The Lost Kitchen

The Lost Kitchen in Freedom, Maine, is one of the most difficult restaurant reservations in the United States and one of the most celebrated dining experiences in New England. Chef and owner Erin French operates the restaurant from a restored grist mill on the banks of a small stream in the mid-coast Maine village of Freedom, a community of fewer than a thousand people with no traffic lights and limited cell service. Reservations are awarded exclusively through an annual postcard lottery: each April, would-be guests mail physical postcards to the mill's address, and names are drawn by hand to fill the season's limited seatings. The lottery generates tens of thousands of postcards for a few hundred spots, making inclusion a genuine chance event. Those who succeed dine on a set multi-course menu — priced at approximately $225 per person — that draws entirely on hyper-seasonal Maine ingredients gathered from the mill's garden, neighboring farms, and local foragers. The menu changes with every seating according to what the land provides, and dishes appear and disappear within days. French's cooking is personal and deeply rooted in the relationship between food, place, and identity, a quality she has written about publicly and that permeates the experience. The mill setting — low ceilings, candlelight, wildflowers on the tables — creates an intimacy that few dining destinations of national profile can replicate.