11 minute read
The Shipwright's Captain
James Beard award-winning chef David Standridge steers the local culinary industry in a sustainable and community-focused direction
By Elle Rahilly
Here, you can really connect with the people doing the farming and the fishing, and I think that connection is where the soul of a cuisine comes from.
Sustainability and fine dining don’t often go hand-in-hand, but chef David Standridge and his crew at The Shipwright’s Daughter are shifting the culinary tide with deliciously unconventional foods. The Mystic restaurant’s award-winning menu is infused with eco-friendly catches like green crabs, sugar kelp, and slipper limpets for a unique twist on time-honored dishes.
“I always fill the kitchen with the best ingredients I can get and then figure it out from there,” says Standridge, awarded “Best Chef Northeast” for 2024 by the James Beard Foundation. Standridge lets the area’s bounty shape the tide-to-table restaurant’s menu, which changes daily. Rather than ordering specific ingredients, the chef asks local growers, farmers, and fishermen to provide him with whatever is ample or ready for harvesting that day.
“This is what we have to do as a food culture,” the chef explains. He notes that much of the food consumed today travels long distances and is often grown in less-than-ideal ways. “If a crop can be grown that’s delicious and great for the environment, then we just need to eat it.”
The James Beard Awards were first presented in 1991 in honor of the pioneering American food personality James Beard to recognize the country’s luminaries in the culinary world. Best Chef awards go to those who set high standards in their culinary skills and leadership abilities while helping to create a sustainable work culture in their respective regions and contribute positively to their broader community. The Best Chef Northeast category brings in nominees from across New England. Standridge’s award marks Connecticut’s first James Beard win since 2006.
Standridge moved to Mystic and opened The Shipwright’s Daughter in 2020 following significant tenures at top-tier restaurants, including New York City’s Eleven Madison Park and L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon.
“I’ve always loved New England and wanted to end up here eventually,” shares the New Jersey native. “I used to sail a lot with my dad in my late teens and early twenties, and Mystic was a big stopping point for us on our way to Maine.”
A desire to connect with the source inspired Standridge to bring his talents to the shoreline. “You can get anything you want from around the world in New York, but nothing really comes from there,” he says. “Here, you can really connect with the people doing the farming and the fishing, and I think that connection is where the soul of a cuisine comes from.”
When a local family member connected Standridge to an opportunity in Mystic, he took to social media to see which local suppliers were doing good work in the community. Two of the chef’s first discoveries were soy sauce brewer Bob Florence and seaweed farmer Suzie Flores of Stonington Kelp Co.—who, with her husband Jay Douglas, owns and operates a regenerative ocean farm in Fishers Island Sound specializing in sustainable sugar kelp cultivation. Sugar kelp is a native seaweed that absorbs carbon and nitrogen (which suffocate aquatic life) from the water as it grows. On the plate, it delivers a nutrient-dense food packed with fiber, vitamins, and minerals.
“Once I learned about the environmental benefits of growing kelp and the nutritional benefits of eating it, they had me sold,” says Standridge. Flores brought him out on the boat to help harvest kelp, and it quickly made its way into the heart of the restaurant’s menu.
“When we first got it, we started using it to kind of sneak it into people’s diet—in an aioli, or as a powder, or a stock, or a soup or something,” the chef shares. Ultimately, the chef wanted the kelp to take the center plate. “Like someone might wrap scallops in bacon, we wrap them in kelp,” he continues. “We fry it and use it as a crispy topping on top of pasta to give it that salinity and crunchiness.”
Today, Standridge tries to buy enough of the winter crop during the short harvest period (roughly late March to June) to last him the entire year. Throughout the season, he will use a lot of fresh kelp and then dry and pickle the rest. The preserved kelp goes into crudos (raw fish), broths, and even desserts—including an ice cream sundae with candied kelp, crunchy kelp, and kelp caramel.
“The kelp kind of brings saltiness and a little bit of umami flavors into the caramel,” Standridge explains. “We did an espresso flan with sugar kelp caramel; that was a big hit.”
Standridge also works closely with local fishermen like Jason Jarvis of Westerly, Rhode Island, to effectively utilize the diversity of local seafood while minimizing waste. According to Standridge, Jarvis is a fellow champion of sustainable fishing practices.
“He’s just one of those guys who works very sustainably and harvests the right fish,” says the chef. “He was willing to get me a lot of fish and other species of aquatic life that were a little more sustainable, harder to get, and less sought after.”
Standridge asks Jarvis to tell him when he’s going fishing and lets Jarvis know how many pounds of fish he can take. Whatever the fisherman catches is what the restaurant will end up using.
Through Jarvis, Standridge began to source slipper limpets, a local sea snail with a slipper-shaped shell seen scattered all over beaches along the shoreline. “They’re one of my favorite seafoods to eat, actually,” the chef shares. “And they’re prevalent to the extreme. Our clam guys have to dig through layers of them just to get to the clams.”
Standridge has started incorporating more into the restaurant’s menu with signature dishes like the “sea-scargot,” a local spin on escargot that Standridge says has been a real crowd-pleaser.
