May 2, 2025 – In the early 1980s, Rod Browne Mitchell met Chef Jean-Louis Palladin when Chef Palladin walked into Rod’s wine shop, the Winemporium, in Camden, Maine. He asked if Rod could find fresh scallops for him as he was not satisfied with the quality of seafood from his purveyor. Chef Palladin moved from France to the United States to open Jean-Louis at the Watergate in the nation’s capital. From Rod’s years fishing the waters off the Maine coast, he knew just where to go so he donned his SCUBA gear to personally harvest scallops for the chef. The Maine Diver Scallop was born!
Years later, Chef Palladin’s first sous chef, Chef Eric Ripert, newly arrived from France, called Rod to place an order. Rod could not understand one word he said so he called Jean-Louis to complain. Without hesitation, Jean-Louis said, ”*@* D*@* it Rod, learn French!” and proceeded to hang up. Today Rod ships seafood daily to Eric at his restaurant in New York City, Le Bernardin, a three-star Michelin icon that is often voted the best seafood restaurant in the United States. “Eric and I are best of friends. He’s one of our top accounts. We supply him daily by shipping a truck from Portland overnight and it arrives in New York City at 7 a.m.,” Rod said to Chaîne during a March 14, 2025 telephone interview.
Eagerly learning new skills and expanding his knowledge have been hallmarks of Rod’s life since he was a young boy. He spent a lot of time with his grandfather, a fisherman and lobsterman in Harpswell, Maine who built all of his wood traps and pulled them by hand from his skiff. Rod recalls catching his first striped bass while fishing with his grandfather for mackerel. “I got the passion to always go striped bass fishing and still do to this day,” Rod said.
Fishing was his grandfather’s primary source of income although in the fall, he was a guide for duck hunters. He whittled all of his own decoys and provided the retriever spaniels for the hunters. “I did that a lot with him as well. So I have a big heritage of starting my life hunting and fishing,” Rod said. He also spent time in the summers with his aunt who owned a small island in the middle of Norway Lake, northwest of Portland. Fishing for fresh water bass and catching turtles without any worries of homework was a dream come true. “I loved staying there so much,” Rod said. He would often convince his aunt to let him stay an extra week.
By the time he was a teenager, Rod knew the ins and outs of the myriad of islands and inlets in northeast Maine, knowledge he would draw upon in his future career supplying seafood to some of the most renowned French chefs in America.
As a young teenager, Rod helped Ransom Kelly, his uncle, and Erle, his cousin, who owned and operated a fishing charter service in Boothbay Harbor. Rod’s job was to take fish off lines, filet the fish and then cut the fish so customers could take the fish home.
During high school, he was hired in Camden as a launch tender where he met a lot of fishermen and affluent customers. With his keen interest in the sea, he enrolled in Southern Maine Technical College where he studied marine biology and worked at a Yacht Club to earn extra money. After graduation, he was not sure what he wanted to do. At the end of the summer, he met Bruce McDermitt at the Yacht Club who offered him a job. Rod asked him what he would be doing. Bruce replied, “I don’t know, we’ll figure out something.”
Winemporium in Camden, Maine
It turns out Bruce did have a plan but Rod needed to pass a few real world tests first. He assigned Rod the job of rebuilding his barn with specific criteria not to make anything level but to fix the holes in the floor and make sure it was rainproof. Rod went to work completing the job in a couple of months. Summer turned to fall and Rod’s next job was to rake Bruce’s massive lawn – with a rake. Without questioning the logic of it, Rod went to work. “I think he was testing me,” Rod said. About an hour later with Rod still diligently raking, Rod learned what Bruce had in mind for him all along. They drove into downtown Camden. He told Rod he had just purchased the old mill and was going to rebuild it. “Who is?” Rod asked. “You are,” Bruce replied and then he took off to spend the winter in Florida.
Rod rounded up some of his friends to form their “animal crew.” They spent the entire winter gutting the building, putting in a new foundation and windows, and even outfitting it with a decorative water wheel. The Highland Mill Mall was ready for business.
Bruce had one more surprise for Rod when he asked him, “How would you like to run a wine store?” “I hate wine. I got sick on Boone’s Farm and Ripple when I was in high school,” Rod answered. Bruce said he would teach Rod about wine and was certain he would learn to love it. Soon Rod was operating the Winemporium at The Highland Mill Mall. “He left me with a checkbook and a store full of wine. We also sold gourmet cheese, which I had to learn about,” Rod said. Bruce bought all of the wine and told him to try any bottle he wanted so he could authentically connect with customers. As Bruce predicted, Rod did learn to love wine.
One couple from France who spent their summers near Camden came to the store often and taught Rod about Bordeaux wine. They became friends and invited Rod to spend time at their château in France – Château Haut-Brion – during harvest. Rod said when he met them, their wine sold for about $50 per bottle but now it’s around $2,000 per bottle. “It’s one of the best wines in the world,” he added.
Rod took them up on their offer and soon he was in France tasting Château Haut-Brion wine, traveling with their winemakers, and eating what he describes as “beautiful fresh fish” at a lot of Michelin star restaurants. “Gee, I really love this profession,” he concluded.
Rod’s world of wine turned into a world of seafood as well back in Maine after he met Chef Jean-Louis Palladin and began supplying him with fresh Maine Diver scallops. As demand for his scallops grew, Rod hired divers. “Thus started my business in specialty seafood.” Chef Jean-Louis then asked why Rod didn’t have caviar.
Before he knew it, he was supplying caviar to Chef Jean-Louis who introduced him to a caviar importer so he could learn how to properly package it. With excess capacity, Rod bought a suit and a little cooler to begin selling caviar under his Caspian Caviar brand to top chefs in Boston.
