The Lobster Dock, on the East side of Boothbay Harbor, is celebrating its 15th season in business.

Dawn and Mitch Weiss, originally from Connecticut, started their business in 2000. 

“In March of that year, we both came home from work one day and said we had had it with corporate life,” Dawn said. “We just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary, so we have spent half our married life in Connecticut, and half in Boothbay Harbor.”

The couple, with their two children, headed to Camden during one April vacation to look for something new and different to do with their lives.

“We stayed in a place in Camden that we were really interested in buying,” she said. “There were cottages and a house on the property. We wanted to raise our kids where we worked, in that kind of environment.”

After staying for a few days, Dawn said they decided the property was not a good fit. They started thinking about other places in Maine.

One night during a pouring rain storm, she got out her laptop and searched online for Boothbay Harbor residential and business properties for sale.

“This property popped up,” she said of The Lobster Dock.

It was owned by local sign painter Jon Marsh, who, with his partners, Larry Oakes and Neil Reny, had built The Lobster Dock and opened it in 1993.

“The only things that we changed were to enclose the inside dining and add doors,” she said. “And we expanded the menu.”

She said one of the things she's most proud of is that they didn't change much else. “We kept all the staff and gave them raises.”

There are 15 employees at the restaurant, full and part-time. 

On June 7, photographer Ted Axelrod of Yarmouth was at the establishment shooting close-ups of many of the menu items. The photos are to be used on The Lobster Dock's new website redesign.

The photos will be used for other purposes too, Weiss said.

“We're always being asked for visuals of the food, and I have recipes in different publications. They will want a photo of the food, and then I'll send the recipe.”

“I've had The New York Times ask for my seafood fra diavolo recipe, and we'll need to supply a photo of it,” Weiss said.

But Weiss said his main reason for the photography session that day was to get good, professional photographs for the website.

The photographer, originally from New Jersey, specializes in food photography. Weiss said that he can't make photographs like his friend Axelrod does.

“And he can't do what I do either. But actually he does cook,” he said with a laugh.

Axelrod said that photos of menu items can make or break a person from showing up at a restaurant, or going on to the next website.

One of The Lobster Dock's specialties, and a favorite of Weiss's, is the aforementioned seafood fra diavolo. Dawn Weiss said the creation of her husband’s is a big seller.

“Sometimes we have six or seven of them in progress and there's not room on the stove for all of them.”

The dish consists of a whole lobster, mussels, shrimp and scallops, in a spicy red sauce, all over a bed of linguine. It’s served with homemade garlic bread.

Other items being professionally photographed that day were: fried clams; fried artichoke hearts (which looked perfectly golden brown and crispy); fresh oysters purchased daily from local supplier Glidden Point; and a hand-cut Black Angus New York strip steak.

The Lobster Dock is open daily from 11:29 a.m. (a lot of area restaurants open at 11:30 a.m., so they wanted to get a jump on them) to 8:31 p.m., 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, weather permitting. The Lobster Dock is located at 49 Atlantic Avenue. The phone number is 207-633-7120. The restaurant is open from Memorial Day weekend to Columbus Day.