King Crabber’s Pub – Damariscotta, Maine
A Place for Friends and Food
King Crabber’s Pub sits near the bridge, one block off Main in Damariscotta. I’ve been there a couple times, most notibly with Charles and Todd before we crossed the Portal. It’s a tall brick place that you can see from the road when you come down towards the river, the windows lit, and the place is warm and inviting as it sits against the dark water under the bridge.
This isn’t East Bay. It’s a different atmosphere. The kind of place that has fed the town long enough to know it’s patrons, and for the town to know the place.
Charles, Todd, and I came here one night after the Observatory Array wasn’t cooperating and we needed to clear our heads. Todd suggested it, and it sounded good to me as well. That was also the night we found out that Charles was hiding a bunch of expensive cars in the barn. He drives the Land Rover, and said his parents owned the others. I just wondered how rich you have to be to not make a big deal of those kinds of cars in your barn, but I digress.
King Crabber’s Pub: The Building
If you’ve never been inside, the walls are brick, and there are dark cherry floors. Low beams cross the ceiling. Iron hooks hold handmade mugs that look worn from actual use, not from decoration. A short rise of steps reaches the oyster bar. A few more steps lead to a small dining room set apart from the noise below.
The place carries the river in its air. Butter, char, and lemon come from the kitchen. Conversations stay low and easy. A chalkboard lists the oysters and the catch of the day in clear block print. The table by the front window has a view of the bridge lights over the Damariscotta River.
The Food
This is the best part. Seriously.
The crab cakes have a crackling crust and soft centers packed with sweet fresh crab. A little Old Bay and minced celery give a clean bite. A squeeze of lemon makes the crab taste even better. The bacon-wrapped scallops are big and just opaque in the middle, the bacon glazed with brown sugar and black pepper so it snaps and then melts. You get smoke first, then the sea.
The lobster carbonara comes with ribbons of fresh pasta coated in a silky cream and egg sauce, glossy with butter and flecked with cracked black pepper. Chunks of sweet lobster claw and knuckle meat show pink against the pale sauce, with crisp bits of pancetta, a scatter of chives, and a little lemon zest. The first bite is rich and briny at once.
The Mediterranean haddock is roasted until it just flakes, sitting in a shallow pool of olive oil with roasted cherry tomatoes, kalamata olives, capers, garlic, and curls of lemon peel. Each forkful picks up something different.
The barbecue salmon has crosshatch grill marks and a lacquer of house sauce, smoky and a little sweet with molasses and cider vinegar. The Caesar is crisp and cold, romaine coated in a garlicky anchovy dressing with shaved Parmesan and croutons that crack and then soak up the dressing.
The coffee comes in thick cups that hold heat well.
The Atmosphere
Our waitress was Alba that night. I remember her because she was really good at what she did. She set menus out, brought water, but most of all, she gave us space to talk, and when she checked in, she made sure we saw her approaching and could adjust. Oh, and she never oversold the deserts, although Todd was eyeing them all night.
The dining room upstairs is set apart from the noise of the pub below. This is where we sat, and where the food was good enough that nobody talked much for a while after the plates arrived, and we were all okay with it.
Todd chased the last tomato through the oil and wiped the plate with bread. Charles savored his dish. I saved the corner of the salmon with the most char for my last bite. That is the best thing I can say about a meal.
King Crabber’s Pub and the Book Series
The three of us drove down from East Bay on an October evening in Book 1, Charles Mandrake and the Resonance Array. No shop talk at dinner. That was the agreement. What happened instead was a long conversation about East Bay, about what it feels like to grow up somewhere, and what Charles was beginning to understand about friendship.
He said it plainly, sitting at the table by the bridge window with his coffee cooling: he had never had real friends before. Todd told him he brought “balance to the force”. I just told him he was our friend. That was true then. It’s still true now.
King Crabber’s Pub is where that happened.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR – King Eider’s Pub in Damariscotta, ME
King Crabber’s Pub is fictional, but it was inspired by the real place. If you find yourself in Damariscotta, Maine, King Eider’s Pub at 2 Elm Street is worth the stop, and we thank them for being the kind of place that Anna, Charles, and Todd could become true friends.
Dockside Salvage
A Packrat’s Dream
Dockside Salvage is probably best described as a “packrat’s dream shop,” at it sits on dock 9. You get there by walking down Pier Street from the three-way split at Mel’s, past the market. Our town is small enough that you can see Dockside standing at the doorway of Mel’s.
