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Father’s Day is coming up soon. The reservation book is now open and we will be opening at 8:00am Sunday June 19th to welcome you and your Dad, grandad, uncle etc etc. We wish a Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers out there and to all the men who have stepped up and been a father to someone. I’m pretty sure I won the big door prize when it comes to fathers. Let me share him with you. I’ve been ‘my father’s daughter’ since the day I was born when he arrived at the hospital with a nosegay of flowers for me. He is a man meant to father a daughter. Proudly so, I’ve been his ‘little girl’ for all of my 62 years. Growing up in my house was a bit like ‘wait till your father gets home’, not to say my mother wasn’t a perfectly capable task master or disciplinarian but there was something about disappointing my father that was different. I always wanted him to be proud of me and my actions. Because of this I rarely broke rules and to this day that pretty much holds true. Growing up my father always told my brother and me ‘blood is thicker than water’, meaning friends are fine, but we are family and family will always come first. Along with my mother, they have managed to instill that strong sense of familia in not just 1 but 3 generations of Kostopouli. My father would do anything for his family, both immediate and extended, and over the years I have been witness to this. And I am quite sure there is even more that I know nothing about. He has always led by example. When I was 26 and working retail in Portland’s Old Port my father felt I lacked direction. My major in Women’s Studies hadn’t panned out into a career. He asked if I wanted to open a restaurant with him. He said, “I’ll make you a star” and in a way he did, we did. We have been partners for some 36 odd years, it hasn’t always been easy, but it has always been rewarding. He taught me perseverance, bravery and loyalty. In a time where there were few female restauranteurs in Maine, he made me fearless and gave me the tools to succeed. Never once has he made me feel being a ‘girl’ could or would stop me from achieving anything. Over the years I have watched my father be a father figure to so many people. His ability to make someone feel loved, help solve life’s problems, make them feel safe and worthy seems boundless. My father thrives on being a father. I have happily shared him with the masses. A man of honor, that is Anthony Kostopoulos. He is truth and honor to the umpteenth degree. His word is gold. Anthony Kostopoulos is a husband, father, papou and great papou. Each and every role he does better than any other man I know. My father hung the moon. He has given me the stars, love, laughter, success, a good moral compass, passion, a childhood to brag about and bouquets and bouquets of flowers. This Father’s Day I am here to shout from the roof tops, thank you Dad. I adore you.  Mother’s day is the next big thing here at The Good Table, we love our Moms. Anyone who knows us knows our matriarch Sylvia, while she only has 2 biological children she has mothered many, many more. A lot of the crew here look to her for mother love. She’s really good at it. So Mother’s day has always been a favorite of ours. The reservation book is open, we have reserved only half of the dining room leaving the rest open for walk in business. I won’t lie, it’ll be busy, but our crew is top notch and we will be well prepared and things should run smooth as butter. If you need to wait for a table we’ll have coffee on the front porch for you. Per usual all Moms will get a beautiful rose and a big love.   Hello Spring.. Finally. It’s here. We took a nice end of winter break in mid March, we are rested and rejuvenated and excited to bring new flavors to the house. Spring dug parsnips arrive tomorrow, asparagus abounds, spring cocktails are here. Hello spring. Soon we’ll be at the market picking up plants and herbs for the gardens. Greens, ramps, rhubarb, radishes and fiddleheads will follow. Hello spring. We start dreaming of summer strawberries, corn, tomatoes, it is the start of a glorious time of year to cook in Maine. The war in Ukraine breaks our hearts. The need to help in some way inspired us to raise money through sales of goods from The Sweets Department, your personal donations, a 10% charity day and The GT’s matching funds we raised $2,390. I am never more proud to be a small business owner then I am at times like this, when we along with your giving can help. Thank you. The money will be split evenly between Save the Children, Unicef and World Central Kitchen. Easter is coming up hot. We will be open from 8:00 am until 2:00 pm. We will serve Breakfast and Brunch all day. We will forgo the lunch and diner menu and stick to brunchy foods. Sorry, no ham, no lamb, but we’ll have plenty of Cinnamon Buns, Creme Brûlée French Toast and Blood Orange Mimosas. The reservation book is open on April 1st, we are taking reservations for half the dining room with plenty of room for walk in guests. There will be coffee on the porch waiting for you. We’ve stopped offering Take and Bake Family Meals with the end of winter. The Sweets Department though is still offering all sorts of goodies to take and bake in your own oven. Check our weekly menus for offerings. Enjoy the beginnings of the green life. Come visit and taste the season in our menus. Happy Spring Maine. Lisa ‘the cure for anything is salt water..sweat, tears or the sea’ isak dinesen  Raising money for charities has always been important to us over the years.
