Q&A WITH ERIN FRENCH

CHEF-OWNER OF THE LOST KITCHEN IN FREEDOM, ME

LOOK FOR ERIN ON THE NEW SEASON OF WEEKENDS WITH YANKEE e attention and adoration has continued. French’s 2018 reservation inquiries exceeded last year’s, and in March her cookbook, e Lost Kitchen: Recipes and a Good Life Found in Freedom, Maine, was named a James Beard Award nalist. We recently caught up with the award-winning chef, who is featured in season 2 of Weekends with Yankee.

In the American culinary world, it could rightfully be argued that 2017 was the year of Erin French, as the chef and her restaurant, the Lost Kitchen, earned a celebrity buzz usually associated with names like Chang, Shire, and Pepin. When French opened her reservation line that spring, more than 10,000 requests came in. e New York Times came calling; Martha Stewart did, too. It’s not di cult to see why. With the Lost Kitchen, which rst opened in 2014, French has created something uniquely her own. Local avors and DIY pride are its building blocks. Her cuisine draws on food grown by area farmers; she sta s the place with her friends.

WWY: Now that you have some distance from the 2017 season, what do you make of everything that happened?

EF: I’m continuing to process it, and it continues to astound me. I never would have imagined it would turn into what it did. It’s far beyond anything I ever dreamed of, or planned. But I don’t even have the time to look back on it, because it’s continuing, it’s not over, it keeps going. It’s making me a stronger person, that’s for sure.

WWY: For this year’s reservation process, you required people to mail in a card, rather than call. What was your thinking behind the change?

EF: We had to make a change, but I never wanted it to be a computer system, because in two seconds the whole thing would have booked out. That’s not going to be satisfying for anyone. So by asking people to mail in a card we still keep it personal, and it takes the weight off us. I know this is not the way people typically do things. I’m not saying anyone has to do this. But this is what works for us.

WWY: Do you ever foresee a time when you’ll open another Lost Kitchen, or another place that features your food, so that more people can have access to your cooking?

EF: No, I don’t. One thing I realize is that I’ve created something that is completely unsustainable businesswise. Because if I get sick, the restaurant closes for the night. I have put so much of what has to happen in an evening on my plate and on my shoulders. I know that’s not a wise decision, and I know that nothing will last forever. But the last thing I want to do is have some offshoot that other people are running, trying to make it look like me when it’s not me.

I want to do this for a while. That’s why I take the big chunks of time off in the winter and why we do four days during the summer. Right now I’m having the time of my life. On those evenings when I get to cook with my best friends, that’s the best. As long as I can do this, I’m going to keep going.