ABOUT THE BOOK:
From Erin French, owner and chef of the critically acclaimed The Lost Kitchen, a TIME world dining destination, a life-affirming memoir about survival, renewal, and finding a community to lift her up
Long before The Lost Kitchen became a world dining destination with every seating filled the day the reservation book opens each spring, Erin French was a girl roaming barefoot on a 25-acre farm, a teenager falling in love with food while working the line at her dad's diner and a young woman finding her calling as a professional chef at her tiny restaurant tucked into a 19th century mill. This singular memoir--a classic American story--invites readers to Erin's corner of her beloved Maine to share the real person behind the "girl from Freedom" fairytale, and the not-so-picture-perfect struggles that have taken every ounce of her strength to overcome, and that make Erin's life triumphant.
In Finding Freedom, Erin opens up to the challenges, stumbles, and victories that have led her to the exact place she was ever meant to be, telling stories of multiple rock-bottoms, of darkness and anxiety, of survival as a jobless single mother, of pills that promised release but delivered addiction, of a man who seemed to offer salvation but in the end ripped away her very sense of self. And of the beautiful son who was her guiding light as she slowly rebuilt her personal and culinary life around the solace she found in food--as a source of comfort, a sense of place, as a way of bringing goodness into the world. Erin's experiences with deep loss and abiding hope, told with both honesty and humor, will resonate with women everywhere who are determined to find their voices, create community, grow stronger and discover their best-selves despite seemingly impossible odds. Set against the backdrop of rural Maine and its lushly intense, bountiful seasons, Erin reveals the passion and courage needed to invent oneself anew, and the poignant, timeless connections between food and generosity, renewal and freedom.
READ AN EXCERPT:
PART ONE
HOPE
1
BACON AND ICE CREAM
It was ten past three in the afternoon, the time of day I looked forward to the most. This was the hour each afternoon that offered a bit of much-needed semipeacefulness in the kitchen at my father’s diner. It was the time of day when, for a split second, I could finally take a break. Over the past four hours I had flipped at least two dozen burgers, fried an equal number of clam baskets, plated a dozen meatloaf specials, and made a few BLTs, ham Italians, and egg salad sandwiches in between.
After the frenetic lunch rush ended, the grill was finally empty, the Fryolators idled hot and peaceful, and the ticket bar sat quiet and vacant of orders. Here it was, my chance to sit down, grab a quick bite, or take my first pee in five hours. But it was also the only moment quiet enough in the kitchen to get ahead with prep for home fries and bacon for tomorrow morning’s crushing breakfast service. The ten-pound bag of pork on the counter was glaring at me impatiently. I pulled a fistful of the fatty strips from the huge bag and laid them one by one into four long rows on the giant griddle that sat center stage on the old diner line. I fried each length until it was just barely brown and stacked it between layers of brown paper towels to absorb the warm fat, then laid out four more rows again, then again, and again, and again. Every day it felt like an endless task, the sputtering grease pelting my wrists with tiny burns. I couldn’t help cringing, even though I was well used to it by now. And then there was the smell of rendered pork fat that came with it. It seemed to permeate every strand of hair, every thread of clothing, every pore: I flat-out reeked of bacon. God, I couldn’t wait for a long hot shower, but that was easily seven hours away. I had more pork to fry and home fries to dice, and then a full fucking dinner service ahead of me.
After the last batch was tucked between paper towels, I twisted each of the four knobs on the griddle to the right and killed the ignition to the pilot lights below. I grabbed the grill scraper and, using it like a squeegee, began to move the puddles of hot grease down the perimeter of the grill, guiding the smoking liquid to the stainless-steel trap in the lower left corner below. Finally a clean grill, a still-empty ticket board, and a moment to sit. Yes! I walked over to the soft-serve ice cream machine that was tucked in the front of the kitchen and pulled on the lever, letting the soft and creamy vanilla squiggles twist their way into the sugared wafer cone in my hand. It took a lot of practice to twist a good-looking cone, but I was a pro by now, after all these years. And then you needed to know the difference between a small, a medium, and a large. It was important; it mattered. Believe me, I got bitched at more than once by my dad for making cones “too big.”
“Why don’t you just give the fucking place away?!” he’d yell. “How many times do I have to tell you?! Three twists around for a small, four for a medium, and five for a large. What do you want me to do?! Work for nothing?! One, two, three! That’s three twists for a small! Four for a medium, and five for a large! Get it?!” His anger seemed so wild, so unnecessary, but not out of character. His lack of patience with me had become old news.
