-The Lost Kitchen in Freedom, Maine,
is more like a secret dinner party than a restaurant.
It's a journey and a destination.
-You have nowhere to be tonight.
It's a Friday night in the middle of nowhere, right?
-Reservations are accepted by postcard only.
The hospitality and the generosity is contagious.
-They're strangers, those people.
They don't even know each other.
They look like they've known each other forever.
-When owner Erin French started The Lost Kitchen,
she was a single mother whose divorce
had taken everything from her but her name.
So she threw away the playbook.
She chose to rebuild and reveal her true self
through her restaurant.
-It's a kitchen, and it's not like a chef's kitchen.
It's a mom kitchen, and we're all moms here.
-How much do I want to just be helping you right now?
-Yeah, go for it.
-Okay, yeah.
-The people who are in the room, they really make the evening,
and it's like, "Oh, it's a quiet night or..."
-About 20,000 hopeful people send reservation requests
by postcard each year.
French can offer reservations
to only about 1% by personal phone call.
There's one menu at The Lost Kitchen, and it changes nightly.
Everyone eats the same thing at the same time.
-We're all having the same experience.
Everyone's coming together in this space.
They don't have to make any decisions.
They just come in, and they just get to be cared for
instead of having to, like, think.
Just come in, relax, and be cared for.
-All of this contributes to the dinner party vibe.
Not surprising, because The Lost Kitchen started
as a supper club in French's apartment.
Now, French's entire cooking and serving staff are women.
Their focus is on the experience,
not the competition that French sees lately
in the male-dominated restaurant industry.
-They want to make this dish that's gonna be better than his.
You know?
It's like they're cooking against each other.
They're not really cooking for the person
who's sitting in that seat.
-I love the way that you run this kitchen,
because everybody is so happy, everybody's friends.
-Yeah, we're friends.
We're family. -Yeah.
-It's like my mom and my best friends and sisters,
if I could adopt them.
-And it's like choreography, I mean,
because everybody seems to just know without a "behind."
-It is, yeah. -Yeah.
-The first two years were a little --
You know, I can show you burns and scars and, you know,
scars on my arms and scars on my heart
that were moments that it took to get here.
It didn't start out like that.
-French grew up in Freedom.
She was once a server at a local diner.
-I moved back home to my parents at 21 and pregnant and single.
I thought I was gonna be successful,
I was gonna be a doctor, and I had done it.
I had gotten away from Freedom, and that's the only way
you can be successful, is to leave Freedom and,
you know, show everyone in high school that you made it out.
It's the most terrifying thing is, you know, having a kid,
and all of a sudden you realize,
"I got someone to be normal for."
I was living in a trailer in my parents dooryard,
like, close enough just so I could have Wi-Fi.
"How do I get normal real quick?"
I needed to have somewhere to put some energy into,
because otherwise I just wouldn't have been
able to get out of bed.
The scariest part of starting something from scratch is,
is it gonna work? It's a restaurant.
It's already -- your chances are slim.
It's a restaurant in the middle of nowhere.
Okay, take it down even more.
It's a restaurant run by a woman in the middle of nowhere.
Take it down even more. So, I mean,
I'm glad I wasn't thinking like that when I started it.
I was just thinking like, "I have to go,
I have to survive, I have to keep going."
But if I'd look back on it now, I'm like,
"Oh, my God, what was I thinking?"
But now I'm, like, so happy. -I know.
Say, "I'm gonna have a great dinner!"
-We know we are. -Hi.
-How are you? -I'm great.
Thanks.
How are you? -I'm great.
Welcome to The Lost Kitchen.
-I'm excited to eat here.
-You can just pull any red right off the rack.
If you want something chilled, like a white or a bubbly,
she's got them in the cooler already chilled.
-It's the wine cellar!
I hear that, at this place, people actually, like,
give each other glasses of wine, too,
so I want to be prepared for that.
I'm Mary Beth. -Mary?
Nice to meet you.
-Nice to meet you, too. -Beth Beth.
-Beth. Okay.
I would like a bottle of sparkling wine,
because you and I are celebrating.
-I've got just the thing. -She's got just the thing.
I love this place.
