Who's Who in Maine Cuisine
Starry accolades across the state and the birth of a new leisure activity: Chefspotting!
By Colin S. Sargent

Say you're hungry and crave a candlelight dinner at an establishment run by a winner of the prestigious James Beard Award. Impossible? There are two such restaurants to choose from up here now. How about eating your way across the state by dining at the host of restaurants in Maine recommended by Gourmet magazine? Why be content with just watching The Food Network when it's being filmed at restaurants all around you? Because Portland has just been named a finalist in the First Annual FN Awards for Most Delicious Destination.Here is a guide to help you sample the creative efforts of area restaurateurs at the top of their game.

Windows on the Water
Chef John Hughes of Windows on the Water in Kennebunk, creator of the Lobster-Stuffed Potato, has been appointed to the Master Chefs Institute of America, "the only chef in Maine ever to be so honored." The restaurant has earned praise from OAG Travel Magazine and PhantomGourmet.com, which takes note of "142 (wine) selections…from all over the world." Pictured, Lobster á la Windows on the Water.
967-3313

Cinque Terre
With chef Lee Skawinski at the helm, Cinque Terre is home to one of USA Today's "World Top 25 Dishes," number 17 to be precise, delicious "pan-seared scallops with balsamic vinegar aioli," according to its December 12 edition. The fine Italian restaurant has also been lauded by The New York Times, Gourmet magazine, The James Beard Foundation, Yankee magazine, The Boston Globe, and Where to Eat, Boston. At press time The Food Network was taping a segment here that will premiere on April 15. 36 Wharf Street, Portland. 347-6154

Hurricane
Hurricane Restaurant has been featured in Yankee and The New York Times, but also in Pamela Hegarty's The Best Places to Kiss: A Romantic Travel Guide, and is "Highly Recommended" by Fodor's Travel Guide. Owner/chef Brooks MacDonald dazzles with fresh seafood specialties. 29 Dock Square, Kennebunkport. 967-9111

Jonathan's
Jonathan's first started courting diners in 1975. Owner Jonathan West says, "We're written up glowingly in Fodor's and the Mobil guides. We've been here 30 years now. We do all sorts of things, specializing in a Mediterranean pasta and rosemary racks." For incredible freshness, "We raise our own Maine Katahdin lambs. Our chef, Rick Cherremie, is from New Orleans, where he worked with Emeril Lagasse." 92 Bourne Lane, Ogunquit. 646-4777

Pier 77
Pier 77 has been open since the 1930s but was recently renovated in 2004 by owner/chef Peter Morency, who brings 25 years of five-star elegance in Boston and San Francisco to this cozy seaside restaurant and bar & grill. Offering dishes such as Duck Three Ways and a signature seafood stew, this restaurant at the end of Pier Road in Kennebunkport features live jazz seven days a week during the summer. 967-8500

Dinner at The Front Room

Abby Harmon of Caiola's

The chefs of Natasha's

A lobster dish at Eve's

A veal dish at Uffa!

Rachael Ray at Pepperclub

Eddie Fitzpatrick & Mary Paine at the Pepperclub

Front Room
Chef/owner Harding Smith's interpretation of comfort food at The Front Room at 73 Congress Street in Portland has resulted in the Portland Phoenix's Best New Restaurant of 2006 award. 899-2750

Jameson Tavern
Listed as "Highly Recommended" in Frommer's, historic Jameson Tavern offers a casual bar, lounge & dining room, and delicious steaks and seafood as part of New England and English tavern fare. Steps from L.L. Bean, the landmark is the site of the signing of the Maine constitution. 115 Main Street, Freeport. 865-4196

Harraseeket Inn
Named one of the United States' Top 50 resorts by the Conde Nast Traveler Guide, Freeport's Harraseeket Inn presents the elegant Maine Dining Room and the casual Broad Arrow Tavern. 865-9377

Caiola's
Chef Abby Harmon cooks up wondrous Calamari Rappini, Lavender Chicken, and a signature Spanish Paella at Caiola's, 58 Pine Street, in Portland's West End. John Golden, columnist for The New York Times, has reviewed Caiola's glowingly in his "Food for Thought" diner's diary. In good weather, Caiola's offers outdoor dining in their private courtyard. 772-1110

Natasha's
Featured at the top of The New York Times's "Where to Eat" section of its "Off the Beaten Path" column, Natasha's (from left, Jeremy Vigus, Natasha Durham, and Emily Kissell) at 82 Exchange Street offers Asian-influenced fusion cuisine. 541-3663

