Lukas Dow
Judy’s Bay | Cambridge, MA
JULY 2024
Lukas Dow was hooking worms, cleaning fish, and wielding a cleaver before he was six years old. Freshwater and ocean fishing with his grandfather, Anthony, around New Bedford, Massachusetts—the largest fishing port in the United States—and cooking in the kitchen with his mother and grandmother, Judy, Dow fell in love with the bounty of the New England coastline. As he got older, he started shore fishing for scup before targeting larger fish, like bluefish and stripers, on his own. Later, Dow joined the non-profit The Food Project, a local farming program for teenagers.
Even though he had worked on the agricultural side, Dow’s first industry job was at his uncle’s restaurant, working the fry station, cooking chicken fingers and spare ribs, and embracing the frenetic flow of the kitchen. After a few months in French fine dining at L’Espalier, he joined the team at Rising Stars alums Irene and Margaret Li's Mei Mei, where he was challenged and taught to work collaboratively at the family-owned establishment.
In 2018, Dow and his wife, Kim, started hosting Asian-inspired barbecue pop-ups, called Judy’s BBQ, in their friends’ backyards, while also cooking in empty restaurant kitchens and planning to open in a commissary space. When the pandemic hit in 2020, they pivoted, and Dow went to work at Movement Ground Farm in Rhode Island, where he foraged for blue crabs and quahogs along the coast. In November 2021, they opened Judy’s Bay. Defined by his childhood on the water, the restaurant embraces the beauty and diversity of local New England seafood, emphasizes whole fish utilization and sustainable fishing practices, and builds off of Dow’s global travels and Asian American upbringing with dishes like his monkfish katsu with yuzu kosho tartar sauce.
