For quite a few people on the Mid-Shore, particularly those with a foodie interest, there was some hope that the new Test Kitchen that replaced the Easton Market Square would be a new contribution to the region’s increasingly impressive food scene. And one of those was the Spy. So, when it turned out that this facility would not be open to the public nor serve food, it generated several questions.

In short, why would a business that was not dependent on local consumers and who sold kitchen equipment for commercial restaurants and other large institutions decide to locate in the heart of a downtown rather than find a presumably lower-cost option in some industrial park nearby?

To answer those questions, the Spy arranged an interview with Jamie and Patti Curren, owners of the Test Kitchen and Spurry-Curren & Associates, along with their executive chef and one of the Mid-Shore favorite foodies, Jordan Lloyd, to get some answers. And their answers were both fascinating and compelling.

This husband and wife team, who purchased the Easton-based Spurry-Curren a few years ago from founder Chris Spurry, turns out to have close to 20 years of experience in the food industry. Meeting as recent college graduates (Jamie from Washington College and Patti from McDaniel) who worked in the Easton coffee bar just out of school, they quickly moved over to the commercial equipment side of the business. Instead of catering to mom and pop restaurants, their jobs focused on the needs of large food producers that were more likely to serve 2,000 dinners a night than 300.

And over time, that experience has paid off as the prepared food industry has reached unprecedented growth. Beyond the scale of preparing, cooking, and cleaning for thousands, Jamie, Patti and Jordan have seen remarkable improvements in technology and automation that have yielded impressive results for their clients and dramatically improved the quality of the food served.

With sticker prices ranging from $5,000 to close to $100,000, Spurry-Curren has proved that they can compete with much larger distributors for the same reasons found in every successful business; knowledgeable staff, over-the-top customer service, and a passion for quality. But the real reason for their success, and their recipe for long-term sustainability, is to differentiate themselves from their competition by retaining their small-town culture.

Rather than taking their customers to cold and remote warehouses to test out equipment, Spurry- Curren intentionally wanted those chefs to experience the special magic that only a tiny but vibrate downtown could offer. After hours of experimenting with both equipment and unique recipes with the assistance of Jordan, Jamie and Patti wanted those customers to be able to walk to places like Out of the Fire or the Wardroom and stay at a cozy hotel like the Tidewater.

That formula for success for Spurry-Curren will undoubtedly be tested after almost a year of expensive renovation at the old Market Square site. Only time will tell. But Jamie and Patti see this as the first step in utilizing the building, leading to special events and other community gatherings centered on food.

This video is approximately six minutes in length. For more information about Spurry-Curren, please go here.

To give some kind of perspective about the current status of the Mid-Shore Community Foundation, it might be helpful to keep in mind that it has taken Washington College 339 years to reach an endowment of roughly $250 million. When Buck Duncan arrived as president of the five-county community foundation in 2013, its total assets were $30 million. In 2021, that number has reached $125 million.

That stunning figure is impressive, but when asked about the thing he, his board, and MSCF staff were most proud of was the creation of a COVID Fund to help the Mid-Shore’s non-profit and educational organizations in April of 2020. Starting with a modest seed fund of $100,000, the fund actually raised $1.6 million this critical lifeline fund.

In our annual chat with Buck, he talks about the early days of the pandemic, how MSCF responded, as well as reinforce his foundation’s mission to truly serve the needs of Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot County residents and their need for health care, nutrition, education and protect the Mid-Shore’s unique quality of life.

This video is approximately seven minutes in length. For more information about the Mid-Shore Community Foundation please go here. The MSCF is the fiscal agent for The Spy Newspapers. 

 

 

 

 

Like many on the Eastern Shore, Tara Gladden was just getting started in her new position as the director and curator of  Washington College’s Kohl Gallery when COVID hit. Just as she was ready to put up an exhibition of five women artists, scientists, and scholars and their multidisciplinary work exploring climate change, the pandemic shut the door of the Kohl and Washington College. 

While Gladden would successfully pivot to online programming, no one could be more thrilled to have the Kohl open this fall. She celebrated this return with plans for a full academic year focused on the environment, which started with the work of Monica Jahan Bose entitled Renew. And just a few weeks ago, she was able to finally display delayed Encounters and Entanglements: The Art of Mapping Meaning.

