Taste of Maine #239

Harding Lee Smith:

That's why I like sailing so much. Because you're always going forward. You always know that you have to keep going somewhere. The restaurant business, you have to keep growing.

John Turner:

I think that ability to really explore and, and really like, use my imagination has helped me create businesses here in Maine, around Maine. So I think that whole upbringing is like a big catalyst to like, why I'm doing what I'm doing now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine radio show number 239, Taste of Maine, airing for the first time on Sunday, April 17, 2016. Maine is not just a place to live. It is a place to make a life to live. Today we speak with four people who are creating successful businesses that feature the tastes of Maine. Our first guest is chef and restauranteur Harding Lee Smith, owner of the Rooms in Portland, who is expanding his presence to one of Maine's favorite ski mountains this year. Our other guests, Chris Avantaggio, John Turner and Nate o' Leary are co founders of Crateful of Maine, a company that is sending the Taste of Maine around the world. Thank you for joining us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Today it is my great pleasure to bring back into the studio Harding Lee Smith, who is a chef and restaurateur who owns the Rooms in Portland. The rooms include the Grill Room, the Corner room and the Front room, as well as Boone's Fish House and Oyster Room. It's great to see you again.

Harding Lee Smith:

Well done.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes, I know it's a mouthful. It is a mouthful. So I'm impressed because the last time you came in, I think that you had only Three rooms. But you had the fourth room. Like that was what was going to happen next.

Harding Lee Smith:

Yes, I believe that's accurate.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. And now you actually have in mind the fifth room.

Harding Lee Smith:

The fifth room. The Mountain Room.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The Mountain Room.

Harding Lee Smith:

Seasonal place up at Sunday River.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, you've actually had a lot going on since 2014, and not the least of which is something that people who are listening won't be able to see, and that is that you are only two thirds of your former self.

Harding Lee Smith:

That is true, yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've lost a lot of weight. You've become more fat.

Harding Lee Smith:

£90. Yes. More fit, more. Well, wellness is definitely a big part of my life now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So I want to hear about that because I think a lot of people would say, well, he has a restaurant and he likes to cook healthy food, so how did he get to this place in his life where he wasn't so fit?

Harding Lee Smith:

I think that just not paying attention to yourself and working a lot and concentrating on one thing and realizing. Not realizing that's even happening, and slowly gaining weight. Gaining weight, working seven days a week, just being focused on that one thing and not worrying about yourself. It's one of the things in. And you give us a sheet to fill out. And I talked about what I would say to myself 10 years ago is take time for yourself. And I'm starting to do much more of that now for the last couple of years.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How do you think that stress actually impacted your weight? Because I have patients who say, well, I eat fine, but I have a very stressful life and I can't lose weight.

Harding Lee Smith:

I've always dealt with stress pretty well. I don't think I know that. It's part of being a chef and being a restaurateur, that stress is going to be there. So I don't know if that really did. I think really eating fried rice at 2am really did it more than anything else.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it's the food and the schedule that was.

Harding Lee Smith:

It's really the food and the schedule. And it kind of speaks to. Because when you take time off, you're going and eating and so forth, and you don't get much time for yourself. So when you get it, you just kind of indulge and really eat all the bad things that you can do rather than eating less fried food, say, or smaller portions or something like that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it's interesting that you're talking about taking more time for yourself. And you like to sail. So anywhere on your boat, you like to, that's your place.

Harding Lee Smith:

Anywhere.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Anywhere.

Harding Lee Smith:

Somebody asked me the other day what's your favorite thing to do? I said sail more than skiing. I'm like, sail where anywhere is fine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But you also like skiing. On this questionnaire that we gave you, you said being at Sunny river on a bluebird day.

Harding Lee Smith:

Yeah, that's the best thing. I mean, if it has to be wintertime and it has to be snowy, might as well be outside and enjoying it. And a perfect day, 32 degree day with no clouds in the sky. It's what we call bluebird with nice soft snow. Is a fantastic time.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think many people worry that they need to stay busy in order to be successful. They need to actually kind of grab onto those reins really tightly and then the weight piles on and then they aren't taking care of themselves. You're kind of describing the opposite. You're saying in the last. Well, since 2014, you've gotten more fit, you've gotten more well, but your businesses are doing fine.

Harding Lee Smith:

Yeah, I think letting go a little bit and letting people do their jobs, I mean, obviously paying attention, but letting go, hiring good people. I mean, if you don't let them do the jobs and you're on top of them the whole time, they don't feel free to create and do things. I think that goes a long way. But also having a baby, he's now two and a half years old. When you're 290 pounds, it's difficult to get off the floor. So you realize you need to start doing something and big difference how I can run and play with him. He's still, you know, beats me every time. But it helps a lot. It really does.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Did you also find that you wanted to make sure you were, I guess, modeling good behavior for him? I know he's only two and a half.

