It turns out that when it comes to the prestigious James Beard awards, the third time is the charm for Portland, Maine, restauranteurs Michael Wiley and his partner, Andrew Taylor. They won this year in the Best Chef: Northeast category after being nominated in 2015 and 2016. The last chef from Maine to win this award was Melissa Kelly, back in 2013.

Wiley says he has his mother to thank for his award-winning career. She’s the one who got him started cooking. “When I was a child I frequently cooked alongside my mother in the kitchen,” he says.

Today he and Taylor operate three restaurants in Portland—Hugo’s, Eventide Oyster Co., and The Honey Paw. All three focus on fresh and local food. Hugo’s, which is where Wiley and Taylor met in 2010 when they were both chefs, is the incubator for all three restaurants.  “At Hugo’s, we are methodical and technique-driven. Chefs are encouraged to utilize the highest-level of ingredients available from a tight-knit network of local purveyors, allowing Hugo’s to constantly evolve,” Wiley says. “We then use a lot of that creative technique we developed at Hugo’s at both Eventide Oyster Co. and The Honey Paw.”

Sharing a kitchen encourages chefs across the three properties to collaborate and exchange ideas. Still, each restaurant has its own niche. Eventide Oyster Co. focuses, as its name implies, on the freshest seafood available pulled from nearby Casco Bay and the greater Gulf of Maine. The Honey Paw, the newest of the restaurants, explores international flavors. “We wanted to experiment with the culinary cultures of Southeast Asia, China, and beyond,” he says of The Honey Paw. “We really wanted to serve comfort food—heaping portions of noodles, umami-laden rice bowls, large-format Korean Fried Chicken. The food at The Honey Paw is supposed to be fun, but prepared with the same skill and attention to ingredients as both Hugo’s and Eventide Oyster Co.”

Korean Fried Chicken + Cornbread

Wiley says he and Taylor focus on using the best ingredients possible while presenting them in a thoughtful way throughout all three of their restaurants. “No matter what type of food, the local ingredients are what shine through,” he says.

Wiley, who grew up in New Hampshire, went to Colby College in Maine. He went out west after graduation, supporting his love of skiing by working in several different restaurants. Taylor, originally from Massachusetts, came to Maine to attend Bates College. After spending years traveling across the country from Seattle to Boston, he missed Maine and took a position at Hugo’s, which is known for its New England fare.

Andrew Taylor and Michael Wiley, photo by Zack Bowen

Growing up, Taylor spent time scavenging for wild oysters and mussels while vacationing on Cape Cod. “I’ve always had a passion for seafood and local ingredients,” he says. Not surprisingly, then, his favorite dish to make is Eventide’s Fish Sandwich. “It’s our take on the Filet-O-Fish,” he says. “It hits all the right comfort food notes, but it’s infinitely more complex.”

While some might bemoan Maine’s seasonal cycle, Wiley says the short growing cycle pushes them to think outside the box and be more creative. “Maine has the most amazing bounty—vegetables, seafood, meats. We really have a lot to work with,” he says. And Portland’s strong restaurant scene means they get to experiment to their hearts’ content.

Michael Wiley–co-owner, Hugo’s, Eventide Oyster Co, and The Honey Paw
Portland, Maine
Hugo’s website
Hugo’s Facebook
Eventide Oyster Co. website
Eventide Oyster Co. Facebook
The Honey Paw website
The Honey Paw Facebook

Top image, brown butter lobster roll, photo by Zack Bowen

The post Putting Portland on the Food Map appeared first on Take Magazine.

Michael Sargent says he tells stories in spite of who he is. Revealing stories about his history, hardships, longings, and fears isn’t his natural mode. In other words, Sargent isn’t who you’d imagine would create The Corner, a monthly community storytelling event in Lewiston/Auburn, Maine. And yet he did.

The story behind this starts with the community where Sargent, who is a psychology professor at Bates College, lives. Sargent started The Corner in 2013, in part because he was frustrated by the lack of world-class arts, culture, and entertainment in the area not specifically associated with Bates College. It wasn’t that Sargent didn’t like his students and colleagues; he just felt as if it would be healthy and good to have a place, unrelated to his work, where he could go and connect with others in the community.

Rather than just complain, Sargent did something. Since 2013, The Corner has been held at She Doesn’t Like Guthrie’s restaurant and cafe, a suitably non-corporate venue.

The Corner | Michael Sargent | Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

Blogging, podcasts, stand-up comedy and the pervasiveness of Facebook, Twitter, and other social-media platforms have made the practice of self-revelation an almost compulsive habit for many. We share facets of our lives—snapshots, tidbits and details—all the time. But the kind of truth-telling and radical candor that Sargent has helped to encourage is different from all that.

Audience members are as likely to cry as they are to laugh. “You can tell that someone else has experienced something similar to what you have,” says Sargent. “It creates a great sense of connection.”

In a time of growing xenophobia, racism, and nativism in America, Sargent sees this connection-forging and community-building as a vital element of storytelling. Watching a total stranger get up to tell a story about having cancer or about coming undone by booze or overcoming crippling self-doubt makes a listener appreciate the bravery of anyone willing to participate, but it also jumpstarts a sense of empathy and compassion.

Storytelling events at The Corner do have rules. The “tellers” have to tell stories that are truthful, first-person narratives, recounted without notes and kept under five minutes. Events are organized around a theme. (April’s theme is “Fool’s Errand”—about doing something when we really shouldn’t have, for whatever reason.)

One of the innovations at The Corner is a sort of preliminary trial run where audience members are encouraged to swap ultra-brief stories with their neighbors where they’re seated. In some cases, this is enough to nudge introverts toward telling their story on the stage for the featured event, or to fine-tune and tweak for some future telling.

Sargent announced in May that he was handing over organizational and logistical duties for The Corner to Kathleen Juten, who has told her own stories there several times. Juten views the act of sharing and opening up to others as more than just a special form of art or entertainment. Before moving to Maine, she worked as a barista in California, where she found that artfully revealing parts of ourselves to each other is what fosters friendships and meaningful relationships, in addition to making mundane interactions more gratifying. “I found that the more open and honest I was with people, the more people reciprocated,” she says.

Civilization is, on some level, built on our ability to all go about our business without being overwhelmed by the depth of human feeling and history that each person carries around with them; if we were to always be fully aware of people’s stories, of what made them who they are—in good and bad ways—we might find it difficult to function smoothly. Storytelling is a small corrective to that. As Juten says, “It breaks down so many of these perceptions that we tend to have about each other.”

The Corner – hosts, Michael Sargent and Kathleen Juten
Auburn, Maine
Website
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Top image Michael Sargent | Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

The post Storytelling Full Disclosure appeared first on Take Magazine.