Chef Spotlight – Christian Gordon
Executive Chef, Federal Jack’s Bar

Top Food that’s Top of the Line

Christian Gordon is all about keeping it real. As executive chef of Federal Jack’s and several other casual, pub-oriented restaurants in southern Maine, Gordon has the resources and the experience to cook any kind of food he wants to, but his real mission is to turn out the best brewpub fare he can. Federal Jack’s, in Kennebunkport, was the birthplace of Shipyard Brewing Company, one of Maine’s first craft breweries and certainly one of its best-loved.

The food is every bit as good, as befits a popular, fun-loving New England brewpub, from classic clam chowder and Maine mussels steamed in Goat Island Light, to fried Maine clams and Potato Encrusted Haddock. “Even something as simple as a cheeseburger can be the best cheeseburger you ever had,” says Gordon, a lifelong Mainer and self-taught cook who has worked for the company since 1998. During his nine-year tenure with Federal Jack’s, Gordon has helped open additional restaurants and introduce more contemporary menu items, at the same time keeping the food close to its brewpub roots.

From a simple seven-barrel operation launched in 1992 in the basement of Federal Jack’s, Shipyard has grown into a major force in the burgeoning craft-brew industry, eventually partnering with microbrewer Sea Dog Brewing Company, and operating two additional restaurant/brewpubs under that name, as well as inns and eateries on Peaks Island in Portland, and at the Sunday River ski area in Bethel, Maine. It’s a somewhat far-flung empire, made a little easier with the opening, in 2003, of a commissary in Bangor that produces all of the restaurants’ chowder, chili, lobster bisque, and other soups and sauces.

The restaurants are probably best known for their chowder, made with fresh chopped clams, potatoes and onions in a base utilizing Custom Culinary^® Gold Label Clam Base. But the Texas Two-Pint Chili, made with both Custom Culinary^® Gold Label Beef and Chicken bases, is the one that’s won the most local cook-off awards, taking top honors for eight straight years running. And while many of the menus run to such standards as burgers, wings, and other pub fare, Gordon has been introducing signature items such as a Grilled Swordfish Club and New England Seafood Paella at Sea Dog (with locations in Bangor and Topsham, ME) to Potato Encrusted Haddock and handmade lobster ravioli at Federal Jack’s.

Specials might run to the likes of handcut New York Sirloin or even Beef Wellington, but you’ll never see anything overtly “gourmet” on any of the menus. “If we serve the steak with a red wine reduction, that’s what we’ll call it, not marchand du vin or beurre rouge,” says Gordon. “We have a lot of customers who can and do go to special-occasion places like The White Barn Inn, but that’s not what they come here for. We’re a brewpub, and we want people to relax and have a good time.”

It’s no accident that in a town like Kennebunkport, which is known as an upscale summertime destination, many of Federal Jack’s customers are locals and year-rounders—the restaurant’s Mug Club loyalty program has more than 300 members. The Shipyard Brew Haus, at Sunday River, also offers a little bit of everything, to all comers. Gordon spent nine days there this February. “We served Beef Wellington with Mushroom Demi downstairs in the restaurant for Valentine’s Day, but I bet I cooked 150 cases of chicken tenders in the cafeteria,” says Gordon.

It’s a scenario that suits him well. Having grown up on fresh seafood and other straightforward New England fare, he enjoys the challenge of making it truly first-class. “I was planning to go to school for visual arts, but as a football player I realized that there weren’t a lot of scholarships available for visual arts,” laughs Gordon, who worked in local restaurants for spare cash during high school. A particularly hard hit one day on the field made him think in more practical ways. “Why not make food for a living, and make it taste good and look good and be done with it?” he says.

In the meantime, he gets to flex his creative muscle handling weddings at The Inn on Peaks Island, a small, romantic inn a ferry ride away from Portland that hosts as many as two dozen receptions in a typical season. Canapés, elaborate desserts, lobster specialties—“that’s where I get to play,” according to Gordon. Still, in the main dining room, the menu still sticks to the pub side of things. Like Federal Jack’s, which promises a “brew with a view” (of the Kennebunk river and the atmospheric village of Kennebunkport), all the restaurants offer pubby ambience and food that’s as flavorful, well-crafted and approachable as the beer. “There’s only so much food and only so many ways to fix it,” says Gordon. “Might as well do the best job you can.”