Harding Lee Smith:

That's definitely true. I think I wanted to model good behavior. Eating well. You know, we sit down at a table when we have our lunch and our dinner and we sit down properly at a table, I think that's important. And not just gorging ourselves and going through fast food or something like that, but also knowing that taking the time. When I say take time for myself, I mean time for my son and myself to be. To do things. I think that's really important. It's really important.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So how. I know you had a life transition of a personal nature, but what was the point where you just said, you know, this just can't keep going on. I can't keep having the body that forces me to bring my foot up to my hand in order to tie

Harding Lee Smith:

my shoe Yeah, I think when I. If you think about how much I've lost, or approximately about £90, that's two sacks of potatoes, commercial sized sacks of potatoes or cases of potatoes. I have a hard time lifting that above my waist onto a higher shelf. I can't imagine that I carried that around. I think that I sort of came to that conclusion that it was difficult to get around. My legs were tired. Squatting down on the floor, just kneeling down on the floor with Griffin. I had bad knees. My knees developed problems because of. Really was important to. I mean, I was always active, I still stayed active, and I was still sailing and doing things, but I wasn't able to do them with as much vivaciousness or as much power as I like to do. Because I really like to go, you know, when I do things, I do it. You know, when I sail, I sail. When I ski, I ski. I open a restaurant. I open a restaurant, you know, I think. And I wasn't able to do that. I was sort of slowing down and, like, didn't really care, you know, about my body and so forth. Just didn't matter.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How do you get to that place. How do you get to a place where all of a sudden the body is just this thing that you carry around underneath your brain?

Harding Lee Smith:

I think it gets to be. You get to the point, because I didn't start out gigantic, I opened the front room in 2005. I was just a little bit heavier than I am now. And it slowly comes on. You don't really know that it's happening. You just buy another pair of jeans, buy a little bit bigger size. Don't really think about it that much. But then you get to this point where you're there, and to lose that is very difficult, you know, And I don't know how you get to that point. You just all of a sudden you're there and you're like, wow. And then you sort of get a little depressed about it. You're mopey, you know, how do people perceive me? Kind of thing. You see. You see a picture of yourself ten years ago, then you see a picture of yourself today, and you're just, oh, my goodness. Now it's the opposite. I was picturing Old Poor magazine that Greta Ribos took. And look at that picture now. Like, wow, that's a great shot. But then you look at the one that was in another magazine two and a half years ago, and I went, oh, my, look at that. I looked like a jolly Red Sox fan.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. You know, it's interesting I asked you how old you are, and if you don't want to tell people, then you don't have to. But when I met you and saw you for the first time, I would have aged you up. I would have aged you up probably at least five years. And now I realize you're actually not that much older than I am, so I can't call you old. So maybe you shouldn't say how old you are on the air.

Harding Lee Smith:

After all, I'm middle aged. No, I would definitely agree with that. I have several people, people just sitting here in the lobby today that I've known for years, couldn't barely recognize me. Somebody told me the other day, you look so young. I don't feel that my hair's nearly white, and I don't feel old. I don't know. I'm 46. I don't feel 46. But I never really knew what that meant. I mean, when I was younger, in my teenage years, 46 seemed like it was ancient. And now somebody in their mid-50s is. You say, that's the old guy. He's like, that's not really old at all. So I do feel. I feel younger, I feel more. I have great vitality, you know, I walk places with much more vigor, with speed, and I just want to get there. That kind of thing. It's supposed to like, oh, I got to go down and get that out of the car. All right. It's totally different. It's like, oh, okay, I'll get that. It's a much different way of being, really is.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When I think of people who are old, and I mean mentally old, these are often people who have decided, you know what, I've accomplished all I want to in my life. I'm good. I'm just gonna keep. I don't know, showing up at the same job or maybe I'm just gonna retire or. But they. They're. They're kind of good. They're. They're coasting. And I know people of lots of different ages who I wouldn't consider old. And in part, it's because there's always. There's always something else that makes them excited. And I think that's true for you.

Harding Lee Smith:

Absolutely. You have to keep moving forward. It's one of the questions that Karen for that Old Port magazine article asked me was about that sort of thing. I said, you have to keep moving forward. You know, that's why I like sailing so much. Because you're always going forward. You always know that you have to keep going somewhere. The restaurant Business, you have to keep growing. Not necessarily. You have to keep growing by opening more places. That's how I choose to do it sometimes, but constantly keeping it fresh, keeping it new. And I think that's the same thing with life. You have to keep going and doing things. Like, I'm so pleased that I've lost enough weight that I feel like this is going to be a longevity thing for me. I had my son when I was 44 years old. That's relatively late in life to have a child. Not the latest you could have, but when he's in his high school years and baseball playing years and so forth, I'm going to be old, so to speak. So I want to make sure that I can still do that, that I can get off the ground, I can play catch and I can hit balls to him and I can do those sort of things or go hiking or keep going sailing with him and go skiing with him. Those years, it's really important to me because I always liked that sort of thing. And I want him to, hopefully, if that's something he wants to do, to enjoy those things, too and be able to have memories of doing it with me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Did you do those sorts of things with your own father?

