Two Maine restaurants are on Bon Appetit’s list of 50 finalists for its annual “Hot 10” Best New Restaurants in America.
Nina June in Rockport, owned by New York City and Maine restaurateur and chef Sara Jenkins, and The Purple House in North Yarmouth, owned by chef Krista Desjarlais, both made the list.
Sara Jenkins, left, and Nancy Harmon Jenkins, are the mother-daughter co-authors of “The Four Seasons of Pasta.” Sara Jenkins owns Nina June, which has made Bon Appetit’s list of finalists for best new restaurants. Photo by Michael Harlan Turkell/Courtesy of Penguin Random House
The magazine described Nina June as the “fantasy vacationland restaurant where Maine meets the Mediterranean.”
“The stunning kitchen, farmhouse tables, and open shelves lined with cookbooks – you don’t just want to eat here; you want to live here,” Bon Appetit editors Andrew Knowlton and Julia Kramer wrote.
The Purple House was cited for its “much hyped” bagels, such as the “za’atar-dusted Montreal-style bagel with (cultured, organic, made-in-house) horseradish-dill cream cheese and gravlax.” But readers were also encouraged to try Desjarlais’ wood-fired desserts, such as the “crisp-edged hazelnut buckwheat financiers dotted with juicy gooseberries.”
The Purple House is closed for the summer while Desjarlais tends to her other business, an upscale summer snack shack, Bresca & the Honeybee, on the shores of Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester. It will reopen in October.
The Bon Appetit Hot 10 winners will be announced Aug. 15.
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