The place was originally one of those small boat repair places, but when most of the business went south to Boothbay, many buildings like that were abandoned. We slowly became a tourist town, and people like Ira Finch purchased the empty places and made them useful again.
From the outside, Dockside looks a lot like the other small warehouses and boat repair places here. There’s the area where boats can be brought in and worked on. This is where Finch now keeps his mounds of packrattish stuff. Todd and Charles often work after school there moving and organizing things for him, and he likes having the company.
There’s a small shop that is attached to the warehouse. I guess it used to be a bait and takle shop, but Finch turned it into a tourist place where he sells the things that he’s salvaged and found.
When you walk into the shop, the first thing that hits you is the smell of his pipe tobacco. He is known in town for smoking Cornel and Diehl’s Autumn Evening during the winter, and the whole place smells like maple syrup and pancakes. If it’s during the summer, he changes out for Elizabethan, which reminds me more of a forest-y smell. There’s always coffee brewed, and if a tourist buys one of the “East Bay” mugs, he’ll offer to fill the cup for them.
If you move to the back wall of the shop, there’s bins with all sorts of small things you never knew you wanted. The bins are marked, but unless Charles sorts them, there’s no rhyme or reason to what’s in them. You might find an old compass, maybe a switch or knob off a console, little lights, things that have no real value mixed in with things you might expect to pay a pretty penny for. Finch never seems to care what something actually costs, he prices things according to how generous he’s feeling at the moment.
I don’t end up at Finch’s as much as Todd or Charles, but I do like going on the evenings that he has a fresh catch from one of his friends, and decides to grill and tell stories in the evening.
Finch is like a father to Todd. For all the years that I have known him, Finch has always been there for him. Sometimes he showed up for the school plays Todd was in. He came to the parade every year that Todd was the school Mascot. Many times he and Todd went out into the woods hunting or doing man things for the weekend.
The last thing that I’ll add here is that if you ever stop in at Dockside Salvage, never get Finch started on his old fishing stories. It will be dark, you’ll have had whatever fish someone brought by or he caught that day, and it will be well after dark before you leave. Finch takes his time, like time was completely irrelevant to him. That’s who he is.
Mel’s Over Easy, East Bay, Maine
Mel's Over Easy
It’s one of those places in a small town where people gather. In the early hours of the morning, it’s the fishing boat and dock workers along with the retirees that get up ridiculously early. The coffee here is always fresh no matter what time you stop in, and if you’re here in the winter time, the place is where everyone goes to warm up from the cold. The door even has a little bell that jingles when customers come in.
For Charles, Todd and I, it’s our spot. Well, It was mine and Todd until Charles moved into the observatory. Mel sat him with us and our duo became a trio almost overnight.
Mel’s in her thirties. She was born in Philidelphia, and moved to East Bay with her parents when she was five. She said her dad bought the place for a good price after working the docks for a few years, and it’s been in the family ever since. She has a kid that’s a little younger than us, Louis. He works in the diner after school when homework isn’t too much. The labor department tried going after Mel for him working, but Gracie Pibbles, Myles’s daughter represented Mel in court and won. Louis isn’t on payroll, he’s family, and he was just helping his mom out. They couldn’t touch him.
Danny’s the other half. Not that Mel ever claims their together, but he’s the guy at the grill. He doesn’t talk much, but every now and then, you can hear him singing old fishing songs in the back as he works. The crazy thing is that it doesn’t seem to matter how many people or orders there are, he get’s it right. Every. Single. Time.
Mel’s Diner, as we locals call it sits at the three-way intersection on the south end of town. Our town is only two miles or so, and everyone walks around. It sits right across from Pier Street Market on the bay-side of the street, and near the library, civic center, and city hall on the other.
Todd loves the meatloaf at Mels. I like the patty melts. Charles gets Charles things. The coffee is free, and we’re thankful for that.
We sit at a four-top in the back next to the bathrooms. It’s almost always open because tourists don’t want to sit next to the bathroom, and have a view of the side of the next shop. We’re locals and don’t care. Mel put in a jukebox a few years ago. Louis keeps finding good records on EBay. I found that I like the Dropkick Murphy songs, but they’re not what I’d normally listen to. They’re just right for some reason in Mel’s.
Evenings at Mel’s are usually students eating and studying, mixed in with locals and tourists. When it’s busy, us kids will either just jump in and help, or get our food to-go if we have to. That’s kind of what local life is like in a tourist town.
– Anna Ko