Harding Lee Smith:

Yes. Yes. We started skiing at Sunday river when I was 2, and then we started Nordic skiing for a while, and then we switched back to downhill when I was 10, and my dad and I would go every weekend.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You also were part of his restaurant business in Nagunku, even from a very young age.

Harding Lee Smith:

Very true. Very young. Seven. Seven years old. In the summertime, we'd ski. In the winter and summertime, we'd cook.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And do you think that your son Griffin, will be the same?

Harding Lee Smith:

I have no idea. If he chooses to be. Hopefully the restaurants are there for him to take over if he chooses. I know that some people in his life would definitely wish that he doesn't do that. And he goes either to law school or becomes a doctor like yourself, or something along those lines. I have a feeling that he probably will go into it in some way. I know that he'll work in the restaurants at some point. I mean, that'll be his summer job. That'll be what he'll do, just like I did. He'll probably wash dishes and do that sort of thing. But hopefully he sees that I have a passion for it. And what I want him to do is do what he has a passion for. Not necessarily. It doesn't have to be cooking, whatever he happens to do. And it's my job As a parent, to make sure I support those. When he shows interest in something, I support him in that. Not to say, okay, you have to be a cook or a front of the house person or whatever. I would love it. But, you know, it's okay, Griffin. You can do what you want.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's nice of you to say that. Yeah. I mean, there is, I think, an enormous family cultural influence on the kids. And even when we say to them, you can do whatever you want, there's still. There's something about the milieu, you know, that they're raised in, and it's hard

Chris Avantaggio:

to avoid that, I think.

Harding Lee Smith:

And they want to emulate us in a sense. I mean, you look at. There's lots of baseball players, for instance, that their fathers were baseball players, and other sports, same kind of thing. I don't know so much in the other fields, but I'm sure there's plenty of lawyers that follow in the footsteps of their parents. I know that in the restaurant business, particularly, because you usually start working at it at such a young age, if your family's in it. It's what, you know, it's what I knew. It's what I knew. I mean, I could have done many things, I'm sure, but it's what I had a passion for. It's what I wanted to get better at. It's what I went to school for, because that's what I knew what to do. When I graduated high school, I was like, well, that seems like it's logical. Let's do that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What is it about cooking in particular that appeals to you? What do you like about that piece?

Harding Lee Smith:

I'm very hands on. I'm visually stimulated, I think. And I wouldn't say I'm add, certainly, because I can focus, but I get bored easily. And I think that having visual stimulation, it changes each time you create. Each time you plate a dish, it's another new way of doing it. There's lots of smells, very visceral in that sense, that I can. I love. I get my food memories from smells. I can walk into a kitchen, anybody's kitchen, any restaurant, and, oh, that reminds me of such and such, you know, And I just. I love that part of it. But when you. When you cook something and you make it for them and they like it and they smile, it's just completely rewarding. It's fantastic, you know, and even though it was something very simple, like you just cooked them a piece of fish, but they're like, what did you do? Salt and pepper? What? No, you know, and they don't do it at home necessarily, or they think there's some magic behind it, and there is definitely some magic behind it and so forth. But making people happy like that is just tremendously rewarding. And I also sort of like the theater of it all. I've always taken to the theater a lot when I was young, but the sort of. The fact that, you know, at five o', clock, the curtain goes up and you're on stage and you're creating sort of some new reality for people to get out of their daily lives and out of their daily routine, give them something unique.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So this love of newness and the stage, does that ever conflict with people's desire for the familiar, where they'll come to the rooms and they'll go to the corner room, and they'll want their same favorite pasta dish every Wednesday at noontime?

Harding Lee Smith:

It does happen a lot. We have people that we've had some things that we've taken off the menu at the front room. Front room in particular, because it's such a neighborhood spot and a comfort food spot. We take something off the menu, and people are like, where did that go? And you either put it back on or you. Hopefully they'll appreciate the new dish or something like that. It does. But we've also sort of built our restaurants to have a core menu and a core thing that is familiar and even familial that people keep coming back for by innovation, and not necessarily innovation, but by keeping it fresh is keeping new products on, new specials, and whether you, you know, keeping the fresh paint on the walls and that sort of thing is more. What I mean by that, I think.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I know that I enjoy when I. Because I work here in the Old Port a few days a week. And so I will often go over to the corner room or to the front room, which is. Or I mean, the grill room, which is right across the street from where I work. And so I really like the salad, and I usually have the white fish, if it's available on top. But I actually like the fact that you have rotating salads, that you have whatever is available on the market that day.

Harding Lee Smith:

Yeah, we work with a lot of farmers even this time of year. You know, they have the root vegetables stored up and carrots and different things like that. And all of our chefs are very passionate about working with these farmers. So they take those things that they get and they try to create them into new things.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So how does that look in March versus in July? I would think that in March, you're doing some very different sorts of produce, very different things.

