ROCKPORT — The "Loved Its" took the lead in the Camden Hills Regional High School cafeteria as students and staff weighed with their opinions of Graffam Bros. Seafood's latest locally produced product — and soon to be statewide school menu dish — the Maine Coast Flounder Fish Tots and Fishcakes. 

It was a discerning crowd and they did have some suggestions: "More salt", "dry", "Not a fan of carrots, but otherwise good", "lobster is better", and an "ad Old Bay Red Pepper."

Still, the encouragements were even more emphatic: "Perfect!", "loved the fishiness", and "nice texture, excellent sauces".

As the three lunch blocks of students continued in the high school cafeteria Jan. 28, the 31 'Loved It' and 17 'Liked It' gained fast over the three 'Not for Me' votes. In the kitchen, staff members were busy dishing up a citrus flavored Kawame Slaw to lay on top of the fishcakes, complemented by a  drizzled side of Wasabi sauce.

Who says Mainers do not get creative with their fish, especially in a public school kitchen?

The taste-testing was part of a bold new effort to incorporate local fisheries and Maine grown vegetables and grain into the diets of students throughout the state. The Maine Dept. of Education calls it the Local Food in Local Schools initiative, as the effort builds.

For Leni Gronros and Kim Graffam, at Graffam Bros. Seafood, it is about expanding markets and keeping a business healthy, especially the deep dark of a Maine winter. And the Jan. 31 taste-test of their Tots and Cakes was almost the last leg of a 25-school tour around Maine asking students what they thought of the product.

And for Gerry Cushman, a Port Clyde lobsterman and founding board member of the Maine Coast Fishermen's Association, it is about healhty nutrition, and a way of life that will slip away unless more effort is made to reintroduce ground fish into the diet of Mainers.

"Kids eat too many foods that are not good for them," he said, standing near the table in the high school cafeteria where trays of Fish Tots were dished up to students and staff to taste-test. 

The groundfish stock in the Gulf of Maine that had declined by the early 1990s due to overfishing, "is on the rebound," he said. "We lost some markets, and it would be good to get fish that are caught in Maine to be processed in Maine, and brought into the schools."

The Maine Coast Fishermen's Association teamed up with the state Dept. of Education, local schools and businesses, such as Graffam's, to distribute more Gulf of Maine fish into regional diets.

It is an effort that is seeing results: The Maine Coast Flounder Fish Tots and Cakes that were sampled Jan. 28 at Camden Hills represented the finessed recipe after their tour around the state. Gronros had traveled with the Tots and Cakes from Kittery to Lewiston to Rumford and back home to Rockport, and the reception for them had been consistently positive.

School districts throughout the state can buy into these local food initiatives through its own Local Foods Fund grant program, explained Catherine Brown, who is a Regional Local Foods Coordinator for the Maine Dept. of Education. She was at the high school serving the Tots to students and listening to their remarks about the product.

Requirements with the Local Foods Fund stipulate that with the product, "51% or more agricultural raw materials grown, harvested, or produced in Maine by weight or volume, is met."

"We offer these tastings, not only to get student buy-in, or to see whether or not they like it, but to also give producers an opportunity to show distributors that, 'hey, we have an institutional buyer here, so we need your help to get it out to them.'"

Through the DOE's Local Food Fund, every district gets $10,000 to spend on approved local foods, she said. But the funding ends June 30, unless there is more federal funding for the initiative.

As she traveled to multiple Maine schools for the taste-tests, Brown noticed that Tots are more popular in elementary schools: "because they're very familiar with what a tot is. At the high school level, they really like the fish cakes, because you can put it on a sandwich, or the way they plated it today [with the Wakame slaw]."

To Brown, the value of the program lies in exposing Maine students: "to everything that is unique and viable of Maine's food system. So many kids do not eat seafood, and we have all of this seafood available."

That is Cushman's intent, as well. Over the decades, the food chain supply to public schools has filled with beef, chicken and pork, as Maine's seafood stock declined. Now, the public is used to eating meat, more than seafood.

"When you take something off the market, people need to fill it with something else, and then that makes it difficult to take the market back over," he said. "It is just habit. I know schools serve fish steaks, sticks, and things like that. But that's off factory boats getting caught in Alaska, which I have nothing against; but, we have a great fishing history here in the Northern Gulf of Maine."

He also wants children to continue eating fish the rest of their lives: "So they have better eating habits. Better eating habits makes better health."

