Maine Chef Brings Seafood Pie to Grocery Store Shelves

Local Brand Features Sustainability as Primary Ingredient 

Chef Sam Hayward is as famous for Fore Street, his downtown Portland, Maine restaurant, as he is for his commitment to local foods. Now he has succeeded in bringing a taste of both closer to kitchen tables around the state with his traditional recipe for seafood pie, featuring sustainably-caught Maine seafood – Maine shrimp, Maine scallops, Maine lobster and rock crab. This seafood pie is now available under the product line Maine Fresh, and is being are sold at Hannaford stores.

Hayward’s Maine Fresh seafood pies, available in shrimp, scallop, crab or lobster, can be found at Hannaford stores.

True to Hayward’s commitment to using as many local ingredients in his food as possible, this traditional pie recipe, a result of years of careful perfecting, is a wealth of the state’s local foods, including its seafood and lobster, cream, sea salt and vegetables. Hayward told the Portland Press Herald that herbs, diced vegetables, flour used for the pastry, and shiitake mushrooms used in the lobster pie will eventually be sourced locally as well.

The Maine Fresh project is a partnership between the for-profit the Cobscook Bay Company and the non-profit Cobscook Community Learning Center in Maine’s Washington Country. In a marriage of local food sustainability and support of local programs, part of the proceeds from Maine Fresh benefit the Center, which supports arts and educational programs in the county. The center represents an asset in an area of the state that provides a bounty of local food but is also challenged economically.

Hayward is known for his early leadership in Maine’s local food movement and for helping to put the state’s thriving culinary scene on the national map. As a James Beard award winner and chef at Fore Street, a restaurant that stands as a jewel in a Maine town crowned “foodiest” by Bon Appétit in 2009, he takes advantage of as many local and seasonal ingredients as possible, tapping Maine farmers, fishermen and foragers for the ingredients that make up his highly-praised dishes. He is known for making inspired use of local wild blueberries, too – in traditional crisps and pies and in dishes that are more unusual, like berry-infused goat cheese mousse.

Read more about Sam Hayward’s Maine Fresh seafood pie.
Learn about Fore Street.