Buck’s Harbor Inn

Back in the mid 1980’s my wife and I stayed at an inn in South Brooksville, Maine. It was named the Buck’s Harbor Inn. The house is still there but the inn closed at some point in the last 20 some odd years. Seeing the house brought back some fond memories of our stay in that little town known more for it’s hospitality to schooners and their guests than anything else. The Buck’s Harbor Marina is still there serving the thousands of sailors that cruise into the tiny sheltered harbor every sailing season. We first discovered it when we took a cruise aboard the Nathaniel Bowditch in the very early 80’s. We fell in love with the town so we went back as landlubbers and stayed for a few days at the inn.

South Brooksville is near Ellsworth which in turn is near Bangor, so you need to travel a bit up the coast to get there. If you’ve ever been to Castine to the Maine Maritime Academy then you’d know how far it is from New Hampshire or Boston or Southern Maine. I’ve been to Castine more than once too with my daughter who had visions of attending the Maritime Academy a few years ago. But back to Buck’s Harbor and the Buck’s Harbor Inn.

One rainy day we didn’t have much to do, so I found myself in the kitchen with the owner. Being an aspiring chef back then I asked if I could help with the prep for the evening’s meal at the inn. They served dinner by reservation almost every evening during the season. I don’t know if they were open in the off-season. It’s been too many years to recall such a minute detail, however the rest of the story is as clear as if it had happened yesterday. While doing some prep we obviously were talking about the inn, cooking and the evening’s menu. The conversation went to my clam chowder which I was eager to talk about even back then. She said she had some room on the menu for my chowder as long as it tasted good enough. Well I was up to the challenge for sure! She told me to go shopping for the ingredients, that she’d pay for them and the chowder would be on the menu that evening if she approved it. So… off to Ellsworth I went! I was back within an hour and I was making my ‘famous in my own mind’ clam chowder.

About an hour later I’d finished the chowder. I’d used Gorton’s Minced Clams or Snow’s I forget, but they were canned clams for sure. I’d bought them at Shaw’s in Ellsworth. This is an important part to this story so pay attention. That evening everyone in the dining room was treated to clam chowder. We were amongst the dinner guests that evening at the inn. The dining room was full for the one time seating. Out came the chowder and of course it was not announced that I was the maker of the chowder until all had had their fill. Several diners requested seconds as it was announced their was plenty. Before the main course was served the owner came out and announced that one of the guests had made the chowder. Well a local fisherman whom I’d met a day or two earlier was among the guests that evening and he was in on the ‘clam scam’ as I like to call it. The guests raved about the chowder which made me feel very good of course, but they were all raving about the freshness of the clams! Knowing they were in clam country, they were just under the assumption I’d dug them myself. The local fisherman from Cape Rosier helped the story along by saying he and I had dug the clams that morning over in the clam beds off Cape Rosier. We laughed hysterically afterward as we’d ‘enhanced’ the clam chowder story and pulled it off. It was pretty spontaneous at the time, but he was quite the character and his story was as big as Maine itself.

So the clam chowder was a success. It was served at the restaurant until it closed as I’d left her the recipe. The ’clam scam’ story has probably been forgotten, but it still lingers in my memories of our stay at the Buck’s Harbor Inn.

Tagged as: Buck's Harbor, Cape Rosier, Clam Chowder History, Maine Stories