York Corner
Two Sundays ago we sought out Kent and Lucy Kilgore at the restaurant they run, Maude Hutchins, now located at Foster's Clambake, at the corner of York Street (Route 1A) and Axholme Road.
They were way too busy with customers on that day to chat with us, but we caught up with them midway through a slack Wednesday afternoon last week (when it was, by the way, still raining), and here's what we learned.
"This place has everything we didn't have there: visibility, parking, seating," said Lucy, in comparing the old and new spots. In their first location, in the Village but tucked in off York Street behind and below Bragdon Insurance, they had just barely room enough to turn around - and no place for customers to sit down and eat. In summer, that was OK because people were happy getting takeout for the beach, but, come winter, said Lucy, "a lot of people would come in, look around, and then leave."
She and Kent installed a counter there and four stools, and those helped some, but the big change came after Kent began negotiations with Paul Murphy and Kevin Tacy, Foster's proprietors.
Kent told us that he'd known Paul and Kevin for a long time when he learned that they were seeking to lease. The arrangement the four worked out freed up Paul and Kevin to focus on the clambake side of their business - and it catapulted Kent and Lucy into a busy summer.
"Business has been very good. Summer was incredible," Lucy exclaimed. "We were used to another pace, where customers trickled in. Here, they were lined up to the counter every day."
For fare, the Kilgores kept just about all of what Maude's had become prized for - its distinctive lobster pot pies, lobster stew, seafood chowder and Portuguese seafood stew, for example - and melded it with some of what Foster's had been offering: fried foods, wraps and Foster's own popular clam chowder. And customers now place their orders at the counter and then take a seat, carrying with them a big, red plaster-of-Paris replica of a lobster claw with a white number on it easily seen by staff when they deliver the food to the table.
Asked if they'd experienced any big surprises in effecting the move, Lucy said no, that her own experience led her to predict that "it was going to be a lot of work and a lot of hours."
That experience, for those who don't know the incredibly hard-working Lucy (and Kent, too), includes eight years of teaching first grade at the Village Elementary School, plus five in special ed before that - plus (most significantly for the Maude venture) 25 years of summers waitressing at Bosn's Landing.
For his part, Kent has taken a year's leave of absence from teaching physical education at the York Middle School, but he continues to run his own Skipper's Bay Lobster Meat, Inc., in which he supplies lobster meat, shelled, to restaurants from Kittery to Wells.
The Kilgores are also doing some catering, offering platters and some specialty items, and supplying food for special occasions at the new facility - the high school's football banquet, for example, and the American Heart Association's local fashion show.
Additionally, the Kilgores run a Maude-product ("Maude Hutchins Premium") mail-order business in which they ship their wares - lobster stew, lobster tails, lobster cakes, seafood pot pies, seafood chowder and lobster pot pies - vacuum-sealed, all over the country. They're now exploring the possibility of shipping these foods fresh and overnight, Lucy said.
"That business is just getting off the ground," she added.
Staff from the former Maude's followed Lucy and Kent to the new one, where they were joined, at busy times in summer, by the high school and college students hired by Paul and Kevin to work their clambake.
When we were first at Maude's two Sundays ago, we chatted a bit with customers Lisa and Archie Jones, and they pointed out one of those young workers behind the counter: their son, Christopher, 19. A 2004 graduate of York High School, he'd spent a year at Carleton College in Minnesota, they reported, and now was considering studying education to pursue a career in coaching after having spent the summer running the track program for the York Parks and Recreation Department.
Their daughter, Lisa, now a senior at the University of Maine in Orono, also worked at Maude/Foster's in the summer, the Joneses said. Lisa, they added, is a journalism major who would like to link a journalism career with travel.
When we talked with the Kilgores, we inquired after their twin sons.
Both, they said, are now out of college, Adam with a degree in journalism from Syracuse, and Zachary with an engineering degree from Duke.
Adam, Lucy reported, is now a sports journalist with The Washington Post covering Atlantic Coast Conference sports events nationwide, and with a home beat in Virginia and at Virginia Tech.
Zach is pursuing his real passion, which is music, Lucy said, and has been living in Boston. With three musician-buddies in a band, however, she added, he's about to depart for California.
When we asked Lucy that question about whether there had been any surprises in Maude's big move, she told us that she missed "getting to meet so many people from all over the world." The small size and leisurely pace of the former Maude's meant that she could "sit and chat with customers, and hear their life stories." That happens now, she added, "once in a while on a slow day, but not in summer."
For the record, the story behind Maude's name (now retold many times over) is that Maude Hutchins was Kent's great-grandmother, from Perkins Cove. Her father, George Adams, founded the Cove Fish Company in 1856, and it's her husband, Warren Hutchins, who is featured, along with friend George Yorke, in an old photograph printed as the background in Maude's current menu. In the photo, George is mending net and Warren is whittling wooden pegs for lobster claws.
In various incarnations over the years, the restaurant at Foster's has been known as Chuck's Landing, The Warm Penguin and The Fin and Claw.
It's official new name is Maude Hutchins Premium Seafood Restaurant at Foster's.
If you're interested, get there soon, because, while Maude's was open for seven days a week in summer, it's now open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, and it will be closing for a brief winter respite between Jan. 1 and mid-March.
Cheers to Kent and Lucy and their staff for some fine work all around.
