One cousin catches, the other cooks
Fisherman Mark Sewall and restaurateur Jeremy Sewall know their Maine lobsters
YORK, Maine -- On a blazing hot afternoon, fisherman Mark Sewall is steering Kelpa, his 38-foot lobster boat, out of York Harbor to haul a string of traps for his cousin Jeremy Sewall. When they reach the first trap, Mark slows the boat, pulls on his orange Grundens overalls and work gloves, grabs the buoy line and as it screeches and whines, spitting algae slime and seawater all over the boat, pulls the trap to the surface. Inside, the lobsters are snapping their tails and clicking their claws in the air.
Most of these lobsters are headed for Lineage, where they'll be boiled in seawater and eaten in the rough. The Brookline restaurant is owned by Jeremy. All summer long, he gets lobsters from Mark and offers them on his menu. Today, the cousins are hosting their families and friends when they get back to the wharf. Jeremy will light a makeshift grill, boil the catch of the day, and serve it with an array of dishes, then homemade biscuits and fruit.
Mark, 45, in a Red Sox cap, ribbed undershirt, and frayed jean shorts, has been fishing these waters since he was a kid. He has 800 lobster pots and traps sweet Northern shrimp in the winter. This morning, as usual, he left the harbor at 5:30 a.m. with Tim Lessard, his sternman of nine years. By noon they had hauled 300 traps and steamed back to the harbor to unload. He saved his best traps for the cookout.
Their grandfather, George Sewall, was also a lobsterman in York, and their fathers grew up fishing before becoming engineers. Jeremy was raised in Lagrangeville, N.Y., in the Hudson River Valley, but spent summers in Maine, and as a teenager went lobstering with his cousin. Every day in the summer at Lineage, he makes "cousin Mark's day-boat lobster," and on Sundays he offers a $45 three-course menu featuring the lobsters in two of the dishes.
On the boat, Jeremy talks fishing with Lessard and teases Mark's kids, Sam, 8, and Lila, 6. Mark's wife, Eileen, is at home. As Mark and Lessard pull up the traps, the contents of every one are a surprise. Most are full of lobsters with some crabs and an occasional cod or flounder. The best spot for fishing is right over York Ledge, about a mile offshore where the water is only 20 feet deep in spots. Lessard tosses back undersize lobsters and egg-laden females whose tails have been notched by other fishermen.
Next, the trap is re-baited with fresh bags of salted herring, and a couple of chunky fish frames, the door latched, and the trap dropped into the water. Between traps, Sam Sewall snaps heavy blue bands over the lobster claws. "The first job on the boat is banding lobsters," says Jeremy. "If you survive that, you move up to something else."
With the seas calm, the afternoon feels more like a pleasure cruise than hard work. "This is as easy as fishing gets," says Jeremy, 35. "My dad's biggest fear was that I would have wanted to be a lobsterman. But there was never a chance. It's one thing to haul some traps in the summer and come back to the harbor tan and ripped. But one day out there in the winter and I'm done. It takes 12 hours to get out to the fishing grounds and haul 300 traps. That's even worse than being in the kitchen." With the traps pulled, and the tank full of lobsters, Lessard hoses down the deck and the boat goes back to the harbor.
Jeremy hops off, and starts passing around Shipyard Ale, which is brewed in Portland. He cracks the bottles open with the blunt side of a chef's knife and boasts that he can "open a beer with almost any kitchen utensil."
Jeremy and his wife, Lisa, and their two sons live in Upton. Growing up, Jeremy's parents owned a cafe at the Sky Acres Airport near Poughkeepsie. "People lined up for Mom's waffles and homemade soups," he says. He went to the Culinary Institute of America and then worked in restaurants in London and Amsterdam. The couple met at L'Espalier, where he was a line cook and she was pastry chef. Then they moved to California to The Lark Creek Inn north of San Francisco. Four years ago, he became the executive chef of Great Bay in the Hotel Commonwealth. Last year, they opened Lineage; Lisa is the pastry chef. She is home today, working at the restaurant. One or the other is almost always on the premises.
Jeremy has packed his minivan with all the essentials for a dockside meal: cream, lemons, mangoes, garlic, butter for the lobsters, a big pitcher of homemade lemonade, and fresh corn. He has jury-rigged a grill, which he loads with hardwood charcoal. In the spring and fall, fishermen grill hot dogs on the wharf while they do boat work and fix traps. Today's fare is a novelty.
In a cast-iron teapot, he warms the butter with rosemary and thyme. He browns chorizo and grilled red onion in a pot for his steamer clams and lays out soft taco shells packed with big chunks of lobster, mango salsa, and avocado mousse. He toasts slices of baguette topped with fresh mozzarella and local cherry tomatoes on the grill, boils the lobsters in seawater with the corn, and spoons fresh berries and whipped cream onto fluffy biscuits that Lisa made. Everything is arranged on big white platters and as the sun goes down, the meal is devoured by family and friends. He jokes with his cousin. "This is just like how Grandma cooked down on the docks," he says. (She was more likely to throw together lobster sandwiches.)
When he opened Lineage, Jeremy learned that the Sewalls have descendants in Brookline, too. Samuel Sewall, an early abolitionist and judge in the Salem witch trials, owned Brooklin, a 350-acre estate that stretched from Harvard Street to the Charles River and gave the town its name.
As Jeremy loads the van with lobsters to head back to the restaurant, he looks comfortable with the chore. The cousins both work long hours. Jeremy says he spends about 80 hours in the kitchen, which he figures is as much time as Mark is on the water.
"The kitchen is hard work, too," says the chef. "But I know my dad sleeps better thinking of me over the stove, rather than out on the boat."
Lineage, 242 Harvard St., Brookline, 617-232-0065, lineagerestaurant.com. 