Harding Lee Smith:

The best time, really, is in October and September. That's our favorite. That's most. Every chef you talk to, I think, would probably say that that's when you have wild mushrooms coming in. All the bounty is the tomatoes are coming in in droves. All these great things that they've been growing all summer are now available to you in March. You're really still into root vegetables. You're into maybe some greenhouse lettuces and things like that. It looks completely different. It really does. And even, you know, in Maine, even in July, you're starting to get some things, but in June, you're not getting much from it at all unless people have the gardens. But we use a lot of people also that are cultivating mushrooms, so we get a lot of local mushrooms. And right now, it's scallop season, so you're using more of the protein aspect of it and wintry greens like kales and things like that. Stuff that does well in greenhouses over the wintertime. That's really more what we're using now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Has it gotten easier to incorporate some of these foods that grow in the winter greenhouses now that people are more open to eating kale, for example?

Harding Lee Smith:

Definitely people are more open to eating it, and it's more available to us. I mean, there's more than one farmer now, and they're realizing there's a big market for it. Once people, you know, chefs and consumers get over the fact that an apple shouldn't necessarily be perfectly round and red, or a carrot is not necessarily orange and straight, it's much easier to use these kinds of products. We had some guests this summer at Boone's on the patio, and the dish came back because we were using multicolored farm carrots. They're heirloom carrots. Carrots didn't start out as orange necessarily. They were purple and white. And she sent it back because she said they were potatoes. So very rarely do you go to the dining room and say that something to a guest. But I went to the and I said, ma', am, I understand you think these are potatoes. Well, carrots are orange. I said, well, not all carrots are orange. These ones happen to be purple and white. I mean, I promise you that these are carrots. I promise I wouldn't give you potatoes as carrots. Fine. And then she ate them all and loved them. But that sometimes getting over that part of it, realizing that heirloom is the original thing and these things haven't been modified, this is really healthy, wonderful food. That's originally as it was appearing and it's much easier now than it was, certainly. But it's still an education process for all of us, for the consumer and the chefs.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is it also an education process when it comes to the seasonality of food and the availability of food? Because we are known as, and I'm not sure I like this word, but foodie. We are considered to be a foodie town and state. Okay, so neither one of us like this word, but let's just pretend that we're okay with it for the purpose of discussion. So people come to this town which loves food, and they want to eat good food at the rooms in February. But some of the stuff that they might want to eat is not available in Maine. Is there ever a conflict there?

Harding Lee Smith:

Well, we do have the miracle of the jet airplane. So you still can get naturally raised produce and organic produce and get stuff here that's beautifully fresh. There's great companies that are doing so. There are greenhouses in Maine now there's tomatoes available. They're doing great things in New Gloucester with hydroponics growing tomatoes. So we do offer because particularly at Boone's is more of a tourist driven sort of place. If you can't get a tomato on your burger, people don't understand why. The other restaurants we don't, but at least at Boone's we do because we have the tourists. So we do utilize the jet airplane and hydroponic and greenhouses and things like that. I think that people are comfortable with the fact that we're using celery root and parsnips and rutabaga and things like that. Those are our vegetables that we're using right now, as opposed to green beans, because green beans aren't grown here right now. I think that we've come a long way from that. But I don't have a. Obviously, in Maine, we can't be 100% out of the ground in the wintertime. It's not possible. You know, I mean, there are others. There are people who are trying to do that with, you know, different levels of success. I think that you have to be aware of. As long as you know that your product is quality and you know where it's coming from, that it's okay if it came not necessarily from right here at this time of year, the summertime, we're using almost all that, you know, all of our carrots, all of our onions, all of those things are grown locally.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I want to ask you about mushrooms because I'm intrigued by them. This is something that when I was growing up, I'm not actually, I'm not sure how many children of any sort like mushrooms when they're growing up.

Harding Lee Smith:

I don't think any. And probably because I've gotten them spit out at me a couple times.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I mean, I think I grew up with the white button mushrooms, probably in many cases. I grew up with canned mushrooms.

Harding Lee Smith:

My mom, they're known as champignon.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Exactly, exactly. And my mom would, she would try a few times, but then she was just like, you know what, I'll just feed them to your father. But I've actually grown to like mushrooms over time. And in Maine we have really some great access to lots of different types of essentially fungus, right?

Harding Lee Smith:

Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What has been your experience with introducing these into the menus at the rooms?