In her first Spy interview, she also notes her passion for Eastern Shore artists as she takes on her role as juror for the Academy Art’s annual Members’ Exhibition next week. 

This video is approximately three minutes in length. For more information about the Kohl Gallery please go here. For the The Museum’s Annual Members’ Exhibition please go here.

 

Like every other organization on the Eastern Shore, the YMCA of the Chesapeake took a hit as the COVID pandemic took its course over the last two years. Visits to the eleven YMCA facilities dropped dramatically, membership numbers were impacted, and the Y’s special role as one of the most important centers for community life was threatened by this prolonged public health crisis.

Given these circumstances, it might be reasonable to assume the Y would simply hold off on some of their major plans until circumstances suggested a return to normal. But, Robbie Gill, the CEO of the YMCA of the Chesapeake, and his board of directors, actually double-downed on construction plans for Kent County and Queen Anne’s County and created brand-new 50,000 square foot plus facilities Chestertown and Centreville.

Nor has it stopped the Y planning for a significant expansion of the Dorchester County facility in Cambridge, or even working with community leaders in St. Mary’s across the Bay to help that community envision a new YMCA program in a region of Maryland where none exists now.

With this whirlwind of activity going on, the Spy thought it would be helpful to sit down with Robbie to talk about this remarkable growth plan. We found him on the construction site of the new YMCA in Chestertown for an update.

This video is approximately seven minutes in length. For more information about the YMCA of the Chesapeake please go here.

As the Spy has noted before, we’ve been spending a lot of time lately trying to catch up with a number of the Mid-Shore’s most important organizations, and their newly appointed leaders, as the Mid-Shore slowly gets back to normal after almost two years of COVID-related shutdowns.

This week, we turn our attention to Isabel Hardesty. She assumed the role of executive director of ShoreRivers at the beginning of 2021 after the retirement of its founding director Jeff Horstman. And unlike so many other groups who reached out nationally for their new executive positions, Isabel has been quite a familiar face in the Eastern Shore’s conservation community for some time.

That is mainly because she had already worked at the Chester River Association as its policy director starting in 2011. And then, two years later, became its riverkeeper for the Chester, a position she held as the CRA merged into the new umbrella organization in 2018.

But, as Isabel points out in her Spy interview from last week, her connection to the Shore and her passion for protecting the Chesapeake ecosystem is also related to being the daughter of Tim and Kirsten Junkin, the founders of the Mid-Shore River Conservancy. Beyond simply growing up in a family of environmentalists, her parents also introduced her to the special role that riverkeepers play in preserving and protecting the region’s water quality and way of life.

When it came time to select a new director, ShoreRivers had already created a culture of hiring from within. With her long tenure at CRA, coupled with a master’s degree from Duke University in conservation management, Isabel was a natural choice to succeed Jeff Horstman in the lead role.

In our chat, Isabel talks about her background, her five years goals, and her organization’s commitment to the Chester, Choptank, Miles-Wye, and Sassafras Rivers. She also highlights the critical role that access plays in how ShoreRivers can engage and educate the Mid-Shore on protecting these beloved bodies of water and its communities.

This video is approximately eight minutes in length. For more information about ShoreRivers please go here.

 

At the end of the day, a talented curator must think about what their audience actually “sees” at an exhibition. For it is not only the process of selecting objects but how that art can be observed in new ways for the casual visitor.

And that was very much on the mind of Academy Art Museum’s curator Mehves Lelic as she assembled “Close Introspection: From Picasso to Kusama” which is currently on view until November 7. With the help of private collectors and paintings found in the AAM’s ever-growing permanent collection, Mehves has pulled together some of the most proclaimed mid-20th century artists, like Helen Frankenthaler, Judy Pfaff, Pablo Picasso, Martin Puryear, and Howardena Pindell, to allow the visitor to inspect these remarkable examples of both modern and contemporary art.

In our Spy interview, Lelic puts the spotlight on the unique differences of approach and intention of the work of Jean Davis and Richard Anuszkiewicz as well other examples where the viewer must test their perceptions with this impressive grouping.

This video is approximately three minutes in length. For more information about this exhibition please go here.