December 7, 2014 — Veteran chef Aaron Park couldn’t wait to share the freshest Maine sea scallops he’d seared for his daughter, Ruth Connelly, at their Bath home. These meaty, toddler palm-sized, dry-packed “dayboat” scallops turn up the day they’re harvested at select markets come December. They were a revelation for Park when he first came to Maine from the West Coast in 1989.
Park, who co-owns and heads the kitchen at Henry and Marty Restaurant in Brunswick, wanted his daughter, then about 6, to revere this winter delicacy, too. Alas, her shellfish allergy presented itself that night. Park had told Ruth no dessert unless she ate at least one beautiful scallop bite. Dad spent a regretful night next to his daughter in the bathroom as it all came back up. (Today, Ruth is 14 and a vegetarian.)
Since he can’t cook scallops at home, Park is all the more eager to plate the now-peak season Maine specimens for his customers. Scallop season is strictly regulated, and fisherman mining the close-to-the-coast state beds are subject to daily catch limits and a rotational management plan, where waters open the past two years are now closed to rebuild the stocks. When the fleeting, up to 70-day season started, Park looked forward to Maine Dayboat Scallops Inc. dealer Togue Brawn appearing at the back door of his restaurant, peddling buckets of the mollusk’s sweet, still-twitching adductor muscles. The scallops are cut from the shell just hours before on small Down East boats in Washington and Hancock counties, where they are most plentiful.
Brawn fears Maine’s 400-plus boats could exhaust in-shore state scallop quotas by late January, well before the season ends. So she is doing what she can to market the esteemed Maine scallop now, here and out of state: she made connections with a handful of New York City’s restaurants, and she overnights dry-ice-packed scallops within a day of harvest, in attractive holiday gift totes that she ships nationwide (mainedayboatscallops.com).
Read the full story from The Portland Press Herald