Harding Lee Smith:

Extremely popular. We had a very bad mushroom season last year, unfortunately. So we didn't have the great volume of mushrooms that we had the previous two or three years. Previous two or three years. We had mushroom halls that were unbelievable. Hen in the woods in particular, just out there, big giant. You know, one of my chefs, Sean, he found I think a 45 pound hen in the woods mushroom. We have great success with them. You know, we have foragers that come to us. There's different laws now governing them by the state. Some people got sick. Some people that were not real foragers or mycologists didn't really know what they were picking. And there's a couple mushrooms out there that have parasites that if you don't know what you're getting, you might be eating the wrong mushroom. They look very similar to the others, but just slightly different. So that's better now because you have to be a licensed mycologist, you have to verify that you know that these are correct mushrooms. So once we have that and we have good people bringing them to us, the customers love it. I mean, I like black trumpet mushrooms are my favorite thing. It's just tremendous. And also with the miracle of the jet airplane, there's great people that are bringing things in at reasonable prices now from Oregon and so forth, where there's like the mushroom capital of the world. You know, so many forest fires, that's where a lot of mushrooms grow out of that morels in particular. But we also have great people cultivating mushrooms now. Relatively easy to do. They grow them on logs and garages and greenhouses and different things like that. And some of them are sort of mimics of wild mushrooms. And they're fantastic. They're uniform they're really, really tasty. You can use them for all sorts of different things. So I think mushrooms have come a long, long way. Would anybody 10 years ago have been excited about a mushroom like a wild mushroom? Probably not. But now I think they almost expect it. You can go to Whole Foods and I don't know how they get away with keeping them because they don't think they sell that many of them. But they're almost always available. At least one variety of a wild mushroom is there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I like the idea that here in Maine we actually have some things that really have very high quality health properties. I mean, chaga is one of these varieties of fungus which is known to be good for promoting health along with.

Harding Lee Smith:

I don't know about that one.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, it is, it's a fungus. It's not exactly like reishi. It grows off the side of a tree. And we have people who are cultivating chaga. But you know, if we go to or actually they're foraging for chaga, but if we go to a. Just talking about blueberries here in Maine we have blueberries which have very high antioxidant levels. You know, we have sea vegetables that people are either cultivating or just foraging.

Harding Lee Smith:

There's a whole new company that's just dropped off at our door there doing great things to see vegetables.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what I love about this is that these essentially are plants that are taking the energy of our state and they're kind of putting them into, packaging them into this form that is readily available to us for our health. And it sounds like you're using a lot of this stuff in your restaurants.

Harding Lee Smith:

Yeah, absolutely. I think the food industry, and not just for, shall we say, tomatoes or lettuces or things like that, but the other things that are people are doing now. It's just amazing. I was reading the paper the other day about lobster bodies or lobster shells being used for a treatment. I forget what it was for. It was christosin I believe is the compound that comes out of it that they were previously using shrimp shells and so forth. We have all these leftover lobster shells all the time. And they just realized that they can do this. They're actually shipping them to Iceland to extract the product. But it's tremendously life invigorating stuff. Amazing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Last night I think I watched four episodes of Chopped with my 20 year old daughter and I and actually both of my children, my daughters specifically, my 15 year old and my 20 year old love that show in particular, but cooking shows in general and there is this whole thing I think within that generation and the sort of the generations around it, around cooking. But when you started this, it wasn't like the Chopped generation.

Harding Lee Smith:

Definitely not. When I first started cooking, there was no cooking show. I mean, Julia Child was our cooking show. You know, that's was my. Who I grew up watching was Julia Child and Jacques Pepin. I mean, actually both of them ended up being one credit professors for me. I assisted Julia at Boston University. It was amazing. And those were. That was the celebrity then it was from PBS and it wasn't Food Network and so forth. And now it's everywhere. I mean, we really, as much as a lot of people probably wouldn't admit this, we owe Emeril Lagasse a huge debt because would we be eating quail or. We probably would have evolved at this point. At some point we would have gotten there. But all these different things that he introduced, you can call him a hack. And he was just putting on an entertaining show. He's a great chef. If you eat his restaurants, it's tremendous. But he was cooking, you know, he didn't care how he was accomplishing it. He was just entertaining the people. And he did that. And he brought food culture right into people's living rooms, into middle class America. Not just foodies and that sort of thing, but to everybody. And he started that whole explosion of the Food Network and that sort of thing. We all owe him a great debt. I mean, we could say whatever we want about him. And I think even Anthony Bourdain, who wants you to disparage him now, says I was wrong.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, what I like about this is that it's gotten people interested in food again, in cooking. I mean, they'll go to a good restaurant. They'll also cook for themselves. Now they know what an eggplant is. Now they know how to actually cut hen of the woods mushroom. So that's what I really like about this. And hopefully people will tear themselves away from the television and actually go into the kitchen and do some of this stuff.

Harding Lee Smith:

I think a lot of people are. I mean, if you look at the kind of foods that they're selling at Whole Foods, even Hannaford has upped their game tremendously in the local markets as well. And Rosemont and all those sorts of things. People are buying the food, so they must be cooking it. I mean, I would certainly assume they are the propagation of Williams Sonoma and the other cooking stores and so forth. It's kind of a. In this town in particular, chefs are, you know, they're somewhat celebrities. I Mean, a lot of the kitchens that you see there opening in restaurants today are all open because people want to see you cook. We have a dining bar at all the restaurants except for the front room where you can sit and watch people cook. And people love it. They really are into it because they understand, like, oh, I wonder if that's what they were doing there, you know, because you see little techniques from the TV shows that you see. Because not all cooking shows now are just, you know, most of them now seem to be competitions, but they were a few years ago and even some still today where they're actually in the kitchen of a chef. So you're seeing, you know, the kitchen equipment and the neat stuff like that. When I was a kid seeing kitchen equipment in the store, I said, oh, we're at a kitchen store. This is really neat.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's actually one of my favorite kind of stores too. I probably have way more kitchen equipment than I ever could use. But it's, you know, it's a guilty pleasure, I guess.