Through a series of unfortunate business partnerships, Caspian Caviar filed for bankruptcy in 1989. Rod was left with his truck, the only thing in his name. “I packed up my truck and moved to Portland,” he said.
His Caspian Caviar customers, top chefs in the Northeast including Chef Palladin, Chef Ripert, Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Chef Daniel Boulud, were stunned. “You need to keep getting us this beautiful fish and caviar,” they told him.
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If ever there was a story of perseverance in the culinary world it’s that of Rod’s customer and friend, Chef Eric Ripert. In 2013 he published his autobiography, 32 Yolks, a New York Times Bestseller that Rod and this author highly recommend. Foodies, vinophiles, young chefs and students contemplating a career in culinary arts would do well to read about Chef Ripert’s challenging personal and professional journey to the culinary summit. Students and young chefs will be aghast reading about Chef Ripert’s apprenticeship under Chef Joël Robuchon who, at age 36, opened Jamin in France. The restaurant earned its first Michelin star within three months. And the restaurant earned three Michelin stars within three years of opening, the fastest any restaurant earned three stars in Michelin history. 32 Yolks vividly takes readers inside the Jamin kitchen as Eric and a team of chefs worked 16 to 18-hour days preparing food to Chef Robuchon’s demanding standards to earn those coveted stars. One day Eric and his fellow chefs found themselves pealing peas to take out the tiny sprout inside to remove any bitterness the sprout might impart to the dish being prepared. Fear filled the air and their souls. Some could not take it and quit. Chef Ripert persevered during two stints under Chef Robuchon before moving to the United States to be Chef Palladin’s sous chef at the Watergate. Young chefs today will close the book with a renewed appreciation for their chef instructors, culinary mentors, and families. In his book, Chef Ripert informs readers that even with the stress, the long hours, and almost impossible demands, he loved working for Chef Robuchon because of what he was learning from the famous chef.
Browne Trading Company
Starting from scratch with his truck and his vast knowledge of fishing Maine waters, restoring buildings, and operating a wine, cheese and specialty seafood business, in 1991 Rod founded Browne Trading Company, named to honor his grandfather and his ancestors. Generations ago the Browne family harvested caviar in the Kennebec River. “I didn’t know when I went into the caviar business that it was my heritage as well,” he said.
He became personal friends with many of his chef customers, including Chef Daniel Boulud, who were also starting their careers.
“My business kept growing,” Rod said. Channeling his early days restoring a building in Camden, he bought a building on the Portland waterfront to anchor his operation that now covers the gamut from retail to wholesale to online customers. With 40 employees and a smokehouse to smoke their own salmon, they sell specialty seafood, cheese, gourmet food and have more than 3,000 wine labels. “Portland is a fine dining city now,” Rod said. He employs three chefs and his director of operations, who has been with Rod for many years, trained under Thomas Keller at Per Se in New York City.
As Rod recently took stock of how to ensure Browne Trading stayed on a “steady and even keel,” last year he took in three investors as partners in his business – Jeff Sedacca, a longtime friend who is known as the “shrimp king” in America; Ed Chiles who had owned restaurants in Sarasota and now owns an organic produce company called Gamble Creek Farms; and Paul Brooke, an investor icon in healthcare. “We’re all equal owners but I’m still the head of the ship” Rod said as he quickly talks about the future. “We’re expanding into Florida distribution. For a long time, Walt Disney has been one of our biggest customers in Florida – and still is. We do all of their five cruise ships as well as their fine dining restaurant – Victoria and Albert’s.”
Browne Trading also directly imports caviar, one of the largest parts of their business along with the fine specialty seafood market. They import caviar from Italy, Belgium, Israel, China and France. Domestically, they source caviar from operations in California and Idaho. “We’re a big supporter of American caviar and import fish from Portugal, Italy, New Zealand and Australia – very high end specialty seafood,” Rod said. “We can supply all chefs in America who want what we do.”
Rod’s career was deeply influenced by Chef Jean-Louis whom he considers his mentor. Rod requires all members of his sales team to read the book, North Atlantic Seafood by Alan Davidson, a book Jean-Louis would reference to tell Rod what type of fish he wanted Rod to source. And then their purveyor-client relationship grew to a collaborative effort in the 1990s in the publishing industry.
Rod helped Jean-Louis as the famous chef wrote the first coffee table book of cuisine, Jean-Louis: Cooking with the Seasons, with photographs by Fred J. Maroon. “The pictures are absolutely spectacular,” Rod said. “Jean-Louis was an incredible master of just being able to create the most beautiful dishes people have ever seen in America. He started the fine dining era of famous chefs.”
When Rod and his wife went to dinner at Jean-Louis at the Watergate for the first time, he cautioned her that the plates may not look like the pictures in the book. He was amazed when the plates put in front of them were as beautiful as those on the printed pages.
Rod is as enthusiastic and energetic about his business today as he was 34 years ago when he founded his company. Nurtured by his family and a businessman in Camden who took a chance that a young kid he met on a dock could not only restore an old mill he bought but also operate a wine shop, Rod smoothly entered the specialty seafood industry. He succeeded even in the face of serious challenges along the way. But it’s no surprise. After all, that’s what Maine fishermen have been doing for centuries.
And did Rod ever learn French? “I learned enough French to take care of Jean-Louis’ sous chef – Chef Eric Ripert,” he said.
Grand Chapitre
Rod Browne Mitchell and Browne Trading have generously contributed a substantial selection of caviar and gourmet products to the upcoming Grand Chapitre in Hawaii. This gift underscores the special relationship Browne Trading has formed with the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs and its members—one that promises to elevate future culinary experiences in truly memorable ways. A special program reflecting this partnership will be officially announced at the Grand Chapitre, according to the Chaîne team organizing the Grand Chapitre.
Featured image above: Rod Browne Mitchell in Maine.