Grissini's
Grissini's brings a cozy Italian dining experience in Kennebunk. Specializing in Tuscan dishes, Grissini's serves dinner year round. Chef Sebastien Pfeiffer takes northern Italian cuisine back to its roots. 967-2211

Clay Hill Farm
Adam White is chef at this former 1780s farmstead. "We have the Distinguished Restaurants of North America (DiRONA) award," says Heather Higgins. "Only two restaurants in Maine have received that award [the other is White Barn Inn]. This winter, we won first place in the Ogunquit Christmas By The Sea Chowderfest, too, for our lobster bisque," as well as ‘Most Romantic Restaurant' in Seacoast's ‘Best of the Best 2006.' 220 Clay Hill Road, Cape Neddick. 361-2272

Cliff House
The Cliff House, featuring breathtaking views near Ogunquit, has captured the imagination of The Boston Globe and Debra Bokur's Healing Resorts and Spas. A Cliff House cookbook has been published, too, with original creations such as Lobster Sauté in Hazelnut Crust. 361-6206

Street & Co.
Street & Co. Restaurant at 32 Wharf Street features what many have called the best seafood in Portland. Beyond kudos from the The New York Times, Frommer's Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, 4th edition praises Dana Street's restaurant for seafood "that's fresh as can be, and cooked just right…Diners sit at copper-topped tables designed so that the waiters can deliver steaming skillets directly from the stove." 775-0887

Federal Jack's
Established in 1992, Federal Jack's is the home of Shipyard Ale, first served here on the blond polyurethaned bar and tabletops of this riverside brewpub. Owing its success to founders Fred Forsley and master brewer Alan Pugsley, Shipyard Ale recently took top honors in the commercial beer competition against microbrews across the country at the prestigious Los Angeles County Fair. 967-4322

555
Specializing in California-inspired seafood, 555 brings a distinctly West Coast flair to its namesake address on Congress Street in Portland. Chef Steve Corry's wine list has earned the restaurant the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence three years running. 761-0555

Back Bay Grill
Back Bay Grill boasts recognition from the The New York Times, Frommer's Guide to Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire, and Food Arts. Chef Larry Matthews's Lobster Tortellini with Lobster Foam and Basil Oil was featured on the summer 2002 cover of Art Culinaire. There is some great art on the walls, too. 65 Portland Street, Portland.
772-8833

Eve's
Eve's at the Portland Harbor Hotel features chef Jeff Landry, winner of the 2007 Maine Restaurant Association Chef of the Year Award. At 468 Fore Street, Eve's also presents a highly popular monthly Caviar Dinner. Starry dining, covered by The Food Channel, spectacular courtyard atmosphere. 775-9090

Robinhood Free…
The Robinhood Free Meetinghouse of Georgetown is, according to The Boston Globe, "deliciously divine dining," and, to The New York Times, "a culinary oasis." Chef Michael Gagne, who's appeared on The Food Network, was recently named a finalist in the 2006 National Association for the Specialty Food Trade Prestigious Fancy Food Show Product Competition. 371-2188

Walter's
Walter's, established in 1989, has won praise from The New York Times. Featuring fusion food with a focus on fresh seafood and pasta, Walter's provides a cosmopolitan atmosphere on Exchange Street. 871-9258

Uffa!
Uffa! in Portland's Longfellow Square offers cosmopolitan café dining, thanks to head chef James Tranchemontagne. Recommended by the AAA Travel Guide and sporting "real style," according to the Maine Sunday Telegram, Uffa!, established 2002, offers the "total restaurant experience." 775-3380

Pepperclub
Featured on Rachael Ray's "$40 a Day" feature on The Food Network, the Pepperclub earned a personal off-camera accolade for its Maine crab-and-asparagus quesadilla from the TV chef to her camera crew: "You know, guys, this really is good." Co-owners Eddie Fitzpatrick and chef Mary Paine's original creations have also garnered "Best Value" and "Best Vegetarian" awards from Frommer's. 78 Middle Street, Portland. 772-0531

David's
"A bright spot," according to The New York Times. Under the control of chef/owner David Turin, look for fusion/Mediterranean dishes here. 22 Monument Square, Portland.
773-4340

Cook's Lobster
The star of national Visa television spots, Cook's Lobster House on Bailey Island has been voted #1 Seafood Restaurant Midcoast Maine continuously since 1995, as well as an Editor's Pick by Yankee. A premier example of a Maine wood-table-and-checkered-tablecloth seafood joint. 833-2818

