EP 68: Dive Deep into Bar Harbor: A Seafood Odyssey with Owner Ben Hodgetts

Transcript

WEBVTT

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Ben Hodgetts in 2016 opened up a restaurant in downtown Seattle called Bar Harbor.

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It brought people from all over Seattle and all over the world who crave seafood.

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I'm one of those.

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I love seafood.

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And he serves up lobster rolls.

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He has a famous dungeon crab roll, New England style clam chowder.

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And we're here today to talk about this experience and what it's like to own a seafood restaurant.

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Ben, welcome

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to the show.

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Hi, Michael.

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Thank you.

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It's good to be here.

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So let's start with a little bit about your background.

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What was it like growing up for you on the East Coast?

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I

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loved growing up on the East Coast, really.

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I get asked this question a lot to compare East and West, right?

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And I've always come to this.

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It's something about the people, about the sense of humor, is the only thing I really miss about the East.

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Okay.

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There's great food, everything's a little older.

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I wouldn't say that those are things that I really miss about, about back there, about New England a, a sense of humor, just a, I don't know, there's a little bit of a know it all personality trait that kind of threads through all the people there that I love.

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I'm really drawn to it.

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A little sarcasm, a little bit of, oh yeah, it's just.

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Playful and fun.

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And sometimes doesn't do that well for me out here.

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Oh, gotcha.

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Gotcha.

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Oh, I was big into pot pies.

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Oh, awesome.

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Okay.

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I think that idea of digging through the fridge and trying to come up with something a lot of bad.

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Ideas were in the fourth and fifth grade.

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Those hours after school, my mom got home sometime around six.

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And so I had those hours to, I don't know, experiment with what we had, but my family back there, they were not restaurant people.

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And so I just, I was drawn to it.

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I have.

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been drawn to all the aspects.

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I've literally done every job in a restaurant.

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Oh, really?

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Oh, wow.

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I did go to culinary school, but I have, I've been a server, a bartender, a sommelier, manager, dishwasher, line cook, sous chef, all literally all of it.

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Wow.

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Is this some of this on the East coast or most of this on the West coast?

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Most on the West coast but definitely some on the East coast.

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My first job was at an all girls.

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College in the cafeteria when I was a junior in high school.

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I remember

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junior in high school.

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I was a janitor at an all girls private school.

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That was not glamorous.

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I would have traded you in a heartbeat.

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It wasn't glamorous.

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You got to meet.

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Nice girls all the time.

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Yeah, that was cool.

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Yeah, that is cool.

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Did you do like on the East Coast?

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Did you do any fishing or crabbing or

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anything like that?

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Never crabbing.

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Did lots of lobstering.

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Oh my God.

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What is that like?

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It is hard as work.

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I've heard that it is.

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I never really advanced far enough.

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You had to get up really early.

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My uncles, I had a couple uncles who were, up at three on the water at four and wow.

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I would meet him at the dock at seven.

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Yeah, I got to pull traps and throw the bugs back.

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And yeah, I was a low man on the totem pole.

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But did

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you like lobster or did you just, you're working doing that?

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So it's like, I don't

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really care about lobster.

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I did not like lobster growing up.

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Wow.

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I wasn't exposed to too many things.

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And I associated that lack of exposure with not liking.

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The things and I almost made a conscious decision in my early twenties that I was going to stop not liking things because there was a long list back then.

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And I was, and I just decided to either suffer through and pretend I liked it until I did and worked for me.

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Now I'm in love with Dungeness crab.

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I'm in love with clams, oysters, all of it.

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I,

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Oh my God.

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Yeah.

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I grew up a little bit on the East coast and we were clamming.

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I was crapping for blue crab and I love to fish, live down the lake.

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And so for me, it just became an obsession at a young age for me.

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Seafood was like one of my obsessions.

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And my dad would bring lobster home.

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He was in the Coast Guard.

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So he'd bring it home from the boat.

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And you'd put them on the ground and we'd play with them.

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And then we'd cook them and eat them.

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And it was just, oh,

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it's amazing.

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I always loved catching more than I liked eating.

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We did a lot of Jersey Shore family and the blue crabs down there were big.

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We'd just tie chicken legs to a string and throw it off the dock and pull it up real slow.

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You could spend the whole day.

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My grandmother would come home from work and there'd be 30 blue crabs in a bucket waiting for her to do something with them.

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Yeah,

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I loved crabbing.

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Blue crabbing was a lot of fun because they swim.

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Dungeness don't swim.

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You just put a trap down and you pick them up.

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Yeah, and it always seems like it's So deep.

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We were in the shallows, right?

