Sous chef Megan Labbe, left, chef Jeb Charette, and line cook Halena Stone prepare meals in the open kitchen at River House in Damariscotta. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Years ago, I taught a college course that made me question myself. The subject of the class isn’t important here; what matters is that I was hired to take over from a retiring professor who had created the course, and for 25 years, he had taught every single cohort that took it. No pressure, or anything.

My first time through, I took his syllabus, course notes, slides and every bit of advice he could give me, including a few nuggets I didn’t completely agree with. I even asked my predecessor to sit in on the first several classes. “You’re doing great,” he told me at the end of the second week. “It’s just like I would have done it.”

The following term, however, I was on my own. No mentor, no safety net. I made a few big changes but did things generally the same way, and it was mostly a success, but the course seemed to have lost its coherence. My tweaks had improved some elements and broken others. Suddenly, the class was neither my mentor’s, nor mine. It took yet another semester before I stopped trying to navigate by two North Stars, and I wrangled the class into submission. Well, not “the class,” but “my class.”

At Damariscotta’s charming River House, a hyperlocal, sustainability-focused restaurant at the waterfront base of the Two Villages bridge, head chef Jeb Charette finds himself in a similar transition phase. Last May, Charette joined the River House team for the second time, after a stint as a line cook in 2021. This time around, though, he was hired to take the reins from River House’s original chef, Jonathan Merry, who had stoked the embers of the kitchen’s hulking wood-fired stove since the restaurant opened its doors in 2019. No pressure, or anything.

“I’ve kind of eased into it,” Charette said. “We made some changes last year, nothing philosophical or anything, but we tried out small plates and tapas. It was kind of fun, but it didn’t work out. This year, I’m doing things a little bit differently. I am trusting myself to do the stuff I’m good at.”

The tuna crudo at River House. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Raw seafood dishes are a key part of Charette’s evolving leadership. Not just Glidden Point oysters sprinkled with Charette’s kimchi-brine mignonette ($19/half dozen), but also thoughtfully composed ceviches, tartares and crudos, like a fat-marbled strip of Maine bluefin tuna adorned with orange pearls of salmon roe, baby basil and mandolin-shaved slices of heat-prickly aji pepper and cooling cucamelon ($20). To further emphasize the raw in addition to the cooked, Charette recently oversaw an expansion of the cooking facilities to add a new raw bar on the circa 2021 front patio.

Last week, I grabbed a table outdoors and was impressed by River House’s commitment to its 20-ish seat, street-adjacent al fresco dining zone. I savored a nasturtium-garnished, caraway-scented Norden Light cocktail ($15), crunching on nugget ice as overhead fans purged the space of its late-summer fug. Meanwhile, rechargeable, Maine-built Hüga Heated Cushions on every chair telegraphed the restaurant’s readiness for the opposite scenario: serving diners outside during cooler months.

I rarely see such thoroughgoing advance planning at restaurants, but I shouldn’t be surprised to encounter it at River House. After all, owner (and former Maine Farmland Trust board member) Eleanor Kinney’s vision to operate River House as a “values based farm-to-table restaurant” is one that demands mindfulness and care in nearly every aspect of the business, from sourcing produce from Lincoln County farms to using eco-friendly machinery indoors.

“There’s nothing we don’t consider. We try to be as sustainable as we can. We use a high-temp dishwasher instead of the kind that requires chemicals. We compost our waste; beers are local; wines are all small-batch and unique; and we get all of our wood (a mix of birch, oak and ash) from the Hidden Valley Nature Center (in Jefferson),” Charette said. “We really use a lot of wood,” he added with a laugh.

Indeed, the bulk of the kitchen’s cooking relies on wood, both for heat and to catalyze what Charette calls “the unique kiss” of wood smoke that suffuses his dishes. Thanks to excellent ventilation in the cozy, nickel-gap-and-varnished cherry wood dining room, you’ll smell what’s cooking, but without having to rub your eyes.

Duck breast with creamed corn, squash, zucchini, mushrooms and roasted tomato demiglace. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Flame’s lipstick traces are all over the duck breast entrée ($36), adding nuance to batons of Morning Dew Farm zucchini and spears of local broccolini, as well as to the meat itself, which arrives gorgeously crisp, yet sadly just past pink. Here, too, a micro-example of River House’s waste-free ethos: Charette repurposes the unfortunately named “backslop,” lactobacillis-rich brine from pickled pearl onions to ferment mustard seeds for the plate’s tangy demiglace.