Meanwhile, my younger sister, Nina, had been dishing out parfaits and banana boats to her stoned friends through the dairy-bar window every day after school and ruining cases of whipped-cream canisters by doing whippets, yielding him net nothing. She was younger, so maybe he went easier. Or maybe he was worn out by his disappointment in me.
Finally I took a perch out back of the restaurant for my afternoon pause. Sitting on an overturned milk crate, I propped my feet on an empty plastic bread rack and lapped up the cold, delicious, and perfect small one-two-three vanilla cone. I was far enough away from the kitchen to catch a breath, but close enough, still in earshot, to hear the ding of the call bell on the cook’s counter should an order come in from the dining room.
* * *
I remember the first day I ever set foot into the diner. I was just five. En route to kindergarten one morning, my mom veered our old Volvo off our normal path to school. We bounced over a few potholes in the wide dirt parking lot before coming to a stop in front of the little diner we had passed many times before, perched on top of Knox Ridge. RIDGETOP RESTAURANT read the prominent sign on the front gable. BEST MEALS FOR MILES in dull brown and yellow paint.
“What are we doing here?” I asked my mother from the backseat, puzzled by the unexpected stop.
“We’re going to visit Dad before school. This is where he works now. This is our restaurant. We bought it!” It was genuine excitement. My sister and I were speechless for a split second. Our eyes widened, and we squealed with delight. “What? We own a restaurant?!” It was as though we both simultaneously pictured all the free burgers, fries, milkshakes, and soft-serve ice cream our bellies could hold. We jumped out of the car and raced for the front door, trying to fling it open in our joy, but the big plate-glass door was heavier than expected, and it opened far more slowly than the speed of our pounding heartbeats. A string of bells tied to the handle clanged gently as we pulled it open with all our might, announcing to everyone that we had arrived. Inside we paused in amazement, taking in our new surroundings: before us was a long row of faux-wooden booths. The tabletops were adorned with paper place mats and simple tableware, red plastic ketchup bottles, pink packets of sugar, and stacks of assorted tiny jam cups. The smells of fried onions and bacon filled our nostrils. To our right was a tall breakfast counter, lined with wooden stools and topped by glass containers stuffed full of baked goods. A few patrons sat at the counter, quietly sipping their coffee from shiny brown mugs and sucking on cigarettes. They noticed us for only a split second before going back to their plates of hash and eggs. I remember marveling at the thin plumes of smoke wafting from their lips and ashtrays, up toward the asbestos drop ceiling yellowed with nicotine stains, the pattern mimicking the shape of the breakfast counter below, representing years of loyal regular patrons.
We were greeted by a kind waitress wearing stonewashed jeans, a soft purple T-shirt, white leather high-top sneakers, and a frilly black apron. She had thick curly brown hair that stood tall and firm (Aqua Net, to be sure), her eyelashes were caked with blue mascara, and she had a Bic pen tucked behind her ear, her hairspray-drenched locks helping to keep it firmly in place.
“Hi there. I’m Viola. You must be Jeff’s girls,” she said in a bubbly voice as she bounded toward us. But before we could even respond with a nod, our attention was diverted by the familiar voice of our grandmother from behind the breakfast counter. There she was, her soft and sweet face coming into view through the haze of smoke.
“Girls!” she exclaimed with a chuckle as she motioned for us to join her behind the counter. We ran to her, eyes still wide, our backpacks swinging behind us. We each received big hugs and a warm kiss on the head.
“Let’s get you two a doughnut and a glass of milk,” she said as she whisked us away into the back. We pushed through the swinging wood door into the kitchen, and there he was—our dad. He was standing in front of a giant stainless griddle, a white apron around his waist, a large spatula in his hand, effortlessly flipping oversize golden pancakes high in the air, all the while whistling happy tunes through his teeth. Each cake he flipped made a hiss! and splat! as its uncooked side hit the hot grill. I liked it. He glanced over at my sister and me, and we were staring at him in honest amazement, our jaws slightly agape. We were mesmerized by the sight of this man, our father—there was something about him we didn’t quite recognize. His smile was so big that his blue eyes were squinted small enough so you almost couldn’t tell what color they were. His dark blond sideburns stretched with his face, and his mustache twitched as he bared his big white smile, still whistling through his teeth. In this very moment his immense joy was overwhelming and obvious. It was rare, and strange, to see him like this—happy, whole. Look at me! Loving life! he said, without actually saying a word. It warmed me inside. “I didn’t know Dad knew how to cook,” Nina said without blinking, without moving or taking her eyes off him, her eyes large like a little fawn’s.
