Portland’s Ladyfish Is Here for a Good Time, Not a Long Time

By Eric Barton
6:39 a.m. ET, July 25, 2026

AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.

Summer in Maine has always come with a deadline. The blueberries disappear, the water turns hostile again, and at some point you realize the final lobster roll of the season has already happened.

Ladyfish, a new Portland seafood restaurant from Jordan and Marisa Rubin, has built that expiration date directly into the business plan. The restaurant opened in May and will close October 31, giving Portland precisely one summer to experience the creative things chef Christine Lau is doing with Maine seafood.

Master stock short rib

Ladyfish has taken over the former home of Bar Futo, the Rubins’ Japanese-inspired yakitori restaurant at 425 Fore Street. Jordan Rubin, named as one of the best new chefs of 2025 by Food & Wine, could have simply reshuffled the menu and reopened the doors. Instead, he and Marisa Rubin created “a summer fling,” a seafood spot designed to arrive with the warm weather and vanish shortly after the tourists head home.

They brought in Lau to run the kitchen. Her New York restaurant Kimika, where Japanese and Italian cooking shared the menu, was a 2022 James Beard Award semifinalist for Best New Restaurant. She later developed the food at Brooklyn’s Chino Grande, drawing from Chinese and Latin American flavors. At Ladyfish, that experience has followed her north.

Shrimp katsu sando

The menu begins with the Maine summer requirements: oysters, chowder, and lobster rolls. Then Lau starts bending the familiar shapes. Whole fried fluke arrives Francese-style with lemon and white-wine butter. Lobster frites pulls from Cantonese cooking. Littleneck clams are roasted on the half shell with Chinese sausage in a riff on clams casino.

Bacon, egg, and cheese okonomiyaki

Grilled maitake

The idea is Maine seafood without much ceremony, backed by local beer, wines by the glass, and the sort of cold cocktails that make more sense near a patio. Dinner runs nightly, with weekend lunch and walk-in seats at the bar and outside.

Garlic beef don bowl

Ladyfish could, of course, return next year. For now, there’s something refreshing about a restaurant willing to admit that summer won’t last forever. The fluke is frying, the lobster is dressed, and October 31 is already coming.