The Maine Lobster Pot Pie from Academe, the restaurant at the Kennebunk Inn, was featured on the Food Network’s “The Best Thing I Ever Ate – Reinvented Classics” in early 2011. The Food Network presents the best recipe ideas, videos, healthy eating advice, party ideas and cooking techniques as recommended by top chefs, food writers and Food Network hosts.
The Best Thing I Ever Ate is the ultimate guide to the country’s most amazing meals, eats, and treats as told by the professionals who spend their lives obsessing about food. The series profiles favorite Food Network stars offering a taste of “the things you must try before you die”.
Lobster Pot Pie, a signature dish at Academe, was selected by Chef Cat Cora: the first female American Iron Chef, author of two cookbooks, Chef of Bon Appetite Magazine, and founder and president of Chefs for Humanity. The Food Network film crew visited The Kennebunk Inn in July, spending the day capturing both the feel of the town and the culinary creativity of Innkeeper-Chefs, Brian and Shanna O’Hea. The crew filmed for over seven hours, capturing every aspect of the production of The Lobster Pot Pie, starting with Brian’s signature lobster stock, to the picking of the delicate meat, to the cutting of vegetables and finally the lengthy process of making Shanna’s puff pastry. Although the dish is simple in it’s flavor profile the components are complex and time consuming to achieve the true buttery lobster comfort dish.
Maine Lobster Pot Pie
The Lobster Pot Pie was directly inspired by Shanna and Brian O’Hea’s passion for travel and tasting the local foods of the area. Maine lobster is known world wide for its rich succulent flavor. Tourists come to Maine looking for the perfect lobster dish whether it be steamed whole or chilled picked meat in a traditional New England toasted hot dog roll. As Chefs their goal was to respect this tradition but to add their personal spin on a dish.
Lobster Pot Pie has been on the Academe menu for over five years, reflecting the skills, training and playful inspiration of both Brian and Shanna O’Hea, who met as students at the Culinary Institute of America. The combination of Brian’s finely honed sense of homemade stocks and sauces and Shanna’s French trained puff pastry skills yields a novel expression of Maine’s five star ingredient – lobster.
About Shanna Horner-O'Hea Maine Lobster Pot Pie
Maine Lobster Pot Pie was featured on The Food Network's "Best Thing I Ever Ate," The Travel Channel's Food Paradise, and in Oprah Winfrey's "O" the magazine. We use only fresh lobster and ship our products nationwide.