Raw bar & wood-fire fish
The tide writes the menu.
Raw bar and wood-fire fish on Custom House Wharf — bought whole off the day boats, broken down in-house, and cooked over white oak the same night.
Provenance
The boats
Provenance here is not a chalkboard flourish; it is a delivery schedule. Scallops come off the F/V Elsie June out of Harpswell, oysters down the Damariscotta from Winter Point and Dodge Cove, whole fish from the day-boat fleet that ties up fifty feet from the kitchen door. We buy whole, butcher in-house, and cook over white oak — nothing else.
At 3 pm the day's landing is counted and the menu is rewritten around it. Some nights that means bluefin; some nights it means monkfish and a chowder you'll think about all winter. What the tide didn't bring, we don't serve.
Around the wharf
The room & the catch
From the tables
“We sat at the bar, asked what the Elsie June brought in, and ate the best scallops of our lives twenty minutes later. You can taste that nothing sat in a truck.”
“The whole bass for two, straight off the oak — char, brown butter, done. This is the restaurant I measure every harbor town against now.”
“Booked the chart room for twelve on a Friday. They wrote a menu around what the tide gave them and printed it with our name on it. Nobody has stopped talking about it.”
Questions
Good to know
Reservations, allergies, the chart room, and Friday's dock door.
Do you take reservations?
Yes — tables release thirty days out, online or by phone. We hold the raw bar and the six window stools for walk-ins every night, so showing up hungry is a legitimate strategy.
Can you cook around allergies and dietary needs?
Tell us when you book and the kitchen plans for it — shellfish, gluten, alliums, most things. The wood-fire side of the menu is naturally gluten-free, and there is always one serious non-seafood plate.
Can we book the chart room?
The back room seats twelve to twenty-four, with a menu written around that day's landing and printed with your name on it. One seating a night, Tuesday through Saturday; ask two weeks ahead in summer.
What is dock pickup?
Every Friday from 3 to 5 we sell from the wharf door: whole fish, shucked oysters by the dozen, chowder by the quart, and the bread. Order by Thursday noon and it's iced and waiting.
Can we bring a special bottle?
One per table, $25 corkage, waived on Tuesdays. The list leans coastal — Muscadet, Txakoli, Chablis — because acid loves salt, but we'll never argue with your birthday Burgundy.
Reservations
Book the tide.
Tables release thirty days out; the bar is walk-in until the ice runs low. Tell us the night, the number, and whether you're the whole-fish kind of table.
Find the wharf