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And so you could see them or

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you can see like for people that are listening, when you crab for blue crab, you tie a string, you tie a chicken leg to a string and you throw it out in a couple of feet of water and the string starts moving around.

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You've got to get a net and the crab is like swimming.

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These blue crabs swim and it's really exciting, but they're also fast and I almost lost a finger.

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They're a lot of fun, but you just have to be very careful.

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So you were in Portland, right?

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Is that where you grew

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up?

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Yep.

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Grew up in

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Portland, Maine.

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And then what happened from there?

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How did you get from Portland to

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the West Coast?

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My dad lives here still.

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I took off and went to Europe for a couple of years after culinary school.

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And when I came back, I was penniless.

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Portland, Maine, Seemed a little small to me after living in kind of big cities in Europe for a couple of years and mostly in Prague.

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I lived in Prague.

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Oh wow.

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Seattle honestly was the only place I could go with no money and have a place to stay for a little while till I got on my feet.

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That was a long time

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ago.

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Yeah.

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Not anymore.

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Oh my God.

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He was, he's up in Snohomish, but okay.

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But yeah, so I came out, stayed with him and started hunting for jobs and stuff.

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But, and then he lives on some great property and this actually ties into my story.

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But my uncles put together this box and they figured out a way to ship 50 lobsters.

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Oh, wow.

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Okay, cool.

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Live lobsters.

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They were basically like a six pack of beer where, except it had 48 slot.

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Oh my God.

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That's awesome.

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Put all these pound and a half lobsters tail down claws up.

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Oh, and then cover it with seaweed and mail it out.

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And we would throw a huge lobster boil up on my dad's property.

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Wow.

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We did that every year for a few years.

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And that turned into a catering business, which turned into some other things.

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And it just grew from there.

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Wow.

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My brother tried to ship.

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Live lobster from Boston.

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He didn't quite have it figured out.

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They showed up dead and it was, Oh, he tried to pack it himself.

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Oh, hell yeah.

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Cause most of those seafood shops will pack it for you.

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And again, my uncle was a, he's a professional.

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He knew what he was doing.

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I think he got them off the boat cause he has a cottage in Maine.

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So he would buy them from the local lobstermen.

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And I don't think they had any packing stuff, figured it out, but didn't quite work.

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Wet newspaper and seaweed.

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But he'd bring them on the plane.

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He'd bring them on the plane that day.

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And Oh my God, it was so great when he came to visit with lobster.

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Oh,

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when it did work.

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Yeah, we would do that.

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We'd bring Dungeness crab from here when I'd go back to visit my family and then bring lobsters back home, back to here.

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Oh my gosh.

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Honestly, I think you're like me.

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I can't decide whether I love Dungeness crab or lobster more.

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My wife would roll her eyes because she knows how much I love lobster.

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Well, I've decided.

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Yeah,

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I know you have.

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I know I'm not supposed to, I'm not

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supposed to say it.

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And which is it.

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All right.

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You don't have to, we'll just leave them in suspense.

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But I've also tried like stone crab and that is amazing out of Florida.

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Yeah.

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We, my in laws are in the keys and we go down and pull stones all the time.

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They're great.

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Yeah, that.

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That is incredible.

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I could not . Seems like a

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lot of waste is the only thing, because they are just claws.

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And it seemed like really expensive until I understood that it was just the claw and

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Yeah, because there's not a lot of extra weight 'cause you're just buying the claws.

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Right?

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Which is really good

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meat.

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And I love king crab too, so I love all crab and lobster.

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I'm not a big fan of Caribbean.

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I'm American Lobster all the way.

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Most people

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are no, I can't even

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different flavor anyway, as you're moving on.

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So you moved to the West coast and then you got your hands into the restaurant business.

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So how did bar Harbor evolve?

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So I had this almost a business plan.

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Now that I know what a business plan is, I don't think it actually, it wasn't one, but I, at the time thought it was, and I had this business plan.

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It was supposed to be in a little corner shop in Pike place market where we Treated Dungeness crab, the way lobsters treated in Maine, where it is not fancy.

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It's almost picnic food.

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It's just, it's expensive because it is what it is and the market determines the price, but it isn't gold leaf kind of food.

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It's a, it's put into a white bread split top bun, but I always wondered why was there not a Dungeness crab roll out here?

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So honestly, Bar Harbor started because of.

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Wanting to introduce in a dungeon as crab roll.

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Oh,

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wow.

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I didn't know that's amazing

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and do it You know the bread is the I think the most important.

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Oh my god I'm getting the bread right and the you know Toasting it the right way and because I think there were some places that sold things called crab rolls but I've had

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soggy ones and I'm telling you, it's just, it's the

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worst.

