Bleu Duck Kitchen owners Jennifer Lester and Erik Kleven behind the oyster bar in the restaurant’s kitchen in Rochester. Three years after they began cultivating thousands of their own oysters off the coast of Maine, the restaurant is serving up their “Minnesota Pearls” as part of a New England-inspired menu for Rochester’s annual Restaurant Week. (Jeff Wheeler/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

ROCHESTER – Bleu Duck Kitchen co-owner Jennifer Lester remembers the moment her business partner, Erik Kleven, called to tell her about an idea he had stumbled upon while visiting the coast of Maine.

“He was like, ‘What do you think about doing an oyster bar?’ ” Lester recalled. “And I said, ‘You’re crazy. We live in Minnesota. How does that even work?‘”

As fishy as it may have sounded, Kleven had a plan. After a chance meeting at a Portland, Maine, seafood restaurant, Kleven got connected with John Herrigel, owner of the Maine Oyster Company.

While the company only shipped to establishments within the state at the time, Herrigel was willing to take a chance with the Rochester restaurant, located more than 1,000 miles from his nearest oyster farm.

“We are always pushing the boundaries, introducing new things,” Kleven said. “But with this, it grew really fast.”

Oysters grown in the beds maintained by Bleu Duck Kitchen off the coast of Main were ready to be shucked and served at Bleu Duck Kitchen in Rochester. They are now serving up their “Minnesota Pearls” as part of a New England-inspired menu for Rochester’s annual Restaurant Week. (Jeff Wheeler/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

So fast that by 2021, Kleven and Lester were back in Maine learning how they could raise oysters of their own in the salty waters of Casco Bay.

They wound up leaving with an agreement to oversee the annual cultivation of 5,000 oysters, the first of which were harvested in 2024.

The oysters and other Maine-inspired dishes will be front and center for Bleu Duck Kitchen as the business takes part in Rochester’s third-annual Restaurant Week, which runs Monday through Saturday this week.

The restaurant will feature a “Maine to Minnesota” menu that includes dishes from some of the owners’ favorite coastal eateries, including pan-roasted mussels from Fore Street Restaurant in Portland and a fried clam basket from Bob’s Clam Hut in Kittery.

More than 30 Rochester restaurants are participating in the celebration, which is designed to boost eateries in what is typically one of the slowest months of the year.

Guests sit in the dining room of Bleu Duck Kitchen in Rochester. (Jeff Wheeler/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

From Maine to Minnesota

Kleven and Lester, who make regular trips to Maine to roll up their sleeves on the farm, said the hands-on approach has left them with a greater appreciation for the work it takes to produce one of the ocean’s finest delicacies.

“Just sorting them, deciding what size cages they go into and when to switch them and how often you have to be out there during the week — high tide, low tide — I mean, there’s so many different factors at play," Lester said. “It’s incredible.”

With their collaboration with the Maine Oyster Company and others — including farms off the coasts of Cape Cod, Mass., — Bleu Duck Kitchen estimates it is now serving upward of 1,200 oysters a week to customers eager to try a taste of New England in landlocked Rochester.

“A lot of people come in just for oysters here and want to hear the story,” Lester said. “And we have people who are more inclined, I think, to try oysters for the first time and have myself or Eric or a server walk them through how you eat an oyster.”

Bleu Duck Kitchen co-owner Erik Kleven holds a plate of oysters he prepared that came from their beds on the coast of Maine in Rochester. (Jeff Wheeler/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

To ensure the oysters are firm, sweet and briny, the shellfish are shipped the same day they are pulled from the water. The next-day delivery, Kleven said, leaves just enough taste of sea salt for customers to know they are getting the real deal.

“Just like with our vegetables, it feels local for us because we know most of the people we are getting the oysters from every week,” said Kleven, who is in the process of becoming an oyster sommelier.

Kleven and Lester said Restaurant Week, which has grown since being introduced in 2022, also provides the restaurant — consistently ranked among the city’s best — an opportunity to take their customers on a culinary journey.

“The best part of all this is we get to be with our people,” Lester said. “I mean, we get to have a dinner party every night.”