Ben Conniff

Campers will have a chance to get up-close and personal with their ingredients when we jump in the kitchen with Chef Ben Conniff and his sustainable seafood. The secret to the superior Maine-style dishes served up at Luke’s Lobster? A community of local fishermen and a long list of simple ingredients with a responsible history of harvesting and handling.

As the co-founder of Luke’s Lobster, one of Ben’s many jobs is keeping the menu seasonal, sustainable, and delicious. Ben founded this seafood-centric restaurant in New York with partner Luke Holden back in 2009, and by 2013, the two opened Luke’s processing facility to guarantee traceability at every step of their seafood’s ocean-to-plate journey. This means making the most healthy and responsible decisions about what ends up on the plate and how it gets there.

When outside of the kitchen and away from the docks, Ben shared his experiences with sustainable food in the Luke’s Lobster cookbook, Real Maine Food; he has also written for Saveur, GQ, Tasting Table, Yankee, and Smithsonian magazines. Ben’s culinary expertise expands far beyond seafood — he sits on the board of Green Bee Craft Beverages, the artisanal honey-sweetened soda company based in Brunswick, Maine; he is also a certified Safe Quality Food Practitioner and a BJCP Beer Judge.

With seasonal specials and classic comfort sides on the Luke’s Lobster menu for campers this summer, and we can’t wait for Chef Ben to teach us more about where our food comes from and what goes into making the seafood at Luke’s Lobster so sustainable.