A restaurant named Lost Kitchen in Freedom, Maine is booked a year ahead. The Wall Street Journal’s
explains (abridged):Every year thousands of people enter a lottery hoping for a table at the Lost Kitchen, a 40-seat restaurant in the remote town of Freedom, Maine, population 719. It’s booked up a year in advance, the customers chosen by lottery each spring from around 20,000 hopefuls who mail in postcards requesting a table.
The restaurant’s chef and owner, Erin French, never went to culinary school. Her food isn’t fancy or cutting edge: no froths, foams, gold flecks or dainty garnishes arranged with tweezers. She writes that she likes dishes reminiscent of childhood, “humble as new potatoes, fresh from the ground on a hot early-July day, creamy and sweet, their skins so soft and tender that all you wanted was a pinch of good crusty salt and a pat of butter to melt over the top of them.”
The author of a bestselling cookbook (“The Lost Kitchen: Recipes and a Good Life Found in Freedom, Maine”), Ms. French has now published a memoir, “Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story Remaking a Life From Scratch.” In the cover photograph she’s hiding her face behind a giant bouquet of red and yellow poppies. It’s a pretty image at first glance, but there’s also something unsettling about it. With reason, as it happens, for the story Ms. French has to tell is dramatic.
By Moira Hodgson
If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for my free weekly email.
If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for the Richardcyoung.com free weekly email.