Chef Joe Robbins serves up pollock at Bangor High School

Chef Joe Robbins and nutritional staff from Bangor High School serve up tasty local seafood and veggies to hungry teenagers.

Students at Bangor High School had a special lunch treat in one of their first weeks back after the winter break. Joe Robbins, member of the Penobscot tribe and chef at Hampden’s Marsh Island Kitchen, created and served a recipe featuring locally sourced seafood courtesy of our Fishermen Feeding Mainers program. MCFA has been working with school districts across the state to get more local seafood into K-12 cafeterias. This includes fish fillets donated through our Fishermen Feeding Mainers program, as well as ready-to serve products. Our first and increasingly popular products are Maine Coast Flounder Fish Cakes, produced by Rockport-based Graffam Brothers Seafood, and Hurricane Soup’s Maine Coast Monkfish Stew and Sweet Potato Pollock Soup. 

That's a lot of happy eaters!

Chef Robbins crafted a tasty lunch of seared pollock served with butternut squash puree, local greens and sage oil. The squash and greens were provided by the Second Harvest Partnership. A tally of student feedback showed overwhelmingly positive results with a 99% approval rating!

Many students had never tried pollock before and were pleasantly surprised by how much they liked it. “I don’t like fish or squash, but I loved it,” said one student. “This is so good. I’m going to tell my grandmother about it,” said another. 

Based on this strong stamp of approval, the school plans to recreate the recipe this spring as well as to put other seafood items on the menu across the district. Abraham Lincoln Elementary School is especially eager to participate, as their students will be doing a unit on Wabanaki studies this spring and learning about the cultural significance of local seafood. 

We are thrilled to introduce more healthy local seafood to students in Bangor as well as across the state. Tying the food that students eat to the place where they live is a real way to build appreciation of the value of Maine’s fishing industry as well as providing a healthy, sustainable source of local protein to Maine students.

We'd like to extend a big thank you to the staff at Bangor High School for hosting this event, as well as Chef Joe Robbins for volunteering his time and expertise. Together, we can get more local fish in more local schools!

The students had a great experience trying out pollock - their smiling faces prove it!