He Started as the Fry Cook. Now He Owns Seafood Ketch.

By the time Ryan Lynde bought Seafood Ketch in 2021, generations of Mount Desert Island families already had memories tied to the restaurant.

Some still come in and tell him their grandparents used to bring them there.

Ryan’s connection to the place began much differently. About a decade earlier, he showed up looking for a summer job.

“I started as the fry cook,” he said.

At the time, owning a restaurant was nowhere in his plans. Ryan grew up in Blue Hill and commuted nearly an hour each way to MDI High School for football. He worked in restaurants for years but never imagined himself running one.

“No chance,” he said. “I worked in restaurants for a long time and never thought I wanted to own a restaurant.”

But the previous owners noticed something in him. Over time, they taught him more than just the kitchen. Baking bread in the morning. Hosting. Managing the floor. Learning the rhythms of a busy summer restaurant in a coastal town where everybody seems to know everybody.

After a few years, they casually floated the idea of him buying the place someday. Then they brought it up again. And again.

“The year after that, they were like, ‘So next year you want to buy it, right?’” Ryan said with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Oh wow. I have been saying yes for three years now.’”

He officially bought Seafood Ketch in January of 2021, just as the island was entering one of the busiest and strangest tourism seasons in recent memory. COVID restrictions were still in place. Staffing was difficult. The lines were out the door.

“It was brutal,” Ryan said. “But financially, it was very lucrative.”

Since then, he’s slowly put his own stamp on the restaurant without erasing what longtime customers loved about it. There’s a newer bar wrapped around a walnut slab countertop. Local artwork hangs throughout the dining rooms. The menu still centers on seafood classics, but the details matter.

The lobster roll comes on homemade bread baked in-house. The seafood casserole is the top seller. Locals order escargot with garlic butter and bread for dipping. And the cocktail list includes the Midsummer Nice Dream, a blueberry-and-raspberry vodka drink Ryan first started making as a late-night shot for regulars.

More than anything, Seafood Ketch still feels like a local place.

“Everybody that works here is from around here,” Ryan said. “They all have friends and family that come in.”

And on warm summer nights, with the patio full and Bass Harbor in view, that feeling is part of what keeps people coming back.

Famous for:
Seafood casserole, homemade lobster roll buns, and Bass Harbor views.

47 Shore Rd, Bass Harbor, ME | seafoodketch.com

photos by Peter Logue