Harding Lee Smith:

Just don't ever buy the asparagus peeler.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Oh yeah, no, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me either. So you have, as we said at the beginning of the show, the four rooms. Boone's was the most recent one, but you have this other one that's opening the Mountain Room at the Peak Lodge up at Sunday River. This will be next winter.

Harding Lee Smith:

It will be open for the winter of 1617, so hopefully in December. We should be starting construction or renovation, so to speak, in June or if the snow keeps staying away, probably May.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And what can people expect from the Mountain Room?

Harding Lee Smith:

Kind of a greatest hit. It's going to have a great big deck overlooking the valley. We have fire pits all over the place. There'll be wood burning fire with couches surrounding it on the inside. It's kind of an apres ski during the ski day. There'll be a full service bar with a big seat open kitchen, a wood burning grill, cooking burgers and steaks and things like that. We'll have fondue like you kick back in an Adirondack chair, dipping fondue, drinking a beer or a hot toddy or mulled wine, that sort of thing. Basically there'll be slippers for you so you can take your boots off, leave your boots over to the side, L.L. bean slippers to walk around in. Just a really sort of unique experience, sort of. The idea that the president of Sunday river and I have come up with is sort of that Swiss sort of feel to it where you go out on the deck, and you get a blanket given to you. So you sit there and you can have a couple of pops, go back in your skis, ski down. Or if you don't want to ski down, we have the gondola right there. So you can take the gondola down. It's going to be very unique. We actually hope to attract some people just coming up on their own and that aren't necessarily skiing. Come up in the gondola, walk over and have a nice dinner as well, or lunch.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How about your full plates, full potential fundraiser? I believe you've done this two years now.

Harding Lee Smith:

Three years.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Three years now.

Harding Lee Smith:

We had our third annual. This New Year's Eve. We have a charity gala at Boone's in the upstairs function area every year. This year, we packed the house. We had 225 people up there at midnight. It was really tremendous race. A lot of money for full plates, full potential. And the Good Shepherd's Food bank, they're sort of in together. But we wanted to make sure we brought a lot of attention to the food bank, which is really near and dear to our hearts as chefs. And we did really well. It was tremendous. It's become sort of an annual thing, which is. We were trying to get it to be. I mean, it is an annual thing, but it's become kind of that thing. Like we were sold out well in advance this year, and we hope the same thing for the next, you know, 20, 30 years, whatever it is, however long it should be. Boone has been there well over 100 years now, so who knows?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, we went and we really enjoyed it. We were upstairs, there were people dancing. There were downstairs, the place was packed, absolutely packed. We couldn't actually get a place to sit and have dinner because we called too late. So we couldn't. We only got to go upstairs, but the people were there. They were loving it. So this next year, it'll be your fourth year, and you'll go on ad infinitum.

Harding Lee Smith:

Yes, we hope to keep going, keep an annual event, and always. It's a unique thing that we're doing, I think, because we're taking a night, which is typically a night that you just try to make as much as you can. And we're turning this into a night where we can bring focus to a cause. I don't know that we'll always stick with the same charity. I would assume that we will. Or something along the same goal of ending childhood hunger in some way by using it on a night that's usually a Typically, very busy night, which it is always for us as well. It brings that much more awareness because people are focused on that on a night when they're all going to be going out and so forth, they're going to know that they're going out for a reason. We call it party with a purpose. Trying to get people to realize that they're doing something by purchasing this ticket. And, you know, if they did a great auction this year, too. A lot of different. Not auction, but a raffle where lots of good things were given away and that money went to the charity. So it was really nice. Good thing to do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you have a lot going on. What are you most excited about?

Harding Lee Smith:

What am I most excited about? Well, I got my son to go down on skis. He's two and a half years old, and he skied down the mountain. Not down the mountain. He skied down the bunny slope by himself and loved it with a giant smile on his face. And when I caught him, he said again. So I think I'm probably most excited about that. It's actually choking me up a bit right now. I'm probably most excited about that. I'm very excited, of course, about the mountain room. I'm thrilled to death. It's like a dream come true having a seasonal place up at a place that I am just passionate. I'm either a Sugar Loafer or you're a Sunday river person. If you grew up in Maine. And I'm a Sunday river person, love Sugarloaf as well. But Sunday river is like home to me. We call it home when we go. And I'm just really excited about that as well. And the prospect of my son being able to grow up in a skiing kind of culture and maybe becoming a championship skier, who knows, instead of a chef. But him being able to grow up in that thing and have a reason to go there and really know it as a community because it's such a beautiful place. The community of Newry and Bethel and just Sunny river in general. And the owners of the mountain, the Boyne Corporation, just such wonderful, friendly people. I'm really happy for him to be able to grow up at least some of the time in that environment. And I'm really looking forward to summer and sailing, too.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I hope that summer comes early for us this year.