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Yeah.

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And in my snobby opinion, they're not crab.

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That's what I wanted to do.

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That was the impetus.

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And then, yeah, this company came along, I was building this building and they actually wanted me to open a wine shop in the space where Bar Harbor is now.

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Based on the wine list at the restaurant where I was the sommelier, Matt's in the market.

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I learned a ton about wine there and got really into it and they thought that I'd be a good wine shop owner and I looked into it and started developing a business plan and the more I thought it was like, let's Have just a little bit of food.

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Maybe I'll sell Dungeness crab rolls at this wine shop.

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It just kept going and then the wine kept getting pushed back and the food kept getting pushed forward.

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It became a lot more of a bar and restaurant than a wine shop.

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Love

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Bar Harbor.

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I work in the building.

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I come from work on my way home and I'm just craving your food.

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It's so hard for me to get in the elevator and go home.

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I'm like, I want a lobster roll tonight.

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I want a crab roll tonight.

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And I get home, my wife's like, did you bring it?

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Really?

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That's great.

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Oh yeah.

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Sometimes I do.

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And sometimes I don't.

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It's every once in a while I'm like, Oh my God, I'm just craving it.

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I love your crab rolls and your lobster rolls.

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Your lobster just seems like it's so fresh.

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And I have no idea what the secret is.

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I've had lobster where it just, it's okay.

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It feels

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fresh.

00:11:46.676 --> 00:11:47.946
Literally the same product.

00:11:48.250 --> 00:11:54.530
That I worked with in restaurants in Portland, Maine, it absolutely becomes in these two pound packs.

00:11:54.530 --> 00:11:55.791
We can't boil lobster.

00:11:55.791 --> 00:11:57.051
We get lobster meat.

00:11:57.360 --> 00:11:57.681
Sure.

00:11:57.721 --> 00:12:05.010
The same two pound packs that we got at every restaurant I worked in Portland, we have them shipped and we bring it in at least three days a week.

00:12:05.275 --> 00:12:11.346
And yeah, I certainly challenging at the beginning, but it's pretty dialed in obviously after this many years.

00:12:11.346 --> 00:12:14.605
But yeah, at the beginning it was hard to find a place to hold it for me.

00:12:14.605 --> 00:12:21.916
And the same thing with the bread, it was hard to find a baker and I wasn't sure we could do it on our, we could make our own bread at the restaurant.

00:12:21.916 --> 00:12:26.490
I wasn't sure if we could keep up or if it has to be you every day, then you're getting there at the end.

00:12:26.841 --> 00:12:28.211
Three in the morning to make bread.

00:12:28.211 --> 00:12:30.431
And I don't know how you do the rest of owning a restaurant.

00:12:30.431 --> 00:12:36.780
If you're right, if you're there that early, yeah, we got turned down everywhere we went except for one, one place.

00:12:36.791 --> 00:12:38.250
And then, and they were amazing.

00:12:38.260 --> 00:12:40.431
They kept making sample after sample.

00:12:40.431 --> 00:12:41.431
And wow.

00:12:41.520 --> 00:12:42.581
Do you want to give a shout

00:12:42.581 --> 00:12:43.171
out to them?

00:12:43.250 --> 00:12:44.821
They are no longer around.

00:12:44.821 --> 00:12:46.716
It was a very, yeah, it was a.

00:12:47.166 --> 00:12:50.306
It's a great story at the beginning and then a horrible story later on.

00:12:50.326 --> 00:12:51.826
The owner passed away.

00:12:51.926 --> 00:12:54.235
They were down in Kent and they were fantastic.

00:12:54.375 --> 00:12:57.966
You call it in the night before and they would make as much or as little as you want.

00:12:58.005 --> 00:13:01.655
Different sizes if you needed sliders or half rolls and things like that.

00:13:01.666 --> 00:13:02.546
Down to the wire.

00:13:02.546 --> 00:13:08.355
It was probably six days before we opened that we finally got the recipe down and signed a contract with them.

00:13:08.355 --> 00:13:08.596
But.

00:13:08.765 --> 00:13:09.816
So what do you do now?

00:13:09.975 --> 00:13:31.255
Now I'm sure you're familiar with, yeah, the bakery, they provide most restaurants in Seattle with, they're fantastic, but it was an item that they didn't have in their inventory when we opened, but since we proved that we were going to stick around, order enough, I guess is the, that we would, we were good for buying enough rolls every week.

00:13:31.255 --> 00:13:38.735
We're able to work with them and have it daily and we just trim them up a little bit cause they have different pans than the ones that we were working with before.

00:13:38.946 --> 00:13:40.905
I've had them and they're just delicious.