Cushman's brother, Randy, was the last ground fisherman homeported in Port Clyde.

"Port Clyde used to have 25 groundfish boats," he said. "My brother was the last one. He just got done this last year. He was the last one getting out of the game."

The economics of Maine fisheries has much to do with global market prices. And Maine fishermen have a hard time competing with international fisheries, the large factory ships roaming the Atlantic from Norway, Canada and Iceland, that catch fish, process them on board, and the flood the grocery stores.

"We're not the only country that catches haddock," he said. "We try to stay away from factory ships here in the Northern Gulf of Maine because we like small community fishing communities."

And so, lobster remains the main Maine stock.

"Unfortunately, the only thing that we catch here around is basically lobster and clams," he said.

Willow Grinnell is a graduate student at the University of Maine, and her thesis is on seafood in schools, as well as uplifting the underutilized fish species in Maine. She is a Camden Hills Regional High School graduate of the Class of 2016. After studying at Montana State University, she returned to Maine to concentrate on marine science.

She emphasized the lack of market focus on Maine coast groundfish: Hake, monkfish, pollack, cod. She works with the Maine Fishermen's Association and Susan Olcott, its Director of Strategic Partnerships to get more fish to the state's food markets. After donating fillets of whole fish to school kitchens, the feedback was, 'provide a more simplified product. Fillets were too labor intensive for school food service staff, often under pressure to feed hundreds of students every day.

That's when the Maine Fishermen's Association started, "to work with Leni at Graffam Bros. and Hurricane Soups," said Olcott. 

Hurricane Soups is based in Greene, and also working on a school lunch product, the Monkfish Stew. With the Tots and Cakes, the Fishermen's Association is now growing its line of products to get to distributors for introduction to public school cafeterias.

As for other institutions in Maine, such as correctional facilities, it is harder gain a foothold. That is because the pricepoint is lower, especially at the prisons, said Olcott. Schools have more funds, via the Local Foods Fund, to buy the seafood products, but the prisons do not. The Maine Fishermen's Association has donated fish to correctional facilities but it has been unable to get a foothold into the distribution.

"We have looked to selling into those facilities, but we cannot do it at a point where it actually benefits the fishermen and the processors," said Olcott.

Looking around at the cafeteria, Grinnell said: "This is the next generation of consumers. Most every person in the State of Maine goes through the school system so if you can get public schools serving and educating kids about eating local foods and seafoods, that is building a huge market."

For Gronros, whose business is also grounded on the health of the fishing industry, the use of flounder in the Tots and Cakes works well, both financially and in the kitchen. When the Fishermen's Association first approached Graffam's with the project, he was enthused about its timing.

"I'm always looking for wintertime work," he said. "Something that can help fill in the gap in this area between the tourist season and the off-season, so that we can keep our crew employed and we do not have to lay anybody off."

The Flounder Fish Tots and Cakes focuses on an underutilized species, he said.

"One of the things that Maine Coast Fishermen's Association does is try to find a use for underutilized fish, so that we can bring in more of it and leave the higher fish for different markets," said Gronros. "This is a great way to use flounder."

He contracts with a Scarborough company to fillet the flounder. Unlike haddock and cod, he said, flounder is thin and more delicate. Filleting it by machine does not work.

His recipe has been refined since September, as he took the Tots and Cakes on tour to Maine schools.

"We cut back on the salt, and then we changed from a rye crust to a white bread bread crumb," he said.

Carrots were added, which gives a crunch and nutritional boost.

Both Graffam's and Hurricane Soups had never sold their products in schools, but because of the initiative, "Both of them have hired new people, bought new equipment, have new products and markets, and new distributors," Olcott said. "We are helping to fill the whole supply chain from the fishermen's market, because we are doing things with flounder, monkfish and pollack."

It is chain that involves the fishermen and the processor, to the seafood business, to the schools, "and have potentially a large volume that we can supply," said Olcott.

For the students at Camden Hills Regional High School who tested the product, the Jan. 28 reviews were good, with 75 to 80 percent favoring the Graffam Bros. Seafood Tots and Cakes. That was consistent in all 24 other schools, said Olcott and Gronros.

"The reaction is a lot more positive than I anticipated," said Gronros, smiling.

Where better to test a new food product than with high school teenagers, who have keen tastebuds and a maturing palate. The sauces and Kawame slaw added their own zest, and new Maine customers walked back to class, satisfied.

Reach Editorial Director Lynda Clancy at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6657