Saturday, March 12th we'll be donating 10% 0f profits to various causes that feed, cloth, house and take care of Ukrainians fleeing war.  Here we are, 2022. I meant to write a pre new year’s ‘What’s New’ but it didn’t seem to happen. I was stumped. While it is a new year, everything seems not so new. So ‘What’s New’ became a little bit of a challenge. But, I will dive into ‘What’s New’ for lack of a more apt heading. The past year at the restaurant found us settling onto the new normal (forgive me that term), finding our balance, our rhythm and flow. What seemed once to be an absolute necessity or constant, no longer is. As we ourselves get older, as the restaurant gets older, as this pandemic gets older, we have a different playbook. Flexibility has become our most important tool. Acceptance and adaptation reside in that same tool box. The GT has always had the good fortune to have many long time coworkers and a certain charm that has allowed and enticed past coworkers to return, sometimes more than once, to work beside us. When The Good Table is referred to as a family restaurant they could just as easily be referring to the staff. Headed up by the Kostopoulos’s, we are a family. Blessed at that. So we carry on as a tight crew, onward and hopefully upward. In the past year we have all been so touched by the gratitude and support you have all shown us. I have had so many folks touch my arm, look me deep in the eyes with such sincerity and say ‘thank you for still being here. thank you for feeding us.’ It is humbling. It reminds me that we are all in this wonderful community together. I thank you, as does the entire family and crew, for weathering the last years with us. Thank you for your support, kindness, patience and love. It has always been and remains our pleasure to feed you. I thought it would be nice to share our family new year’s tradition. It has changed in the past years because of the pandemic but remains a constant in one form or another in the Kostopoulos family. Vasilopita is the traditional new year’s bread most Greek Orthodox families make for the celebration of a new year. For my entire life I have made this bread with my mother and she with hers and so on and so forth. In our big fat Greek family every woman and girl child has shared in this tradition. This bread is made to be cut with great ceremony among family and friends on new year’s day. A coin wrapped in foil is baked in the sweet round loaf. The bread is cut by the head of the household, a slice is cut first for St Basil, then the church, then for each member of the family starting with the oldest to the youngest. The person who receives the coin is destined to have good fortune for the upcoming year. In our family every woman and girl gets their hands in that dough, even infants are encouraged to squeeze some through their little fingers. In one day we make the Christmas bread, called Tsouraki, sweet braids stuffed with raisins, cinnamon and butter and also the big loaf of Vasilopita. When the braids are done we pull out the large round pan, wrap a coin in foil and nestle it in the dough. The Vasilopita is decorated with a six pointed star of almonds. Before the pandemic there would be upwards of 12 women and girls around my kitchen island, kneading and braiding. Four generations plus cousins make this bread together. It is a beautiful tradition, one that has been sorely missed as we separated into pods during the last couple of years. While we have not made it en masse, it has been made by each family. I even hear that some men and boys been able to join in in some houses!! Even Tony has joined in. In long tradition my mother, Sylvia, always assures we make many more loaves then we need so that we have extra to share with extended family and friends. This brings me back to St Basil and the tradition of Vasilopita. I knew very little if nothing about St Basil. I found the story. St Basil realized his flock was poor and suffering but also understood they were a proud people who would not accept charity. He asked the women of the church to cook loaves of bread with coins scattered throughout them. After church services the bread was shared among the community, each slice holding a coin or two. St Basil was being charitable without making his followers feel needy. And he did it without expecting recognition. It made me think about our own giving and sense of charity. Do we give enough? Do I give enough? Do we give with no strings, glory, no expectations, no prizes?I do believe St Basil has a lot to teach us. All the best in the year to come. Lisa ‘the cure for anything is salt water..sweat, tears or the sea’ isak dinesen  We are quickly swinging into the holiday season.
Ready or not here it comes. Thanksgiving is just days away. We are preparing to make piles of pies and goodies. Our Sweets Department has a list of sweets available for your holiday tables. Just give a call to order and pick up either Tuesday or Wednesday before Thanksgiving. To see a full list go to The Sweets Department tab on our website: www.thegoodtablerestaurant.com. Next comes Christmas to The GT. Star baker Adrienne will be making hundreds of those delectable Take and Bake Cinnamon Buns for your Christmas morning. We will also have a list of sweets available. We introduced The Confection Box last year, it is a box filled with sweet treasures, perfect to drop off on a neighbor’s doorstep or give to your favorite nail tech, or just curl up next to the fire and enjoy yourself. Directly after Thanksgiving we’ll start taking orders for everything sweet. New Year’s Eve has been a tradition here at The Good Table for many years, the last couple have been different than years prior, but in 2021 we’re hoping for a taste from the past and the celebration we have always loved so much. We will be dressing up the restaurant, the menu and ourselves for a sparkling evening. This is one of the few nights where we are reservation only, our reservation book will be open December 1st. We hope you’ll join us. A reminder that our Rensair Air Purifier has kept us and our guests safe for over a year now. We are sorry to say there will be no take away option this year on New Year’s Eve. Our hours for the holidays are as follows: open Wednesday November 24rd from 11:30 - 8:00 pm closed Thanksgiving Thursday Novemember 25th closing at 2:30ish Christmas Eve December 24th closed Christmas Day December 25th closed between 3:00 and 5:00 December 31st closed New Years Day It has been another topsy turvy year, but there are so many blessings to be thankful for. We are blessed, by you our friends, by our fantastic staff and by this great community; thank you and here’s to a shiny new year ahead. Be well. One of my favorite messages, painted on an old broken down sign on the side of the road in midcoast says ‘Be kind and remember the poor’ I think this is my wish for 2022. best of the season -Lisa As we head into our 37th year of business and are drinking bubbly in celebration of the 36 years past, I was curious about statistics on restaurants and longevity. I googled ‘the average life span of an independent restaurant’, what I found was rather stunning. Half of all independent restaurants will close in the first year and 80% of all restaurants will never see their 10th year. The remaining 20% will find long lasting success. Well, here we are, 36 years later, still cooking and welcoming you to our table.
