Sometimes There’s No Choice But To Be Out With the Old and In With the New
Peekytoe Provisions About to Start Months’ Long Quest to Rebuild Itself
BAR HARBOR—Peekytoe Provisions, a squat rectangular restaurant and fish market, hovers above Main Street with a sort of stepped-back authority. Customers climb wooden steps to a hostess stand or through the door into the fish shop and restaurant.
“Hello!” Cyndi Bridges beams toward arrivals. “How are you? How are you?”
And how is she?
A lot of the time she laughs when you ask, but especially now. It’s August, a time of myth for many in Bar Harbor’s retail and service and food industries, a time where a day can often last a month. Bridges will tell you that without a qualm, but she’ll also turn it around, eyes widening with sincerity, “But how about you?”
Peekytoe and Bridges’ conversational, genuine style is reflected not only during her in-person interactions, but also in her emails. Those have become a staple for many recipients.
Every Friday, “Fresh Fish Friday” an email goes out to its regulars. It lists the fresh seafood, a plethora of possibilities for a business that also offers take-out and table service for those who don’t feel like cooking. But it also offers a tiny bit of insight into the truth of what Peekytoe is and who the people who run it are.
“As always,” the latest one reads, “we’d love to feed you!”
Another week?
“Hello Friends!
“It's a beautiful list and a beautiful day!”
Earlier in June, just as the Bar Harbor tourist season started in full swing?
“I don't have a second to spare,” she wrote, “so I apologize for making this super brief!”
Those lack of spare seconds? Bridges and Drew Smith (a triple threat of co-owners and partners and spouses) just got a lot less of them. Beginning September 18, the building on Main Street will be torn down, which may be a shock to some who are used to seeing that building and the flowers in front of it when they head into Bar Harbor. The last times they’ll be open is Labor Day weekend.
“We're super scared, and super excited. We hope you are, too!” Bridges and Smith wrote in an email this Friday announcing the change.
But there’s a purpose in that destruction. They’re rebuilding, hoping to be bigger and better for themselves and their customers.
“We've been working on trying to make this happen since early 2019. COVID threw a wrench in that process, and then last year we had a contractor back out due to lack of subs. So, we put the project out to bid in December of 2022 to ensure it could come together. All projects take longer than expected, but the goal is to be open before July 4 of 2024,” Bridges said. The big goal is the end of June.
There might be a significant loss of income for the couple, but, as always, they are trying to figure out ways to soldier through.
“We are trying to work something out with a seasonal business where we'd be able to just use their kitchen for a once-a-week, online pre-order situation. Ideally, people could order fish on our website and pick-up on Fridays at the kitchen door. We may decide to do smaller menu items like (cold, to cook yourself) crab cakes and/or chowders, etc. There are details to be worked out, but we are hoping to still be able to provide some of our services to the year round community,” Bridges said.
After 13 years together working in other restaurants, Cyndi Bridges and Drew Smith opened the Maine specialty food market hoping to create sustainable products and practices. They’ve lasted nine years already and will have their ten year-business anniversary in September 2024. Their actual ten-year wedding anniversary will be two years later.
LET’S TALK ABOUT DREW SMITH, FOOD, AND THE NEW BUILD
Walk into Peekytoe Provisions any time it’s open (and when it isn’t) and you’ll find Smith working the kitchen equipment, quietly putting out dish after dish after dish with a competent purpose.
“He keeps people fed and happy every day,” Bridges said.
There’s a quiet confidence to Smith’s style as he works the press and the burners. Watching him silently move and tweak and twist, you can see his time in local eateries has crafted a precise skill set that is more like an athlete than many other professions. There’s nothing unsavory in Smith’s kitchen.
Bridges calls him the silent genius. Most of Peekytoe Provision’s menu items are from his mind. And he’s the one behind the stove all day long. Those menu items often include crunchy monkfish nuggets, mahi-mahi tacos, and crabmeat paninis.
Genius.
