Maine’s rugged, rocky landscape isn’t an obvious draw for farmers, food producers, or chefs.
Thats exactly why generations of outside-the-box types have settled here, creating some sublime food along the way.
Despite the restaurant’s cinematic isolation, nearly 20,000 hopefuls apply by postcard each year for roughly 4,600 covers.
From left: Chef Erin French in the doorway of her Airstream trailer at the Lost Kitchen, in Freedom; outdoor seating at the Lost Kitchen.Greta Rybus
We crossed the millpond dam and were shown to a table at the water’s edge.
Kitchens in Maine, lost or otherwise, are never far from the source.
Maine is among a handful of states to have an item of food as its symbol: the lobster.
From left: Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch, owners of Four Season Farm, in Harborside; pickles at Pembroke’s Smithereen Farm.Greta Rybus
“Fingers crossed they show up,” she said with a twinkle.
Little sounds of delight gusted among the tables.
A story of new life and last-of-the-season raspberries gathered such sweetness.
A volume from the trove of culinary writing at Rabelais, in Biddeford.Greta Rybus
Emotions missing during the six months of pandemicspontaneity, hope, joyflitted like damselflies over the millpond.
The night I visited the Lost Kitchen, French served lobster on a biscuit as a starter.
Now relocated to Goose Cove, the indoor-outdoor restaurant is the centerpiece of a summer-camp-like resort.
From left: Wooden tableware at Harborside’s Good Life Center; a shellfish course at Aragosta restaurant, on Deer Isle.Greta Rybus
Ironically, the coronavirus pandemic, ruinous to many restaurants, propelled Finigan to creative maturity.
“I want to highlight how lucky we are to live here.”
“It’s lovely to see where it all starts,” Finigan said.
A yurt at the Good Life Center.Greta Rybus
In other words, Maine food showed me the state through two lenses.
The other lens drew my eye to new ways of thinking about food.
One visitor, now in his early 80s, stuck around.
Chef Devin Finigan sourcing ingredients for her restaurant, Aragosta, off the coast of Deer Isle.Greta Rybus
“It comes down to hard times and wild foods.
But people have chosen to farm here and fish here and forage here.”
It was never easy.
From left: pizza at Tinder Hearth, on the Blue Hill Peninsula; one of the newly restored cabins at the Gills Group, on Bailey Island.Greta Rybus
“It comes down to hard times and wild foods,” he said, quoting historian Sandra Oliver.
“We’ve always had a short growing season,” Lindgren explained.
“We’ve always had soil that wasn’t fantastic.
From left: Warming up after a late-season dip near Stonington; lobsters at Smithereen.Greta Rybus
We’ve had freezing cold weather and tons of snow.
But people have chosen to farm here and fish here and forage here.”
Bean’s Freeport emporium, I met dairy cows adorned with microchip earrings.
They are part of a cutting-edge research project with a goofy name: B3, for Bovine Burp Buster.
The middleBrefers to methane, a greenhouse gas more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
The center’s agricultural research coordinator, Leah Puro, explained how the B3 Project works.
A computer-controlled mobile feeding station recognizes each cow by her ear tag.
The stakes are real.
So-called regenerative agriculture strives to undo industrial agriculture’s destructive effects, including its contributions to climate change.
It doesn’t hurt the land.
Regenerative is making the land healthier."
Pretty seaports survived only by replacing the once-bountiful cod with tourist dollars.
Hardscrabble farmhouses blasted by centuries of sharp weather trailed stone walls like loose threads.
Half a mile down the road I met the Nearings' successors.
Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch were at breakfast in the warm, bright kitchen atFour Season Farm.
Together, they have organic star powerthe ag world’s Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.
“The Nearings probably inspired ninety-some percent of the people who came here,” Coleman said.
“A lot of them probably did what my first wife and I did after reading the book.
We came to meet the Nearings.”
The land they sold the young couple was agriculturally barren but creatively fertile.
“At that time, everyone told me, ‘Oh this is impossible.
you could’t do it,'” Coleman said.
“Well, I knewimpossiblewas an easy word to overcome if you put enough energy into it.”
And so a new generation of energetic idealists has followed.
Call it regenerative entrepreneurship.
Myfarm-to-table road tripwas bookended by…books.
Pembroke was a 19th-century industrial center with shipyards, sawmills, an ironworks, and sardine canneries.
Even by Maine standards, land is dirt cheap.
“It’s the periphery of the end of the world.”
She has made herself town crier for a more sustainable, more equitable agrarian future.
“Farmers are brave and good,” she shouted at me.
“Give them land!”
Suburbia is her nemesis.
Maine is her laboratory.
In Maine she found what her ideas needed most.
“We come to the margins to experiment with new ideas.”
Doubles from $140; tasting menu $125.
El El Frijoles: Fun locavore taqueria on the Blue Hill Peninsula.
Entrees $6$15.
Long Grain: Farm-to-table Asian takeout in the heart of the Mid-Coast.
Entrees $14$19.
Lost Kitchen: Homegrown ingredients elevated by star chef Erin French.
Tasting menu $175.
McLoons Lobster Shack: Of many great lobster options, this Mid-Coast spot is perhaps the most picturesque.
Entrees $6$33.
Tinder Hearth: Utopian wood-fired pizza on the Blue Hill Peninsula.
Pizzas $16$22.
Rabelais: A shoppable archive of food writing from the Renaissance to the present day, near Portland.
Doubles from $189.
Brooklin Inn: A quiet, simple country inn and restaurant near Blue Hill.
Doubles from $175.
Gills Group: Quintessential summerhouses on Bailey Island.
Cottages from $200.
Smithereen Farm: A Down East saltwater farm with cabins and camping.
Cabins from $50 per night.
A version of this story first appeared in the April 2021 issue ofTravel + Leisureunder the headlineThe Maine Course.