We recently posted pictures from a long time ago, in our beginning years. It brought back so many flashes of who we were in those early years. Pre-social media and an advertising budget, we had that flashing, ever painful sign out front to shout out the offerings, ‘all you can eat’ was a standard. Once you got past the sign and into the dining room our Blackboard Specials let everyone know what we were cooking. The Blackboard has been with us since the very first day. There are so many ways to track our passage through time. Our table coverings is one. The progression from checkered tables cloths (that I use to wash) to glass tops, to finally unadorned wood. Other measurements are the bar and our giant leap from rock gut liquor to maine crafted liquor, the size and shape of the kitchen, pre-fire, post fire, pre-pandemic, still pandemic; but the best way always to measure our growth is our Blackboard. The Blackboard has grown from ‘all you can eat’ to this past week where the menus were studded with just foraged hen of the woods mushrooms. Our Blackboard has been influenced by many cooks and chefs who have worked beside us and taught us; The Good Table kitchen was the first I’d ever worked in, I had a lot to learn. I am thankful to have learned from so many all these years, starting with my parents. The Good Table took a distinct turn from who it was to who it would become in 2001 after the restaurant burnt down. With the leadership of two of the best chefs and teachers, John St Germain and Ryan Weeks, we ever had we rose to a higher ground. We started to seriously work with all the local farms and became the restaurant we are today. While many of our original menu items from 1986 still grace the menu, the Blackboard has always been our place to grow, experiment and create. From breakfast to dinner each cook gets an opportunity to put themselves on that board. Partnerships that last 36 years are also a bit of a rarity. A father and daughter team seems the right mix for Tony and myself. We both have brought different nuances to the business. We haven’t always agreed, but our differences are what has made the restaurant a place where everyone is comfortable and there is something for all. I am more than thankful to have him as my partner. I can always trust him and his opinions and he mine. In 2018 we invited Jessica, my oldest niece and Tony’s first grandchild, to join us as a partner. Jessica has been with us since she was 14 years of age, she has seen every angle there is to see in this restaurant. Our goal was always to keep her ‘out of the kitchen’ but turns out that is where her true love is. Her youth, strong work ethic, and love of good food has been genius. She is strong, smart and kind. She has a passion for good food and the business. She has been such a great addition to our partnership. It is a testament to this restaurant that we have a cook, Danny, who is coming up on his 25th year with us. There are so many things that Danny cooks for our guests, all the chowders, Juanita’s burrito, corn beef hash and the infamous Danny’s Burger. He is so good that he never takes a weekend off, even when he had a short hiatus for a year and worked somewhere else, he still worked sunday brunch with us. He is one of the biggest reasons we rock the hell out of saturday breakfast and sunday brunch. Danny is family and we are thankful for him and all the others, though with not quite as much longevity, who have cooked beside us, taught us, bettered us and been loyal and true. The Good Table has always been known for our Sweets Department, now head up by Adrienne, she is fearless and talented. The cinnamon buns we made all those years ago are the same we make today. Each and every pastry chef over the years has brought their own spin on sugar. You can tell the seasons through our pies because it’s always pie season at The Good Table. We have been been blessed with the best, sweetest, strong assed women creating in our kitchen. I have loved and learned for each one. Kaylin leads the dining room, everyone who knows us knows Kaylin. She is gold. She leads a gracious, smart team and has proven neither fire nor pandemic can keep her and our front of the house team from doing their best each day. I couldn’t come close to counting the amazing women who have made us who we are. There are so many, you all know who you are. Thank you. (Wanna pickup a shift?) Over the many years most of the Kostopoulos family has done some time with us. In the kitchen, in the dining room, the age span from oldest to youngest currently at the GT is 88 to 16. How extraordinary is that? While family politics can sometimes be challenging I know we are still here because of the family that had our backs. Sylvia, the matriarch, has been our champion for 36 years and more. She has brought the design, taught me how to cook, how to be a host and how to be a leader. We would not be celebrating all these years with out her. Last but certainly not least are all the people who sat at our tables. People we have grown to consider family, friends. Babies being born, the passing of beloveds and everything in between, our history is rich. There are so very many who have brought a smile to us. Thank you seems not quite grand enough, but thank you. You have made it worth all the work, it has been our pleasure to feed you and yours for all these years. - lisa ‘the cure for anything is salt water..sweat, tears or the sea’ isak dinesen Summer is in full swing. The weather has been slightly grey and wet but we are taking it in stride and enjoying our beach, lake, gardening and grilling time.
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