They make their own soups and the homemade blueberry pie is made by their friend Dick Rand, previous owner of the long lost (but never forgotten) Island Chowder House. “Cause he's the best,” Bridges said. Fresh seafood and local shellfish are available to purchase as well.
It’s a lot.
When you add that they cook lobster in house every day and supervising an employee that picks it? It becomes a mammoth undertaking that Smith handles with grace.
As Bridges told the MDI Hospital during an earlier interview, “Drew and I got married in September 2016 and closed the shop for four days. When we got back, there were several handwritten notes on our sign wishing us a happy marriage and lots of luck. It was very sweet! Our community truly cares about its members and we see things almost every day that prove it–from sharing road conditions to rescuing lost pets and throwing benefits to raise funds for those in need.”
When Bridges and Smith are gone, they are missed. And they’ll be missed again during the reconstruction phase, but it’s worth it, Bridges said, because it’s needed to provide the best service.
“When we bought the building back in 2014, we were told the roof would need replacing in the next six to ten years, so we knew we would at least have to do that. But we also thought we were just going to be a fish market. Think Hermie in Rudolph, who "just wanted to be a dentist!" Since then we have become a full service restaurant with a gigantic menu, but we still only have one six-burner stove and a panini press to put out this gigantic menu. We need to expand our kitchen so that more than one person can put out all of that food! That's why we started to talk to architects and builders in 2019, we thought we may be able to just expand the building and increase the size of the kitchen, but all of the advice we received was to start over. The present building was built in 1890 and has had several additions put on since then. Starting fresh and designing for efficiency and sustainability outweighed the potential problems of an old building requiring more fixing every few years and who knows what else over time,” she said.
“The new building will allow us to separate the market side from the restaurant side of the business, triple the size of our kitchen, triple the amount of indoor seating, add a full bar, cover our outdoor seating so it is not weather dependent, and most importantly, add 3 apartments upstairs to accommodate for year round housing for year round employees.”
That housing accommodation is something that Bar Harbor’s Planning Department and Town Council have been clamoring for, making a housing plan a priority. Like Le Brun on Cottage Street, Bridges and Smith are taking matters into their own hands.
The town’s housing survey conducted in November of 2022 showed that of those surveyed, a majority of the employers (84 percent) said that their employees not living in Bar Harbor have difficulty finding housing that meets their needs. Of the employers responding, 76 percent said they lost an employee due to lack of housing or housing affordability in town.
In January, the town’s Comprehensive Planning Committee heard that the town will need between 522-616 rental units by 2033 and an additional 94 owner-occupied housing units.
Often employees in Bar Harbor have to share housing, sometimes for years, sometimes for season after season.
CHANGES ARE EXTERNAL BUT THE HEART? IT STAYS THE SAME.
Recently, someone on a group social media page talked about what they loved about Bar Harbor was that the servers, the bartenders, hostesses, and bussers were familiar faces year after year. They’d come back and see people from their last vacation. They’d come back and be remembered.
It is, one of the many things, that makes Bar Harbor special, people agreed.
Bridges and Smith are good at remembering the people that come into their business. They are a part of that continuity and recognition, with Bridges joking that they’ve been in the industry in Bar Harbor for forever. Their combined experience is over 50 years.
“We met working at Donohue's (which was previously Bubba's and is now The Finback) back in the early 2000s. We spent several years in Park City, Utah after Donohue's, where we both worked in restaurants/bars and lived the ski town life. Then we tried doing summers here in Bar Harbor and winters in Park City, which was great until the housing crisis began. Finding a place to live with a dog for 6 months at a time in both of those tourist destinations (even back in 2006-2012) was proving to be more and more impossible,” she said. “So we had to make a choice, and we chose the ocean over the Rockies. We also knew it was time to stop working for someone else and figure out how we wanted to do it. It was (and still is!) very scary, but also very rewarding, especially when we get genuinely positive feedback from our local (and tourist) supporters.”
They hope that the support will continue during Peekytoe’s reconstruction phase.