00:13:40.905 --> 00:13:44.066
I had, I think I had two last week.

00:13:44.326 --> 00:13:44.535
Yeah.

00:13:44.535 --> 00:13:46.765
I've seen you in there a couple of times recently.

00:13:46.816 --> 00:13:47.196
Yeah.

00:13:48.265 --> 00:13:48.696
Twice.

00:13:49.056 --> 00:13:49.475
I had two.

00:13:49.625 --> 00:13:54.716
Both Dungeness Crab because you recommended it and I was like, Oh my God, I love Dungeness Crab.

00:13:54.785 --> 00:13:55.525
I'm just, I'm

00:13:55.525 --> 00:13:56.135
obsessed with it.

00:13:56.135 --> 00:13:59.296
I think that's the only thing my wife has ever had there is crab roll every time.

00:14:00.456 --> 00:14:03.115
I've had the crab sandwich too, and that's really good.

00:14:03.166 --> 00:14:03.416
And the

00:14:03.436 --> 00:14:04.145
chowder.

00:14:04.285 --> 00:14:04.936
Oh, that crab

00:14:04.936 --> 00:14:05.336
cake.

00:14:05.446 --> 00:14:06.115
Mm hmm.

00:14:06.125 --> 00:14:07.405
The crab cake sandwich is

00:14:07.405 --> 00:14:08.066
delicious.

00:14:08.436 --> 00:14:09.495
Chowder's a little bit of a thing.

00:14:09.495 --> 00:14:10.635
It's different style.

00:14:11.035 --> 00:14:11.796
Yeah, it's not

00:14:11.806 --> 00:14:16.336
very thick, which is better, which is New England style more, I think.

00:14:16.346 --> 00:14:16.975
No roux.

00:14:16.975 --> 00:14:18.966
It's just that we don't start with a roux.

00:14:19.326 --> 00:14:19.775
Right.

00:14:20.166 --> 00:14:20.985
Potato thickened.

00:14:21.255 --> 00:14:23.096
Yeah, that's a key, I think.

00:14:23.096 --> 00:14:25.225
And the flavor profile is really good.

00:14:25.225 --> 00:14:27.166
I can taste saltiness of it.

00:14:27.196 --> 00:14:29.535
So it really, it feels very fresh to me.

00:14:29.576 --> 00:14:39.980
And I appreciate that as a chowder lover, but I So tell me a little bit about Brian because he's the one that really connected us and I've talked to Brian so many times and I love Brian.

00:14:40.061 --> 00:14:40.961
And who is

00:14:40.961 --> 00:14:41.291
Brian?

00:14:41.451 --> 00:14:44.061
Brian is, he's the manager.

00:14:44.061 --> 00:14:47.280
He runs everything day to day at Bar Harbor.

00:14:47.341 --> 00:14:54.166
I have become more of a shopper and Brian Handles staff and all of that kind of stuff.

00:14:54.206 --> 00:14:59.765
And he carried the restaurant through all of the pandemic time.

00:14:59.785 --> 00:15:02.666
I owe a debt of gratitude to Brian.

00:15:02.745 --> 00:15:03.755
Like you wouldn't believe.

00:15:03.826 --> 00:15:04.676
He's going to hear this.

00:15:04.676 --> 00:15:05.135
I'm sure

00:15:06.806 --> 00:15:07.655
he will now.

00:15:07.706 --> 00:15:07.865
I

00:15:07.865 --> 00:15:08.336
love Brian.

00:15:08.535 --> 00:15:09.125
I come there

00:15:09.125 --> 00:15:09.596
for him.

00:15:09.686 --> 00:15:10.505
I really enjoy him.

00:15:10.546 --> 00:15:11.025
Literally.

00:15:11.046 --> 00:15:17.576
Sometimes you read reviews, every review, whether they talk about the food or not says something about the staff and it's really good.

00:15:17.966 --> 00:15:21.025
And how good it is and it's such a source of pride for me.

00:15:21.096 --> 00:15:27.010
It's that's awesome Yeah, a lot of that stuff is going In a different direction at a lot of places, you know what I mean?

00:15:27.081 --> 00:15:27.471
Right.

00:15:27.591 --> 00:15:33.671
And yeah, he's just the right amount of kind of he's super charming and funny professional when he needs to be.

00:15:33.691 --> 00:15:38.030
And we've talked about it a lot and make sure you let him know he's not ever allowed to leave.

00:15:38.140 --> 00:15:39.061
Yeah.

00:15:39.091 --> 00:15:39.471
All right.

00:15:39.490 --> 00:15:41.591
I will tell him that I'll harass him a little bit.