Harding Lee Smith:

Looks like it outside. It's looking pretty sunny outside right now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Absolutely. And then you can open up your deck at Boone's Fish House and people can go down there and watch eating oysters. Start eating oysters. Watch the Ships coming in. We've been speaking with Harding Lee Smith. He is a chef and restaurateur who owns the rooms in Portland which include the Grill Room, the Corner Room and the Front Room as well as Boone's Fish House and Oyster Room and also the upcoming Mountain Room which will be at Sunday River. It's been a pleasure to talk to you again today. Thank you for coming in.

Harding Lee Smith:

Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

often that I have the opportunity to interview a passel of individuals truly all at the same time. Today we have three people in our studio and I feel pretty lucky about that actually. We have Chris Avantaggio, John Turner and Nate o' Leary who are the owners of Crateful of Maine. Chris Avantaggio is an advertising art director, associative creative director and the founder and creative director of the Maine lifestyle brand Liv Maine. John Turner is the founder of Traps Eyewear. He repurposes oak lobster traps to make sunglasses, cufflinks, tie bars and authentic accessories with a nod to the past. And Nathan o' Leary is the founder of Mainly SEO, a digital marketing firm specializing in SEO, social media and e commerce website design for small businesses. So you guys are just like a crate full of talent across the microphone from me today. Thanks for coming in.

Nate O’Leary:

Thank you.

Harding Lee Smith:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So obviously Maine is important to each of you. You each have your own links to the state, I guess. John, I'll start with you. You have this whole Harpswell connection. Tell me about that.

John Turner:

Yeah, definitely. I was born in Portland and grew up on the coast of Harpswell and definitely just really had a great coastal upbringing. Making forts on the beach, looking for lobsters, crabbing, those are all things that I definitely got to do. And I think that ability to really explore and really use my imagination has helped me create businesses here in Maine, around Maine. So I think that whole upbringing is like a big catalyst to like why I'm doing what I'm doing now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So when you say the beach, you mean Popham?

John Turner:

Yeah, definitely. Popham was a great place, but you know, just the rocky coastline in front of my house. That was definitely where I spent a lot of my time. A lot of time. Ragged island, just islands off the coast of Harpsville.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And thus, I'm assuming that the oak lobster traps became somewhat of a draw for you because of the stuff that you used to build when you were younger.

John Turner:

Yeah, definitely. I just. I've always been into repurposing salvaged materials, and the original idea was to take old wired frames and melt them down and to make metal sunglasses. But that material is not very malleable. And I saw the oak lobster traps, and I really liked the history behind the traps. The traps I'm using now to make lobster traps were actually made by the lobstermen who fished them, and then his son fished them as well. So it was this really cool progression of the material. You know, great story behind every single pair of glasses. They're all different. They're all different because of, you know, the environment that they were put in. So each time they, like, banged up against the boat or encountered frigid water, it changed the grain pattern. So each pair is definitely significantly different, and each pair tells a story. So, yeah, you know, the whole hard soil upbringing really has, like, created and honed my, like, skills and talents into what I'm doing today.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Chris, you tell me that you're also a saltwater guy, you also like the ocean, and you're the live Maine guy. So when we see the shirts that say, Live Maine, Run Maine, Eat Maine, you're that guy. Maine is really important to you.

Chris Avantaggio:

Yeah, I love Maine. I grew up here. I grew up in Damariscada, and similar to John, I spent a lot of time on the water, growing up fishing with my brother. And down in the South Bristol area, we had some. My mom's father was a lobsterman. I never met him, but it's in our family heritage. So there's cool. There's that connection to the ocean there. It's just. I feel like a part of who I am. I have a lot of strong connections with the state and love celebrating all the great things that there are to do here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

That brand has been pretty successful over the years.

Chris Avantaggio:

Yeah. Every year it gets a little stronger, I guess. It's something that I started about five or six years ago, and it kind of just started on a whim, really. It was a single T shirt design I put together for a bunch of friends and myself. We would go to the Maine Brewers Festival every year, and one year they asked me to put a design together, and the first one that came out was Beer Me. There was a Lot of attention drawn to it. And I saw an opportunity to really expand it and create a lifestyle brand for Maine. And from there it's just kind of grown through friends and family supporting it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Nate, you're the sole freshwater holdout. You are a big fan of Sebago Lake, but you still love Maine. Why is that?

Nate O’Leary:

Just the culture, the diversity here, all four seasons. I'm a big fan of skiing and, you know, enjoying the summers on Sebago Lake. Fall is, you know, one of my favorite seasons. So just being able to experience all four scenes seasons of Maine and, you know, the people here and how happy everybody is and, you know, just kind of enjoy Maine and everything that it brings to the. To the table, I guess.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How did you get interested in SEO work? And for people who are listening, who don't really know what that is, describe it a little bit.

