\u2019s family began coming from Brooklyn to summer in Kennebunk nearly 100 years ago. It\u2019s the late Rebecca \u201cPearle\u201d Stein Goldsmith (left inset), her namesake maternal grandmother who so loved life and Kennebunk summers, who seems to be Charles\u2019s muse and inspiration. In her 2003 memoir\/cookbook, Lobster Rolls & Blueberry Pie,<\/em> Charles writes, \u201cMaine will always be home because of our memories\u2026My grandparents [Pearle and Goldie Goldsmith] first drove their shiny Packard touring car through Kennebunk in very early August 1920. As their car motored around Beach Avenue\u2026they would have seen some of the same beautiful old stone cottages, shingled saltboxes, and Victorians lining the road across from the water that I now pass.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Goldsmith family summer-vacation tradition meant lodging at the Forest Hill House and Cottages on Western Avenue. Since the 1880s, and well into the 1940s, Forest Hill House was known as the Jewish guest house and was the only hotel in the yankee Kennebunks that accepted Jews as guests.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, Forest Hill House is the White Barn Inn. In the early 1980s, Rebecca Charles was hired as a young cook by the White Barn\u2019s then-owner, Jack Nahill, to come run the kitchen and make the food more exciting. \u201cFirst I took all the microwaves down to the basement,\u201d says Charles. \u201cI completely changed the menu. They had packets of Knorr dried sauces! Their idea of an elegant dish was canned artichoke hearts with Knorr hollandaise sauce!\u201d Her stint as chef lasted just the one season. \u201cJack hired me to completely change the menu, and I did, so he fired me.\u201d She laughs, with a carefree shrug. Restaurants are a crazy business.<\/span><\/p>\n

A PRO IN HER ELEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Charles, a youthful and energetic 62, earned her chops in restaurant kitchens in Kennebunk in the early 1980s, including at the Whistling Oyster and Caf\u00e9 74, which she ran, and in New York in the late \u201980s and \u201990s at many spots including Anne Rozenzweig\u2019s Arcadia, and then at Cascabel. She opened Pearl Oyster Bar in Manhattan\u2019s Greenwich Village in the summer of 1997. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt really was the first place in the city to serve lobster rolls and chowder\u201d and other New England classic summer food. \u201cThe knock-offs didn\u2019t take long. Mary\u2019s Fish Camp [also in the Village] was first, and now they\u2019re everywhere.\u201d She ponders the nature of New York food trends. \u201cThe lobster roll, the porchetta sandwich, and David Chang\u2019s pork bun\u2013everyone knows these upscale sandwich-type foods now. They\u2019re everywhere [in New York City], but they weren\u2019t anywhere until the first one.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A film-major dropout from the State University of New York at Purchase (\u201cI wasn\u2019t really good at school\u201d), Charles never attended culinary school. \u201cNot too many of us did back then, really.\u201d She remarks that many of today\u2019s young cooks think being a chef means culinary school, working for a big shot chef, becoming a big shot chef, and getting a TV show.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI train my cooks,\u201d she says. \u201cI train their training out of them. I don\u2019t think technique and consistency are things many of them are interested in.\u201d I remark that her host and waiters at Pearl in New York are remarkably hospitable. \u201cI want my waiters to have fine-dining experience\u2014but they\u2019re sick of it\u2014so they still know their stuff.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And while she\u2019s in Kennebunk getting Spat Oyster Cellar open, where does Charles eat? \u201cI really like the fish sandwich called \u2018A Fish Called Wanda\u2019 at Allison\u2019s. If I want clams, I\u2019ll go to the Clam Shack on the bridge.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July\/August 2016
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