Bowman Constructors out of Newport is the contractor for the project and Design Group Collaborative out of Ellsworth are the architects. Peekytoe has been 100% solar powered (via the community solar farm and an array in Tremont) since 2014, and they will be installing solar on the new building as well.
According to the website and Bridges,
“We are connected to the sea in our backyard. We are committed to our hard-working local clam diggers, lobster people, farmers, our close and supportive community, and the many local businesses making flavorful, honest, Maine foods. Peekytoe Provisions is your year round source for from scratch prepared foods, lunch and lighter fare, fresh oysters, sustainable seafood, local shellfish, local and imported cheeses, Maine made specialty foods, and delicious homemade desserts.
"Peekytoe is absolutely committed to sustainable and renewable practices, from energy to fisheries. We were the very first business supporter of the Bar Harbor Community Solar Farm, and our electricity is 100% solar. We compost all of our food waste, including lobster, clam, mussel and oyster shells, and all vegetable matter, and even our kitchen tickets. We are committed to sustainable aquaculture, and source all of our wild fish from accountable sources."
Peekytoe, just like Bridges and Smith, is a place that’s meant to be real: authentic, local, and friendly, a place that tries its best to stay open well past the tourist season. A place where people are humans meant to be connected with, not tables meant to be turned over.
It’s a place that’s made from love, love of food, love of friends, and love of each other.
“What we are most concerned about in making these huge physical changes is not losing our integrity—with either the food or the business model. We certainly do not want to become ‘too big for our britches.’ The changes are major, but we are utilizing the new space to become more efficient and user friendly, as well as to provide year round housing and year round jobs.”
The main impetus from the very beginning of Peekytoe was to provide year round residents with fresh fish and local shellfish on a year round basis.
“The winter before we opened we were pondering why there wasn't a place to buy oysters for Thanksgiving and Christmas, or scallops during the Maine season (which is only in the winter!) We have a completely different clientele in the off season, and a large amount of those people won't even come into Bar Harbor in the summer. It's wonderful to feel the love from the year round community when most of the tourists go back to their own lives,” Bridges said.
Since it’s opened, Peekytoe has been more year round than many businesses in town.
“We usually take off for the month of March, and more recently we also closed for a week or two after the marathon. However, with year round employee housing and opportunities for work, we are hoping that we won't need to close for a break at all in the future,” Bridges said.
Her biggest worry, she said, is probably finding the right fit of employees and keeping them excited to work and live in Bar Harbor. The excitement about the project and its possibilities outweighs that fear.
“Most definitely having a building that isn't in constant need of repair” is one of those exciting things, she said. “But this is a long list of things if we think about it. Having ample and efficient kitchen space, having indoor and outdoor seating that isn't weather dependent, being able to accommodate larger parties, having a full bar, separating the retail space from the restaurant, This is only naming a few of hundreds of things!”
One of those things they are looking forward to is a building that no longer has stairs heading up to the entrance. And another excitement? It’s the same as the worry, Bridges said. “Also, probably finding the right fit of employees and keeping them excited to work and live here.”
QUICK FACTS:
Closing Labor Day weekend;
Demolition process begins September 18;
Reopening late June;
Gaining 3 employee year round housing units, outdoor seating covering, a bar;
Tripling the size of the kitchen and indoor dining area;
Hopes to open in “pop-up” situation in late fall/early winter.
All photos Carrie Jones and Emily Ciciotte unless otherwise stated.
Check out Peekytoe Provisions at 244 Main Street in Bar Harbor or www.peekytoeprovisions.com for more information.
Read more about the Bar Harbor Community Solar Farm here:
revisionenergy.com/bar-harbors-bold-road-to-solar
Some of the companies and products Peekytoe Provisions carry that are committed to sustainability and renewable food sources:
acadia-aquafarms.com
cleanfish.com
sodexoseafood.com
wrs.co.uk
harborfish.com
brownetrading.com
vetalapalma.es
seachoice.org