Slate's
Winner of the Local Secrets, Big Finds Award from travelocity.com, Slate's Restaurant and Bakery is rebuilding after a March 2007 fire. Slate's specializes in French café cuisine with an international touch. 622-9575

Becky's
Becky's always earns a lot of ink. Featured in Esquire and Gourmet, and recommended by Rachael Ray, the Commercial Street greasy spoon is "a slice of diner heaven." Serving classic diner fare within the call of gulls, it's one of Maine's best places to keep it real. 773-7070

Le Domaine
Le Domaine, established in 1947, sparkles in Fodor's and Frommer's guides, is a member of Select Registry, is in Esquire's list of "Recommended Country Inns: New England," and is a 2005 winner of the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence. The authentic Provençal restaurant and inn in Hancock has also received accolades from The New York Times, Yankee, Gourmet, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. 422-3395

York Harbor Inn
The elegant dining room here has earned garlands from Food & Wine magazine. Featuring locally caught seafood as well as continental veal, chicken, and beef dishes and an extensive wine list. 363-5119

We've only just begun our chefspotting! Send us your favorite restaurant's clippings to chefs@portlandmonthly.com and visit www.mainerestaurants.com for more outstanding achievements.

Six to Watch
For these Maine chefs with dazzling national acclaim, every night is a starry night.
By Judith Gaines

Sam Hayward

Sam Hayward Fore Street, Portland

Sam Hayward, 57, who won the James Beard award as the Northeast's best chef in 2004, describes his cooking style as "unembellishment. We buy the best raw materials we can and mess with them as little as possible. You could call it ‘naked food'–so the cooking technique and the seasoning have to be perfect."

Hayward says he's often skeptical about new cooking innovations. "But I'm never skeptical about a beautiful artisanal cheese or a perfect head of Maine lettuce." He works hard to support Maine producers as exclusively as he can.

Born in northwest Ohio, Hayward initially studied classical music and played the double bass. But he always cooked as a hobby, and when a friend invited him to man the kitchen at an oceanographic lab on one of the Isles of Shoals in 1974, "I fell in love with the Gulf of Maine–not just the breathtaking seascape but the whole biological system." Now he's so attached to Maine "that I get anxiety attacks when I have to go over the Kittery bridge."

After training on-the-job at various eateries, he opened Fore Street in 1999. The décor features "no faux textures–everything is genuine, lived with. The tables are made of copper or wood from old barns. The restaurant is one big room with an open kitchen as if it were a theater. You can watch as the staff cooks in front of a glowing, wood-burning oven or turns a spit with big joints of meat."

His most consistently popular appetizer is the wood-oven-roasted mussels. Hayward also loves "the braised, sugary sweet late winter root vegetables." And he's especially proud of "the Maine island lamb. It's nose-to-tail cooking with the lamb prepared three ways: a slowly smoked shoulder cut, a marinated leg of lamb turn-spit roasted, and a loin or rib chop, grilled."

Melissa Kelly

Melissa Kelly Primo, Rockland

Of all the accolades a local chef can receive, none is more coveted than the James Beard award as "Best Chef in the Northeast." The first chef now working in Maine to win this award is Melissa Kelly.

Kelly, 41, was raised on Long Island in a family of fine Italian cooks, especially her grandfather, gourmand and butcher Primo Mangani. After working at several restaurants, including Alice Waters' Chez Panisse and The Old Chatham Sheepherding Company (where she won the James Beard award in 1999), she opened Primo in Rockland with partner and pastry chef Price Kushner. She says she was drawn to Maine by "its old world charm and the drastic change of seasons that brings a changing bounty to the table."

The restaurant is a 125-year-old Victorian home "that we stripped back to its bare bones," revealing "beautiful horsehair plaster, wide pine board floors, and lovely wooden molding." It sits amid four acres where staff raise most of their produce and flowers, even butcher their own hogs.

"The menu is constantly evolving to take advantage of whatever's fresh," with everything made from scratch daily, Kelly says. Her mantra is "fresh, seasonal, local." Among her favorite dishes are her grandfather's saltimbocca–spinach, mashed potatoes, and prosciutto layered with pork cutlets and served with a mushroom Madeira sauce. She also loves to make pastas and other Mediterranean "classics, adapted to Maine ingredients straight from the garden." Try her signature halibut with Meyer lemon, fava beans, and sorrel risotto.

