Waiting on the Tide Demand for clams still high in Maine despite plankton threat

loading...

Down East, people are still clamoring for clams.

The red tide scare has been relegated to a single question: “Are the clams safe?” That is easily dismissed by waiters and waitresses. Once assured, restaurant customers order up a plate of fried clams and dig in.

In Machias, the price of a plate of fried clams at Helen’s Restaurant is going up by one dollar, to $14.95, next week, once the new menus come back from the printers. Owner Judy Hanscom hates to do that, but she has to.

“We are paying $25 more for a shipment of clams than we were paying a year ago,” Hanscom said. “That price went up $5 just since last week.

“We are paying more for everything, almost twice as much for scallops than last year. Everything is more expensive, because of the prices of fuel. We can’t absorb it all like restaurants in Boston can, and people probably understand that.”

The prices of seafood have risen, wholesale and retail, but the call of customers asking for clams hasn’t subsided.

“If people want fried clams, they want fried clams,” Hanscom said. “So we have to keep ordering them.”

Farther west on U.S. Route 1, clams are still a steady seller at the White House Restaurant in Jonesboro.

Owner Lorraine Proctor works hard to keep the price down for customers – many of whom are clam diggers themselves.

“We’d like to see the [wholesale] price go down, but then that wouldn’t help the clammers who eat here. That’s what they do for a living,” Proctor said.

“Mostly we have been paying $90 or $95 a gallon for clams, which is by no means cheap. At least it’s not the $135 that we were paying.”

Menu prices for fried clams are about $12 for a small order and $14 for a larger order.

Oddly, people are ordering clams like never before.

“We have sold twice as many clams in the last month as we expected we would,” Proctor said. “People ask about [the effects of red tide], but once you reassure them, they eat them up. They love them.”

Proctor buys her clams locally from Barbara Fish of the CE Fish Co., within a mile of the restaurant.

“Her clams are always so good,” she said. “I wouldn’t dream of getting them anywhere else. They’re [local workers] still clamming here.”

In Columbia, the owner of Judy Ann’s Restaurant, also on Route 1, has had some trouble recently keeping enough clams on hand for customers.

“It’s just been hard to get good ones,” said Judy Bubar, who also buys her clams locally. “I won’t serve frozen ones, and I won’t serve Canadian ones. That’s because they are not my usual quality. I’d rather say I’m out of clams than serve ones that aren’t the usual quality.”

At Dennett’s Wharf and Oyster Bar in Castine, co-owner Gary Brouillard said he had been able to keep a regular supply of clams.

“Prices have gone up. We’re paying more, but I think that’s to be expected,” he said. “Prices are up about 10 percent.

“Customers are curious. They definitely want to know where it’s coming from,” Dennett said. “They question us because of all the publicity, but we’re able to reassure them that our sources are dependable.” Red tide hasn’t stopped people from ordering shellfish at the restaurant, Brouillard said.

Chris Jones, co-owner of The Quarterdeck Restaurant on Main Street in Bar Harbor, said that earlier in the year he had some problems with availability.

“We had a couple of weeks when there was a problem,” Jones said. “First it was mussels, and then they closed the flats and it was steamers. But it was only about one week or so that we had problems.

“Right now I wouldn’t say it was a problem,” he said. “Customers ask questions, but they haven’t stopped eating shellfish.”

Sarah Tinney, daughter of the owner and manager at Duffy’s Restaurant on Route 1 in Orland, said prices of clams had increased by $30 to $102 a gallon.

“We deal only with Maine Shellfish. We don’t buy from local diggers,” she said. “We’ve had very good luck with them. There were a few times when supplies were short, but it hasn’t been too much of a problem. We’re a regular customer, and I think they tend to take care of the people who do a lot of business with them.”

There are rumors that prices might go as high as $150-$160 per gallon, Tinney said.

“If it gets that high, it puts us in a hard place. Do we sell at that price or not sell it? Tourists will pay anything, but we have a lot of local people here and we don’t want to put the price up to the point that we scare them away.

“We’re a diner and we offer a big meal for a decent amount of money. If we lose one or two orders, we lose our profit.”

In Stonington, Jack Scott, co-owner of The Fisherman’s Friend Restaurant, said he has found clams to be available, and prices charged by his supplier, Oceanside Seafood, haven’t gone up much yet.

“It’s odd. I’ve been talking with the dealers and the prices aren’t as high as they expected. Part of that’s because the demand has dropped radically in some areas.”

In Cape Cod, which traditionally buys clams from this area, “people don’t want to touch them,” Scott said.

The publicity about red tide has not had a major impact on sales at his restaurant, Scott said.

“Either people haven’t heard about it or they understand that the red tide is not prevalent in this area,” he said. “Sometimes we seem to use fewer clams than usual. But we sell a lot of fried clams. I don’t think the effect has been significant – not as much as you might expect with all the publicity.”

Not all retailers are feeling the pinch of clams. In Milbridge, Walter Tibbetts of Tibbetts Seafood Market said he is selling clams at 20 cents a pound less now than this time a year ago. The price to his customers is $2.20 – and this is prime time for clams.

“All the summer is decent for clam sales,” he said. “But this is the weekend [Fourth of July] you’ll sell your biggest amounts.”

Tibbetts buys from local diggers, who are unaffected in western Washington County by red tide threats. Still, the local customers who have heard about red tide elsewhere haven’t stopped asking about the clams’ source.

“Oh, people do ask,” he said, “but there’s no red tide here, and the price hasn’t even been affected.”