Chef Bowman Brown, formerly of the celebrated restaurant Forage in Salt Lake City, is opening a restaurant Tuesday in Biddeford called Elda.

Elda, at 140 Main St., the former home of Custom Deluxe, will serve a variety of small plates inspired by local ingredients, ranging in price from $6 to $24. A sample menu is posted on the restaurant’s website, eldamaine.com Dishes include a cherrywood smoked arctic char with preserved cherry blossom and monkfish roasted with carrots and mussels.

The restaurant plans to eventually serve wine, beer and cocktails.

Forage, which Brown owned with chef Viet Phan, closed in 2016. It was considered one of the best restaurants in Salt Lake City and was credited with helping to elevate the food scene there. Brown and Viet Phan were named in the 2011 class of Food & Wine magazine’s Best New Chefs. Brown has also been a six-time semi-finalist for the James Beard Best Chef: Southwest award.

The name of Brown’s new Maine restaurant is an homage to the chef’s great-grandmother, Elda Whiting Brown.

Bowman’s culinary roots are in New England. He attended the Atlantic Culinary Academy in Dover, New Hampshire. He has worked at the Dunaway Restaurant in Portsmouth, at 231 Ellsworth in San Mateo, California, and at Gary Danko and Fifth Floor in San Francisco.


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