After only a week serving locally caught seafood, razor clam belly to bay shrimp, Maritime is already changing things up. 

As Eat Beat first reported in May, former Le Pigeon chef de cuisine Andrew Mace, one of Portland Monthly’s Next Top Chefs, paired up with Community Supported Fishery's Jeff Wong to bring hyper-local Oregon seafood straight to the people. Originally, Wong and Mace planned to spread their gospel via a roving food cart, Maritime. But after a week parked in front of Northeast 24^th Avenue's Han Oak, Mace realized he’d be better off evangelizing all over town, starting with collaborations with Han Oak’s Peter Cho.

Maritime will live on at Han Oak in the form of casual drop-in lunches and dinners, with a slightly more refined, less deep-fried approach (think albacore ceviche prepared with Jiro-like precision). Mace says he’ll keep the Salt and Pepper shrimp, a riff on the Chinese takeout staple using local Oregon Bay shrimp. That’s a relief: Those guys are fried head- and shell-on, seasoned with rice flour, black pepper, and coriander and served with a green goddess-style sauce reimagined with lime juice, fish sauce, ginger, and Thai chiles. The dish is crunchy, light, and addictive, and as far from the bay crustacean’s typical image of dweeby, chemical-soaked cocktail shrimp as possible.

Away from Han Oak, Maritime will continue to evolve in borrowed spaces like Old Salt, where lunches, dinners, and even seafood butchery classes are intended to educate people about the sustainable, local fishing program.

Lastly—and this is a major teaser—Mace tells us the Maritime dinners are leading up to an eventual brick-and-mortar, tentatively set to open in close-in Northeast Portland, near Le Pigeon, in summer 2018. Why the ridiculous lead time? The current building will be leveled in early 2017 for a big, mixed-use office space. Maritime intends to take the ground floor as a restaurant, small processing facility for coastal seafood, and retail space. 

In the meantime, you can get updates on Maritime’s lunch, dinner, and class schedule via Instagram. More info as it becomes available.