Chef Erin French has had a remarkable career path — working on the line in her parents’ diner as a teenager, running a secret supper club in Belfast, building a kitchen in a 1965 Airstream trailer — and has remarkable talent. She centers fresh, local ingredients on her plates and this spring, compiled those recipes into her first cookbook, The Lost Kitchen: Recipes and a Good Life Found in Freedom, Maine.
French built her restaurant, The Lost Kitchen, in a 19th-century grist mill in Freedom three years ago. When the 40-seat restaurant opened for their 2017 season, they received 10,000 calls in 24 hours. Now her little spot in a Midcoast town with no liquor licensing has become a food-world sensation attracting the attention of Martha Stewart and the New York Times. On December 12, you can hear French tell her story live in conversation with Portland Press Herald reporter Mary Pols.
Video Recorded December 12, 2017
Mary Pols writes primarily about sustainability for Source. She came to the Press Herald in late 2013 to work on Source after a long career writing about movies. She has almost, but not quite, broken the habit of waking pre-dawn on Oscar nomination day. Mary was born in Portland and raised in Brunswick, but was away for 25 years so it’s been a thrill for her to learn about her state in the 21st century. She studied art history at Duke and her masters in journalism is from UC Berkeley. She’s happiest reporting a story in Maine’s great outdoors, whether she’s watching seaweed farmers plant a crop or eating fresh caught perch with an ice fisherman while a hungry eagle hovers nearby. History really floats her boat as well (once she wrote an entire story about the life of a very old and rare apple tree in Freeport). She lives in Brunswick with her hockey-obsessed son and their dog, a foster-fail kitten and an elderly Maine Coon.
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