Farther down the vast line I could see my grandfather, fiddling away with something in a large Fryolator. His black-rimmed reading glasses were smudged with grease and had slid down to the very tip of his nose, where they miraculously managed to stop and stay. He was whistling loudly too, with joy. His tune would mingle with my father’s from the grill to the fryer, and back and forth again. From the hot oil we watched him pull one, two, three—six—piping-hot doughnuts and place them on a parchment-lined plate that my grandmother was patiently holding beside him. He turned in our direction, his white apron splattered with egg and batter, adjusted his glasses, and blew Nina and me a kiss, before dropping more raw dough into the hot fryer and resuming his joyful tune.
Gram stood before us now with the plate of freshly fried doughnuts. We each grabbed one and bit in. Steam rose from our mouths. The warmth, the crunch on the outside that yielded to the softness inside, the delicate hints of nutmeg and vanilla, and the subtle sugary sweetness. It was the best thing I had ever tasted in my entire life. We cooled our mouths with swigs of fresh cold milk in between. We were all so happy in this moment. It was poetic and romantic. What is this magical place?! I thought as I took my second bite.
“This is our restaurant,” my dad said out loud, glowing. And I was in love.
* * *
I was twelve years old when my dad first pulled me onto the line. I remember the Sunday morning clearly. I woke early, filled with butterflies and excitement that I was going to work at the diner for the very first time. I jumped into the passenger seat of my mom’s car and honked the horn impatiently.
“Come on, Mom!” I yelled from the side window.
“All right, all right!” she yelled back as she made her way through the front door. She got into the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition. “I can’t wait for you to get a driver’s license,” she said, tired and slightly annoyed.
“Mom, I’m twelve. I’m saving for a bike.” I rolled my eyes.
I had stepped in all those years ago to help my dad out at the diner, mostly because I needed the cash to buy that bike, then eventually to fill the tank of my Volkswagen Rabbit, or to buy Janet Jackson cassettes. I worked my way up the rungs of the line and learned every basic kitchen skill a cook would need to know: How to cook a burger a nice pink medium-rare. How to cook eggs—hard, sunny, over easy, scrambled, poached, and boiled. How to roast a chicken and extract every bit of meat from the carcass (we always saved and dried the wishbones—for wishes, of course, which Nina and I would duel over). How to perfectly bread and fry clams, scallops, shrimp, and fish. How to balance the ratios of mayo, vinegar, salt, and butter. I learned about timing and multitasking—minding the grill with a half-dozen burgers (in an array of different cooked temperatures) or composing chicken and egg salad sandwiches while warming stews in the microwave and monitoring the fry basket, just to name a few of the varied and simultaneous tasks I was charged with. Left alone in the kitchen without my dad to answer my many questions, I was learning how to use my intuition, to rely on it. To taste and test and figure out what seemed just right. All those years of experimenting—out of necessity—had started shaping me as a cook.
* * *
Now, nine years later, I was holding my own on the line, though not without its own sacrifices, evidenced by my quick ice cream break before returning to another twelve-plus-hour-long shift. The cone was melting fast in the summer heat. I couldn’t keep up with the vanilla custard dripping down my hand and onto my very pregnant belly. I was twenty-one years old; single, nine months pregnant, and fighting through a sixteen-hour workday. I was tired, uncomfortable, and particularly angry with my father, who had left me in charge of his diner while he was off manning a blooming-onion booth at a nearby county fair for Labor Day weekend. There was too much money he’d miss out on by not going—every year he’d sell through hundreds of pounds of fried onions and come home with garbage bags filled with cash—but to me it still made no sense. “What if I go into labor?” I asked him. “I don’t care,” he had told me with the most sincere lack of concern over the phone earlier that day. “Lock the fucking door if it comes down to it.” My pregnancy was not only a major inconvenience to him, since I would need time off from work at the diner to have my baby, but a genuine embarrassment. “Do you see the problem I’ve got on my hands here?” he snapped at the Sysco salesman one afternoon, pointing squarely at me and my belly as I worked in the corner salad station. The disdain was no different from what he once showed toward the female kittens on our farm. They were useless creatures—it was just a matter of time before they got knocked up, forsaking their mousing duties and creating more mouths to feed.
I wanted to lock the door, go home, take a bath and a nap. But I didn’t. I finished my cone, washed up, and went back to the kitchen. There was more work to be done for the following day, and with the baby due any moment, it was best to get ahead on prep. There were home fries to be made. And bacon.