00:15:41.610 --> 00:15:45.770
He introduced me to Sarah Monson and she had an amazing story.

00:15:45.801 --> 00:15:46.530
Oh my God.

00:15:46.671 --> 00:15:48.130
About creating a cookbook.

00:15:48.610 --> 00:15:54.640
When Governor James Lee shut everything down, all these cooks and chefs got together and she collaborated with them.

00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:55.890
I remember.

00:15:56.110 --> 00:15:56.910
It was amazing.

00:15:57.270 --> 00:15:58.130
Just amazing.

00:15:58.230 --> 00:15:59.551
He connected me with her.

00:15:59.561 --> 00:16:00.471
We had a great time.

00:16:00.701 --> 00:16:04.081
As we move on, what was it like for you during the pandemic?

00:16:04.081 --> 00:16:06.140
What, how did your staff react?

00:16:06.150 --> 00:16:09.551
That must have been just, what the hell happened?

00:16:09.730 --> 00:16:12.620
All restaurants in Washington shut down for weeks.

00:16:12.905 --> 00:16:17.816
All restaurants around the world, all of hospitality just closed except for takeout.

00:16:17.946 --> 00:16:19.576
Even takeout for a little while.

00:16:19.625 --> 00:16:20.596
Yeah, that's nuts.

00:16:21.216 --> 00:16:35.105
There was nothing for at least a month, but yeah, March 12th, March 11th or March 12th, that year was, you're just standing in there and then all of a sudden everybody's on a schedule for the next day to time it, to come in alone and just take all the food home.

00:16:35.176 --> 00:16:37.485
I go in and pack it all up and everybody takes the food home.

00:16:37.485 --> 00:16:56.650
It was, Just as awful for me as it was for everybody when it was time to start thinking about coming back we came back a little early because we have that huge outside space and We were able to put that to use where nobody came into the kitchen The kitchen was basically closed just the two chefs who were working on opposite sides.

00:16:56.740 --> 00:17:05.826
We were able to pump food out Let people sit out on that deck or take it to go or just pull up on Fairview Avenue and we'd bring it to the car, that kind of thing.

00:17:05.865 --> 00:17:08.586
Brian really spearheaded that whole thing.

00:17:08.715 --> 00:17:09.185
It was great.

00:17:09.215 --> 00:17:14.465
I had four or five people who All wanted to work as much as they could.

00:17:14.546 --> 00:17:20.895
We were real adamant about keeping it masked up, even on the deck and trying to make everybody feel as secure as possible.

00:17:20.935 --> 00:17:22.226
I don't tell a lot of people this.

00:17:22.276 --> 00:17:25.195
We went on a vacation at Christmas time.

00:17:25.195 --> 00:17:34.046
My family, my son and my wife and I, and we went to Maui and we had gotten really close with this family that we've stayed with some, a couple of times.

00:17:34.115 --> 00:17:37.486
They decided they weren't going to, weren't going to, or couldn't place anymore.

00:17:37.486 --> 00:17:38.465
So they, Oh.

00:17:38.905 --> 00:17:44.756
Decided to just stay and we ended up staying four months as a family bonding thing.

00:17:44.756 --> 00:17:45.746
It was amazing.

00:17:45.746 --> 00:17:47.556
My son was going to school online.

00:17:47.556 --> 00:17:49.796
My wife was working from home.

00:17:50.145 --> 00:17:54.806
The restaurant was closed and with the time difference, it was pretty amazing.

00:17:54.806 --> 00:17:57.566
I know this isn't about my trip to Maui by 10 AM.

00:17:57.605 --> 00:18:00.786
His school day was already over because of the three hour time difference.

00:18:00.786 --> 00:18:26.895
During that time, Brian and Leroy, who was the chef at the time, those two Just put it all back on the tracks and yeah, they were stayed in touch and had Zoom meetings like everybody else but that was basically my input was to have zoom meetings with those two and they and I Just followed their lead and you know I gave them the run of the restaurant and they just took it and ran with it and turned it into something Awesome.

00:18:26.976 --> 00:18:28.226
It was great story.

00:18:28.526 --> 00:18:38.290
We you know, we killed it for a little while in that because we had enough space where people could come and Brian's You know, knowledge of local beer and stuff like that.

00:18:38.290 --> 00:18:40.221
We have just a killer beer list there.

00:18:40.480 --> 00:18:40.961
Oh, wow.

00:18:41.060 --> 00:18:46.431
It was just a kind of an amazing time for me to watch those guys get to work, continue to work.

00:18:46.431 --> 00:18:51.191

EP 68: Dive Deep into Bar Harbor: A Seafood Odyssey with Owner Ben Hodgetts

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