A Look Inside The Winsor House At Island Creek Oyster Farm

Photo Credit: Morgan Ione Yeager

Island Creek Oyster Farm recently announced the opening of their third hospitality concept – a rustic fish house at the newly transformed Winsor House at Island Creek Oyster Farm in Duxbury, Mass.

The farm-to-table fish house features a raw bar menu at the historic property complete with oysters from around the country along as well as luxe offerings like Island Creek Oysters house-packed caviar served with hashbrown, sour cream, chive, shallot and hard-boiled egg. Choose from Sterling Farms White Sturgeon (California) or Adamas, Siberian (Italy) for the ultimate indulgence. Other raw bar favorites include bluefin tuna crudo, Cobia ceviche and yellowtail crudo.

Main events include brown butter poached halibut, Steelhead trout with frisée foie gras purée, grilled striped bass and the haute Winsor House “float dinner” filled with shrimp, clams, smoked sausage, corn, potato, onion “and all the sauces.” For dessert, we recommend saving room for the olive oil cake topped with crème fraiche ice cream, orange curd and Island Creek Oysters caviar. At $45 a slice, this might be the South Shore’s most indulgent dessert.

Photo Credit: Morgan Ione Yeager

“Stewarding The Winsor House into the future is a very humbling, full circle feeling to me and many on the ICO team,” Island Creek Oysters founder and owner Skip Bennett said. “The Winsor House is where my family has gathered for generations; having it under the Island Creek umbrella still feels surreal. At the farm, our goal has always been to go to work every day to do the thing we are most passionate about—growing oysters and building community–and to share that passion with others. Opening The Winsor House as our own is an opportunity to continue to do just that while honoring its history and forging ahead into the next era.”

Bennett was raised in Duxbury and spent years working on the Bay digging mussels, razor clams, and steamers. After college, he bought some of New England’s earliest clam seed from a hatchery on Cape Cod and decided to try his hand at growing quahogs. When all of his clams died, he moved onto oysters. For eight years Bennett was the only person growing shellfish in Duxbury Bay while the ensuing years confirmed that the cold, turbulent, salty waters of Duxbury Bay produced what Bennett already knew – an oyster that chefs and consumers around the world would come to revere. Today, Island Creek Oysters can be found as the house oyster at Thomas Keller’s sister restaurants The French Laundry in Napa Valley and Per Se in New York City.

Island Creek Oysters now operates one of the only shellfish hatcheries in the northeast; a distribution company selling shellfish from over 100 farms to about 700 chefs around the country; a retail business serving thousands of home-shuckers online; a seasonal outdoor Raw Bar located on their 11-acre working waterfont; The Shop, a shellfish market and raw bar in Portland, Maine; and an international development NGO active in Haiti, Africa, and Duxbury.

The newly redesigned restaurant is located next to Island Creek Oysters farm experience and is open for dinner Wednesday through Sunday.

Photo Credit: Morgan Ione Yeager