2
TAPIOCA AND KITTENS
Freedom, Maine, population 719, was the town you passed through when you were going somewhere bigger. A little town of nothing, a rural mix of farmland and thick woods. It didn’t offer a lot—a church, a small general store with a couple of gas pumps, a sleepy post office that was open for only a few hours a day. At the center of town was an old shingled mill, sitting vacant and crumbling, overlooking the Sandy Stream. This mill was long ago the backbone for the town, harvesting power from the stream to grind grains like flour and corn. Eventually it would transform into a saw- and wood-turning mill, putting out lumber and shingles and handles for shovels and screwdrivers. The work of the mill came to a quiet halt in the sixties. It sat for the years that followed, the water rushing past it and flowing over the falls, forgetting it. It slowly faded and became the heap of crumbling wood and granite that I knew it to be in my childhood.
My sister and I would parade past the old mill every Fourth of July in our retired dance recital costumes from the year before, and attend Sunday school just up the hill at the Congregational church each week. We ice-fished each winter and skated along the clear ice of Freedom Pond, which fed into the Sandy Stream, running past the mill and washing bits of it away. The sad and neglected structure listed dangerously to one side, its rusted metal roof warped from the many years it had been forgotten. It appeared as if it could collapse with a single gust of wind. The only souls foolish enough to explore its rotting interior were a few of the local teenage boys who would mark the walls with their graffiti and piss, or throw rocks through the few panes of glass that remained in the dark holes that used to house windows. To me the building represented everything I thought Freedom was: If you stay here, you will rot. Freedom didn’t lend a lot of promise. We were raised with unspoken reminders: If you wanted to be something or do something with your life, then you had to go somewhere else; you couldn’t live out dreams in Freedom. You couldn’t be successful in Waldo County; there was no good life to be found in Freedom. The mill whispered a ghostly reminder of what would happen if you stayed—You’ll just end up like me, a crumbling junkyard that nobody cares about. If you were born in Freedom, you would most likely die in Freedom, and whatever you did in between wouldn’t matter all that much.
Copyright © 2021 by Erin French
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MY REVIEW:
Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch by
Erin French
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story; Remaking a life from Scratch by Erin French is a 2021 Celadon Books publication.
An inspiring story of success! In this memoir, Erin French shares her life journey in an honest, emotionally raw voice. Her upbringing, her family dynamics, her first marriage, her lonely and extremely difficult battle with depression and substance abuse, hitting rock bottom and clawing her way back up to become a successful restaurant owner is often harrowing to read about, but rewarding in the end.
The Lost Kitchen is located in Freedom, Maine, which makes the title of the book a nice play on words. Freedom is a tiny little town, but the restaurant is known as a ‘dining destination’. Erin, and her restaurant, have been noticed and featured in the NYT and Martha Stewart Living, and Erin has shared her story on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and more.
Her journey to this point has been fraught with many roadblocks, mistakes, and challenges, but Erin dug deep to find the tenacity to turn her life around and the courage to grab her dream and make it come true.
Anytime I see someone work their up from rock bottom, having lost virtually everything, to reclaim their lives again, I find much hope and inspiration in their determination to fight back.
From a personal standpoint, Erin didn’t exactly make a good first impression. She got off on my bad side almost immediately by offending my religious beliefs. Although I bristled, I was able to shake it off and read the book with an open mind and by using my critical thinking cap.
I am glad I stayed with the book. Erin's battles with depression is especially grim, and her pain, literally jumps off the page. My heart went out to her, but I was also impressed by her strength and her love for her son, which inspired her fight to win.
It is good to see someone pull themselves back from the brink to find professional victory, and personal stability as well.
I’m happy Erin's talents are being recognized and sincerely hope she continues to enjoy much success and prosperity.
While I live a long way from Maine, I'll keep an eye out for more great reviews and features about Erin and her
The Lost Kitchen. GRAB A COPY HERE:
THE LOST KITCHEN -FREEDOM, MAINE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Erin French is the owner and chef of The Lost Kitchen, a 40-seat restaurant in Freedom, Maine, that was recently named one TIME Magazine's World's Greatest Places and one of "12 Restaurants Worth Traveling Across the World to Experience" by Bloomberg. A born-and-raised native of Maine, she learned early the simple pleasures of thoughtful food and the importance of gathering for a meal. Her love of sharing Maine and its delicious heritage with curious dinner guests and new friends alike has garnered attention in outlets such as The New York Times (her piece was one of the ten most read articles in the food section the year it was published), Martha Stewart Living, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and Food & Wine. She has been invited to share her story on NPR's All Things Considered, The Chew, CBS This Morning, and The Today Show. Erin was featured in a short film made by Tastemade in partnership with L. L. Bean, which won a James Beard Award, and The Lost Kitchen Cookbook has been named one of the best cookbooks by The Washington Post, Vogue.com, and Remodelista and was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award.
Hard Cash Valley by Brian Panowich
