News & Events

MARY DUMONT

Executive Chef at the Dunaway Restaurant, Mary Dumont, was selected by Food & Wine Magazine as one of America’s Best New Chefs. This is the first time a New Hampshire woman, chef, or restaurant has received this honor and coveted award.

I met Mary at the Dunaway Restaurant and was immediately welcomed by the atmosphere and the delicious smells emanating from the kitchen. I had a chance to talk to her and learn more about the new fame of our local native.

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Hot Young Chefs

Chef Mary Dumont studied creative writing in college, not cooking, but she has a culinary resumé and upbringing that chefs twice her age would envy. Her father, two of her brothers (one is Executive Chef Dan Dumont of the Wentworth-by-the-Sea Hotel) and a sister are all in the restaurant business in the Seacoast area and she’s donned her chef’s whites at some of the country’s best restaurants, including Campton Place and Jardiniere in San Francisco. Now, at The Dunaway, she’s leading a team that is redefining Seacoast cuisine by cultivating and using ingredients from the historic gardens at Strawbery Banke and even raising their own pigs for charcuterie. They also work on a garden and culinary projects with kids at New Heights, an organization that prepares teens for a successful adulthood, in an innovative Seed to Table program.

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12th Annual Seacoast Taste of the Nation

April 2006: FOOD & WINE MAGAZINE SELECTS MARY DUMONT
AS ONE OF AMERICA'S BEST NEW CHEFS 2006

Portsmouth, NH......Dana Cowin, editor in chief, Food & Wine Magazine, announces the selection of Mary Dumont, executive chef, The Dunaway Restaurant at Strawbery Banke, as one of America’s Best New Chefs.  The honor, unveiled on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 in NYC, is one of the most coveted in the restaurant industry.  And it is a coup for New Hampshire, as this is the first time a New Hampshire chef/restaurant has been so honored by Food & Wine Magazine.

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March 2006: From Seed To Table

• The Dunaway Restaurant, Strawbery Banke and New Heights After School Program Create “SEED TO TABLE” Program
• Children to Plant, Tend and Harvest 2-3 beds of Gardens at
  Historic Strawbery Banke
• Children to Sell their Produce and Flowers at Portsmouth Farmers Market

Portsmouth, NH–.Long a proponent of the “Farm-to-Table” process, Mary Dumont, executive chef, The Dunaway Restaurant, was delighted to be approached by John Forti, Curator, Historic Landscapes at Strawbery Banke, and Dave Cohen, Assistant Director, New Heights after school program, to work together on a new program called “Seed To Table.”   The plan is for the children to select the seeds, plant and tend 2-3 garden beds at Strawbery Banke.  “We are doing this together with the children literally from seed to table” confirms Dumont.

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Portsmouth Herald, April 5, 2006:
City chef wins national honor

The bar was full at The Dunaway Restaurant in Portsmouth’s Strawbery Banke Friday night. Guests sipped creamy garlic soup from shot glasses and spread meltingly smooth duck mousse onto slices of rustic toast, topping it off with a bit of pickled fennel and a violet mustard.

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Portsmouth Herald, April 5, 2006:
Ben Hasty climbs culinary ladder of success

In the basement prep kitchen of The Dunaway Restaurant in Portsmouth, Ben Hasty, a tall introspective young man in chef’s whites, leans against a gleaming steel countertop while Executive Chef Mary Dumont trims fresh artichokes, placing them in lemon water and Sous Chef Evan Hennessey cleans and prepares long smooth razor clams.

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