Thank you all for coming to this year's 2008 Maine Oyster Festival. The catch phrase of the night was "I'm having a good shuckin' time." I never tired of hearing it. Roughly 5000 oysters were consumed at this year's event. Below are the list of winners. Click on the blue underlined names to see photos. We have hundreds of photos of the event that we will try to post up as quickly as possible. Thank you to many of you for sending your photos to me this morning!
2008 Maine Chef of the Year
Taylor Miller
Inn on the Blues, York Beach ME
1st Place - Taylor Miller, Inn on the Blues, York Beach, ME - 166 points
2nd Place- Charlie Cicero, Anneke Jans, Kittery, ME - 159 points
3rd Place- Karl Mace, Union Grill, York Beach, ME - 154 points
2008 J.P.'s Shellfish Maine Oyster Shucking Champion
Nate Perry
J's Oyster Bar, Portland ME
1st place - Nate Perry 42.8 seconds
2nd Place - Adam Cambell 51.8 seconds
3rd Place - Barry Griffin 52.68 seconds
2008 Maine Oyster of the Year
Wiley Point, Damariscotta, Maine
1st Place, Wiley Point, Damariscotta, Maine - 155 points
2nd Place - Pemaquid Oyster Co.,Damariscotta, Maine - 143 points
3rd place - North Haven Oyster Co., North Haven Island, Maine - 141 points
2008 Maine Oyster Luge Champions
Roman Cooper team of North Haven Oyster Company
2008 People's Choice
Best Maine Oyster
Pemaquid Oyster Co., Damariscotta, Maine (Jeff McKeen)
2008 People's Choice
Best Chef
Justin Walker, Arrows Restaurant, Ogunquit, Maine
Rowan Jacobsen will be a guest judge at the 2008 Maine Oyster Festival. Rowan will be signing his books at the festival.Rowan Jacobsen writes about food, the environment, and the intersection of the two. His work has appeared in The Art of Eating, The New York Times, Saveur, NPR.org, and elsewhere. He is also the author of Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honeybee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis. For A Geography of Oysters,
he spent a year traveling the country and sampling its oysters. He eats
oysters regularly, despite the challenge of living in rural Vermont,
and also organizes private oyster tastings.
Rachael Forrest will be a guest judge at the 2008 Maine Oyster Festival. Rachel Forrest is a former restaurant owner, world traveler and food
and dining editor for Seacoast Media Group. Her column appears
Wednesdays in Go & Do. Her restaurant review column, Dining Out,
appears Thursdays in Spotlight.

Jean Kerr is the Editor-in-Chief of Taste Magazine, a food and wine magazine covering northern New England. She is also the food columnist
for Mystic Seaport Magazine.
She is also a food writer, chef and author, along with Spencer Smith,
of three cookbooks to date: Mystic Seafood, The Union Oyster House
Cookbook, and Windjammer Cooking. She is a two-time Book of the Year
Award nominee.

Fiona Robinson is the Editor-in-chief of Seafood Business Magazine, the largest seafood publication in the world. She has been a judge at one of the top Seafood contests in the country, the Symphony of Seafood
in Anchorage, Alaska and has written for Gourmet News as well.