Rob Evans
Hugo's, Portland

"Eating," says chef Rob Evans, 43, is what interested him in cooking. The Southboro, Massachusetts, native–whom Food & Wine magazine in 2004 named "one of the best new chefs in the U.S."–never went to cooking school and trained to be an electrician. "But I got bored with electrical wiring. With parents who both came from Newfoundland, I always had a strong passion for fish. My love of eating turned into a love of cooking."

After working at several prestigious restaurants, including The French Laundry and The Inn at Little Washington, Evans opened Hugo's in 2000 in Portland. Why Maine? He was inspired by the quality of local ingredients, especially the impeccably fresh seafood, "and the change of seasons keeps you on your toes."

Evans says his cuisine is designed "to let people experience familiar flavors in new ways." You may have tasted cod before, but what about cod tongue? Or his playful version of tater tots? Or flavor pops? Fun is always on the menu at Hugo's, and if the cuisine seems eccentric, the ambience is not. It's a modest building on Middle Street with warm, unpretentious décor and a wait staff dressed in jeans.

For a signature dish, Evans suggests his chorizo-crusted Maine scallops with organic sunchokes and garlic, or something from the bar menu, which includes imaginative items such as maple-glazed pork belly or quail and rabbit ballotine, as well as "some snacks I've invented, á la carte."

Mark Gaier & Clark Frasier
Arrows, Ogunquit

Mark Gaier, 49, and Clark Frasier, 46, met in 1985 while cooking at Jeremiah Tower's Stars restaurant in San Francisco. Gaier was a pre-pharmacy major, and Frasier had studied Chinese and foreign policy. But both "cooked on the side, to pay the rent," Frasier says. At Stars they became "tremendously excited and inspired" by what they experienced in the kitchen. They determined to open a restaurant together.

When they saw a handhewn 1765 farmhouse in Ogunquit in 1988, "it spoke to us." But in those days, the culinary scene in Maine was "bleak," Frasier recalls. They couldn't find good olive oils, decent bread, or bright, fresh organic greens anywhere. So, out of necessity, they began growing or making as many primary ingredients as they could.

Today, patrons come to stroll through their lush gardens and enjoy the rustic but elegant ambience in what Bon Appetit magazine has called "one of the 10 most romantic restaurants in the U.S." This year, Gourmet ranked Arrows No. 14 of "America's Top 50 Best Restaurants." And Gaier and Frasier have been finalists three times in the James Beard competition.
Arrows now grows more than 300 varieties of herbs, flowers, fruits, and vegetables, including 36 types of lettuce. Its staff makes their own cheese and cures their own meats and fish in a new smokehouse. With just a few exceptions, such as the extensive wine selection, "almost everything we serve is grown or made at the restaurant," Frasier says. "It's on your table just a few hours after it's harvested."

He especially loves the salads, "like the heirloom tomatoes with sautéed crispy okra; home-cured bacon and housemade goat cheese, with a little pesto drizzled over the top; or the house-cured prosciutto with persimmons, pomegranate, and field greens. We also serve a salad with four different greens and little bowls of different oils and vinegars and salts; that's a fun signature dish."

Jonathan Cartwright The White Barn Inn, Kennebunkport

Jonathan Cartwright, 40, never dreamed of being a chef. "I wanted to be the first Englishman to win the Tour de France," says the native of Sheffield, England. He only started cooking after he failed to get a job repairing roads–a position that would have allowed him to cycle on weekends.

But as he tried his hand in various restaurants, including The Savoy in London, Cartwright decided that cooking and cycling have a lot in common. "They required similar teamwork, commitment, dedication, hard work, and patience. I found that I enjoyed cooking very much."

He came to Kennebunkport's White Barn Inn 11 years ago. Now it's the only restaurant in New England to win the AAA Five Diamond and Mobile Five Star awards. It also is Maine's most expensive restaurant.

Set in a renovated 1860s barn, the ambience features rustic post-and-beam architecture with elegant accoutrements, tuxedoed waiters, white linens, and candlelight. The cuisine is classical gourmet, marrying local ingredients and a European style of cooking, beautifully presented. Cartwright suggests trying the poached lobster on handmade fettuccine with cognac coral butter.

NOTE: The nominees for the James Beard award as Best Chef in the Northeast were announced. Three of the six nominees come from Maine, and we listed all of them above: Rob Evans, Mark Gaier, and Clark Frasier.

© 2007 Portland Magazine Colin Sargent, Editor & Publisher editor@portlandmonthly.com Click here to subscribe