-We are gonna start tonight with a really lovely soup.
This is a spring end, early summer aline soup
with last-of-the-season asparagus.
We're gonna pour this table side for you.
We've got a really nice, refreshing salad
to follow with that.
We have these really beautiful, crunchy,
organic heads of iceberg,
and we're just gonna serve you a nice wedge of this.
We have beautiful grass-fed Maine tenderloin,
and we're just gonna sear these in cast-iron skillets
and roast them off in the oven till they're rare, medium-rare.
First of the season baby summer squash and zucchini.
So we just quickly roasted them, and we're gonna serve them
room temperature like an Italian salad.
-French runs her kitchen like a sisterhood.
-Maia, last year, the day that she gave birth,
she made the last call and went home
and gave birth to the baby at 1:30 in the morning?
-Yes. -You finished up, you were like,
"Uh, I'm having contractions." That was at 4:00?
3:30? -Yes, 3:30.
-3:30, and she went home and had the baby.
So, this is an old-fashioned butter cake,
and I just made it like an old-fashioned loaf cake.
And when it came out of the oven,
I had a butter bath waiting for it.
-Butter cake is like butter. It's amazing.
Erin, will you marry me?
-We've all grown, and we've all become stronger women
being here together.
No screaming in the kitchen.
There's no, like, crazy drinking fests.
We created this work environment that is, like,
so respectful and so safe.
We just keep telling ourselves, when we stop having fun,
we're just gonna stop.
That could be next year, it could be 20 years.
It could be 30 years from now.
-When you get home, what do you eat?
-You really want to know? -Yeah.
French fries?
-No, I have microwaved dinner. I do.
I put it in the microwave for 4 1/2 minutes
while I take a shower, then I eat it in bed.
But it's organic!
I feel a lot of pressure to care for this place
and to not let it explode in a way
that is just unhealthy or gross
or just, you know, paints any sort of light
other than what this place really is.
You know, I'm just at the point
where I'm able to feel comfortable.
Like, I said to my son this past year,
we went in the grocery store, I was like, "Get what you want."
He's like, "What do you mean?"
I was like, "Let's go down to the snack aisle
and let's just put anything you want in here."
And that was, like, a moment of, like, ahh, I'm doing okay.
'Cause I could think of moments when we'd go
in the grocery store, I'm like, "We have $40 this week,
for the whole week, to spend."
I want to be true on the life that I want to life
and not live it for the purpose of money.
We're all taught, like, that's what we're supposed to do.
It's all about making money and to be successful.
I'm like, "What about, you know, just having a simple life?"
It's equally as successful.
-A simple life in Freedom. -A simple life in Freedom.
They're looking for more than food.
They're looking for that thing that food has,
which is power to make you feel something.
You can taste joy and you can taste happiness
and you can taste authenticity.
Like, you can taste it and it, like, feels real.
And for all of us, like, we're all real.
-It's an escape from reality in that this is reality,
'cause we're all in this room sharing a moment.
But it doesn't feel like reality.
It feels like what reality should be.
At the end of the evening,
French puts out the diner's postcards
that got them into the restaurant that night.
-I did one for my husband and for Leslie at our table.
-Are they appreciative?
-They're appreciative now.
-Her whole story about, like, second chances
and what she went through with her divorce and everything,
which is very similar to something that I went
through personally.
-I'm so thankful for every moment,
for everything that happened.
If I didn't have that struggle, I wouldn't --
I couldn't have found my strength to be here.
And I keep saying, like, I cried a river,
and it brought me to a waterfall.
It's true!
-We've all been there.
Maybe you're going through it right now --
a seismic change that requires you to redefine your life,
fight for your authentic self.
And if you can come out the other side and give yourself
and others joy, that's everything.
-It's Friday night, we're in Maine,
the best place in the world.
It's far more than the food.
I hope you remember the way that you felt tonight.
So welcome to Freedom.
I've a lot of things that I've figured out as I've gotten old.
I've learned how to hug.
I never knew how to do that well.
And I'm learning how to take compliments.
-How do you hug?
-I'm like -- -Like, full -- Oh, my God.
-And then you do -- No, but then what you do
when you think you're done, you keep going.
-You keep going.