Jarvis also introduced the chef to green crabs, an invasive species that came from Europe in merchant vessels hundreds of years ago and has become a huge focus for The Shipwright’s Daughter due to its environmental impact.
“They don’t have a lot of predators; they compete with local crabs for food, and they pull out the eelgrass at the root—which is coastal protection for us against flooding and storm surges, as well as a natural habitat for other animals,” Standridge explains.
Green crabs usually dissipate in the cold water and return in the summer. Now that the waters are warmer than ever, the populations aren’t reducing in the winter.
The Shipwright’s Daughter was the first restaurant in Connecticut to start cooking with green crabs. Standridge has been instrumental in pushing it on a larger scale across the culinary industry.
“They’re wonderful to cook with, but American chefs just aren’t as exposed to them,” says the James Beard winner, who shares that the crab’s roe is a delicacy in France. “They have a beautiful flavor, similar to one you would get from a crab or lobster bisque.”
The crab’s small size makes harvesting its meat difficult, so Standridge uses the crab for different stocks at the restaurant, which are added to fish curries, pasta sauces, and other dishes like local scallops with green crab fried rice.
“That’s probably our most popular entrée,” Standridge shares. “We sell about a thousand of those a month, and a dollar from every dish sold goes to GreenCrab.org. So, it’s really helping them expand their operations.”
Standridge has been working with GreenCrab.org to help broaden the market for green crabs. This past spring, he conducted masterclasses to introduce local chefs to techniques for cooking with sugar kelp and green crabs in a commercial environment.
“That’s one of the things about the James Beard Awards that really helps,” he says. “Because when you win, there are about a gazillion other chefs out there who want to win, so people start looking very closely at what you’re doing.”
While most of the tide-to-table restaurant’s menu comes from the sea, Standridge utilizes Westerly Farm Co-op for farm-to-fork ingredients. “I kind of built the menu based on the percentage of what we should be eating—mostly local, sustainable fish, a lot of vegetables, and a little bit of beef,” says the chef. Beef appears in just a couple of dishes on the menu, including grass-fed ground beef from local supplier Golden Farms.
Standridge says it was challenging to get people to buy into the restaurant’s avant-garde cuisine upon opening. Still, he viewed the challenge as an opportunity to support the local blue economy while educating visitors to the shoreline. The tide began to shift when the Connecticut Restaurant Association awarded The Shipwright’s Daughter “Restaurant of the Year” in 2022.
“People started to know who we were,” Standridge says. “We started getting more press, and I was like, okay, this is building towards something now.”
He attributes much of the restaurant’s success to the staff and feels lucky that the people who stayed bought in.
“What I found is, the kind of people who want to come and work here are people who also value doing something good for the community,” Standridge reflects. “Our staff has been very happy to get behind it, and they’re amazing.”
Second in command in the kitchen is executive sous chef Michael McHugh, who has been there since the beginning. Standridge describes him as the backbone of the kitchen, going above and beyond to make things work throughout the pandemic and the more challenging years. Leading the front of the house is general manager Claire Procaccini, who started as a bartender during the restaurant’s most chaotic time. Standridge says she jumped in with both feet and has since risen to general manager, which is one of Standridge’s favorite success stories.
Standridge’s wife Kathleen has also played a huge role. A sommelier by trade, she joined the team in the second year and took over the wine program. As a talented storyteller with a deep understanding of the restaurant’s mission, Kathleen also directs the company’s marketing. In fact, she named the restaurant.
“We wanted to pick a name that would pay homage to Mystic’s nautical history but also indicate that we were kind of the next generation,” Standridge explains.
“Our ownership group is pretty amazing and forward-thinking,” says Standridge. The family-run company, which also owns the Whaler’s Inn in Mystic, stood by the restaurant even when it was losing money. Standridge confesses he questioned their sanity but says they are being rewarded for their patience. “They are the best bosses I’ve ever had, that’s for sure,” the chef adds.
Outside the kitchen, Standridge serves on the Eating with the Ecosystem board. He has also been recognized as a leader of the James Beard Foundation’s Smart Catch—an education program created by chefs, for chefs to increase the sustainability of seafood offered on menus. Standridge also teams up with other local chefs to help get the word out, including hosting a kelp dinner this year at Max Fish in Hartford, as well as one with James Wayman of Nana’s Bakery & Pizzeria and Grass & Bone Butcher Shop and Table, both in Mystic.
Looking ahead, the chef anticipates that consumers will need remain willing and open to trying new foods and be flexible with their diets as the shoreline’s natural habitat and wildlife continue to shift with climate change. At The Shipwright’s Daughter, Standridge says diners can expect to see dogfish on the menu, a small shark he describes as delicious and super sustainable.
“We kind of took over the sustainability label, and other chefs have really followed suit,” says Standridge. “And that’s what we wanted to happen. I would love to see the local restaurant industry as a whole kind of go in this direction—where the tourists are leaving better than they came, understanding a little more, and really supporting the community.”
The Shipwright’s Daughter is located at 20 East Main Street in Mystic. Hours are Monday through Friday from 8 to 10 a.m. and 5 to 9 p.m.; Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.; and Sundays from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Call 860-536-7605 or visit shipwrightsdaughter.com for more information and menu updates.
