With a TV show and new cookbook, Erin French, who owns The Lost Kitchen in Freedom, Maine, is “at 90 miles an hour all the time.”
The lost kitchen in freedom is a phenomenon in the restaurant world. It is lavishly praised for the dining experience it offers and it is so wildly popular that it can accommodate only a fraction of the people who’d like to eat there. Erin French,
Who started cooking in her parents’ diner in freedom when she was just 12 years old, is the owner and chef at the lost kitchen. Her new cookbook, her second is called Big Heart Little Stove. The little stove refers to what she cooked on in the first incarnation of the lost kitchen
Which she ran out of her second floor apartment in Belfast with mismatched silverware and table tops made from scrap wood. She has come an unimaginably long way since then. And some of the lessons she learned. She’s now sharing in her new book.
I was cooking on a four burner electric stove in my apartment and I didn’t have a lot of tools or I didn’t have a lot of money. And so I had to be really frugal and I used what I had and that’s really what got me to where I am today.
It was putting my heart into something deeply and pouring myself into it and using the resources around me, which is really the essence of what this book is about. The little stove has real meaning. The big heart has real meaning you write in the book about the importance of preparing food with love.
That’s what you place at the top of the mountain. That’s what matters the most. It’s the best ingredient. I mean, you can’t make, you can’t make good food if you’re in a bad mood. I truly believe that it really has to come from somewhere deeper of just following a recipe.
But there have to have been evenings in here when you’ve had a wretched day and you’re in a bad mood. How do you make good food? I do. I, I find a time to, to come out of it even if you’re having a bad day.
If I know that I have 50 people who are coming across that bridge, like I am pouring my utmost care into it because they’re showing up whether I’m having a good day or a bad day. And that doesn’t matter, the care is gonna come out because I’m so pressured by it.
I was struck in looking through the book as I was at least halfway through. And I thought, you know, this is almost more of a hospitality book than it is a cookbook. And then I got near the end and you wrote that. You think of yourself more as a hostess
Than as a chef. Yes, 100%. And, you know, that really comes from a place of, uh, well, I didn’t go to culinary school. I’m self taught completely. So it feels strange to call yourself a chef when you didn’t go to school
And be like calling yourself a doctor if you didn’t go to medical school. Erin French opened the lost Kitchen in 2014 in this old mill building in Freedom, a town where she grew up as word got out that this place offered an extraordinary dining experience. The demand for reservations soared to unmanageable levels.
So Aaron French adopted a new system diners hoping to get a reservation, had to send in postcards and the winners were drawn at random in 2023. How many postcards did the lost kitchen receive? About 70,000? You say that what you really want people to think when
They leave here at the end of the evening is not? Wow, what an amazing meal? But wow, what an amazing night. I mean, isn’t that the best thing that you want people to feel? I, you know, food is what I do and I’m a cook. But at the end of the day,
Everything that I’ve prepared is the plate has been lit clean. There’s nothing left to show of that. So for me, the most powerful thing is knowing that it’s not just that meal that’s gonna linger, but it’s that memory and that feeling people I think get intimidated by cookbooks,
Especially ones that have beautiful photography in them and they say I could never do that. And you got all these suggestions for little tips of how people do the things that you do. So let me just mention a few of them warm up the plate in the oven because then
When you put the warm plate with the food on top of it in front of your guests, it’s something special, right? I mean it’s so simple, but everyone can do it at home. And I think if people feel that you have taken that little extra step, just that little something
They’re gonna feel like. Wow, you thought and cared that much to just warm that plate and you’re caring for me that much. Those little things, those, those little moments are really truly what can make people feel extremely loved another one. Give people a little extra treat after dessert,
Which I think is a great idea. That’s brilliant. I think we’re up to like four desserts now at the last kitchen here. So it’s like, oh you thought you were done now? Here’s some warm cookies. Oh, you thought you were done? Oh, chocolates are coming.
So those little extra surprises you’re not necessarily expecting that. So a little bit of the unexpected and those extra touches you make the point that what really matters is not the food that’s on the table. It’s the people who are at the table and how they feel and what everyone is experiencing together.
And it goes back to that idea of the most important element in the preparation of it all is love. Yes. Yeah. I mean, why are we all getting together? It’s not just about a meal we’re getting together to enjoy and have company and camaraderie and laughter and moments.
And that’s really why we’re getting together. The food is kind of the excuse. But I think the purpose of why we’re actually sitting down at that table is so much more than just filling our bellies, well said, but the idea of extra dessert after dessert and then a little more dessert after that
Is winning of a year ally for sure. I knew you were gonna like that. I think I might have a new girl crush. She’s amazing. And I love her outlook on that. It’s gotta be more than just a recipe that you’re following for this stuff. Oh, it’s so cool.
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