If you’re wondering where on the menu those pearl onions end up, I can tell you. Their segmented, translucent layers slip and slide in a cascade of black garlic allium butter spooned over a remarkable wood-grilled swordfish fillet ($38). The accompanying sear-marked green beans and extraordinary square of creamy potato pavé only amplify this dish’s appeal.

Order the summer berry salad ($17), and you’ll give the grill (and the three cooks working the sweltering line) a break. Here, the star of the show is Fuzzy Udder Tempest, an award-winning, tomme-style cheese with tons of umami. It works beautifully with the salad’s candied hazelnuts as well as the tumble of blueberries and raspberries. I found the gochujang-black-garlic vinaigrette a bit unbalanced, however: Too much champagne vinaigrette turned it puckery, rather than tangy.

Sous chef Megan Labbe puts the finishing touch on a slice of peach cobbler cheesecake. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Our server described the peach cobbler cheesecake ($15) to us as “cheesy and peachy and sweet.” Yes, it is all three of those things. But that rudimentary description sells sous chef Megan Labbe’s cheesecake short. It is also a clever dessert that nicks warm spices like cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg from a cobbler’s craggy topping and sneaks them into both the cheesecake’s crumb crust and the batter itself. Labbe bakes the cheesecake slowly, in a water bath, then cools, slices and caps it with an abundance of sticky peaches roasted (where else?) on the wood stove.

I love not only the divergent thinking behind this dessert, but also the fact that Charette delegates it to a senior member of his kitchen team. “Once in a while, I dabble (in pastry). I have my likes, my wishes, my influences. I do like it. But I leave that particular creative avenue to Megan (Labbe). That’s her main background,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot here, and one thing I learned is that you’ve got to let people do what they’re good at.”

The Norden Light cocktail with aquavit, Aperol, fresh lime juice, orange bitters and soda water. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

RATING: ***1/2

WHERE: 27 Main St., Damariscotta, 207-563-6156, riverhouseme.com

SERVING: 5-8:30 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday

PRICE RANGE: Appetizers & sides: $7-$19, Sandwiches & entrees: $18-$48

NOISE LEVEL: Courtside at a pickleball match

VEGETARIAN: Many dishes

RESERVATIONS: Yes

BAR: Beer, wine and cocktails

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Yes

BOTTOM LINE: Sheathed in wood from rough-hewn ceiling to polished pine flooring, Damariscotta’s River House restaurant is a charmer. And you don’t have to sit indoors (or at the one, coveted back patio four-top that overlooks the Damariscotta River) to enjoy it – since 2021, the hyper-local, values-focused farm-to-table restaurant has served ethically sourced dinners in its covered front patio. Since taking the reins in the kitchen in 2023, chef Jeb Charette has embraced this outdoor space, adding a cool (in both temperature and allure) raw-bar workstation to balance out the mammoth Grillworks wood stove where most of the restaurant’s cooking happens. A year into his tenure as head chef, Charette seems to be coming into his own with appealing plates like Maine bluefin crudo with punchy aji peppers and shaved cucamelons, and swordfish served atop grill-marked green beans and a slice of one of the best potato pavés you’ll eat in New England. Overall, a slow-burning winner.

Ratings follow this scale and take into consideration food, atmosphere, service, value and type of restaurant (a casual bistro will be judged as a casual bistro, an expensive upscale restaurant as such):

* Poor
** Fair
*** Good
**** Excellent
***** Extraordinary

The Maine Sunday Telegram visits each restaurant once; if the first meal was unsatisfactory, the reviewer returns for a second. The reviewer makes every attempt to dine anonymously and never accepts free food or drink.

Andrew Ross has written about food and dining in New York and the United Kingdom. He and his work have been featured on Martha Stewart Living Radio and in The New York Times. He is the recipient of seven recent Critic’s Awards from the Maine Press Association.

Contact him at: andrewross.maine@gmail.com
Twitter: @AndrewRossME

Editor’s Note: This review has been re-edited and re-published because the original did not meet our editorial standards.