Harding Lee Smith:

Sure.

Nate O’Leary:

Excuse me. So SEO stands for Search Engine optimization. And when you go to Google and you put in a search term, Google has an algorithm with 200 different factors that determine what website results you're going to get. And I try to manipulate that as best as I can to favor our own websites or our clients websites to rank higher in Google. So if you're looking for a steakhouse in Portland or, you know, made in Maine gifts, we try to optimize websites to show up for those search terms.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it sounds like each of you are working together on this new venture called Crateful of Maine. And it sounds like each of you has your own individual talents that you have been able to weave into this. Who came up with this idea? Originally,

Nate O’Leary:

I think it was just us having a beer.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It comes back to the beer again, doesn't it?

Nate O’Leary:

Well, there's such a strong beer culture here.

Chris Avantaggio:

Yeah, there's so many good ones. Yeah. It was an idea that I think Nate had originally suggested to John and I saying, you know, I think there's an opportunity to create a business or a service where we can highlight a lot of these amazing main brands and small companies that make these really great products and kind of showcase that and get it in front of a larger audience. And from there we started to think about it a little more and knew that branding would be crucial and really getting it right and making it feel like a really great product that people would be drawn to. So we thought about it for a while and tossed around some ideas, and after a couple sort of bad names, we came up with Crateful and the whole concept of putting it together in a craft cardboard box screen printed to look like an old lobster crate just seemed like a really fun concept to us. I think we pitched it around to a few friends and other people and just kind of got some feedback first, but it seemed like a good direction to go in.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what types of things are in your crate full of Maine?

John Turner:

We definitely offer a wide range of items in our crates, and right now we're really building out the different themes in our crates. So, you know, we have a baby crate. We have our evergreen crate, which was the first initial launch of the product, which was what was available for Christmas. We have a ladies crate and a gentleman's crate. We're working on a brunch crate. So we're really looking to. To cover every aspect of the great products that are made in Maine. We're also looking to make sure that we have really great themes for both men and women, but we really look for genuine Maine makers who are doing something original and really showing off their craftsmanship. We've got to work with awesome makers here in the state already, and we keep. We hope to keep, you know, working with many more. There's so many people making great things here in Maine. I recently just put a quick Facebook post on our Facebook wall asking people to suggest Maine makers, and we had, you know, 50, or I think maybe 50 comments of people just suggesting their friends and friends of friends.

Chris Avantaggio:

So, you know, the products range, though, from everything from, like, handmade soaps to leather goods, small handbags, wood products. I mean, it's. It's a range of manufacturing. I mean, even like baby blankets and onesies. It's. It's all stuff that's made here in Maine by sometimes just one person. It's a small business looking to get exposure and just trying to grow like everyone else.

John Turner:

Yeah, definitely. I mean, we have, you know, products from utility tools, which is a precision manufacturing facility, facility here in Portland that are doing large volumes. And then we have single makers that are baking us cookies one by one. So it's definitely a vast range of manufacturing abilities, production abilities, and just product.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So I'm interested in how that works. If you have. Presumably you have a variety of things to choose from, how do you, I guess, bring in the materials that you need in order to have them available for your crates to send out to people in a timely fashion? Because that seems to be what people want when they order it. They want it yesterday.

John Turner:

Yeah. Inventory management is obviously a big portion of this business, and so far, we've really pushed crates out for finite dates. So whether it be, you know, a Christmas type deal or a Valentine's type deal. So that really puts, you know, a time frame on when people should be ordering these. But now we are getting into more products such as the ladies crate and the gentleman's crate that are just, you know, standalone products that people can order at any time. But it's really just creating a great relationship between us and the people that make these products to ensure that there is this communication that when we do need product that, you know, we can source that product and get it to the end user as soon as possible.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Nate, what's your favorite crate?

Nate O’Leary:

Probably just the Evergreen crate, the first one that we came out with. We packed, I think, 17 items into that crate, tried to add as much value as we could to that in time for Christmas. We launched it on Black Friday, so there was a lot of noise, but we were able to cut through that with some smart marketing and just getting the word out there, obviously through social media and, and word of mouth. So that was extremely successful. And to John's point, like, we initially went to many of those makers and just asked them for a certain quantity, and then within the first couple days, we were already past that and needed to re up like almost two or three times. And they were all great and able to get us the product very quickly. So that was awesome that they were able to move fast for us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Chris, you work with Via, and your job is essentially, well, I guess, branding, marketing. You're the actual. You're an art director, you're an associative creative director. So this is your field. What have you seen when it comes to the brand of Maine? What have you seen as far as trends over the last, say, five years?

Chris Avantaggio:

That's a great question. I would say that things are becoming much more independent and authentic. So there's a large. I mean, Maine as a state has. Has this kind of mystique around it. I don't know. People are drawn to it and I think they really appreciate the. The quality and craftsmanship of things now. So I think branding is really, really important when it comes to a product or a company and putting, you know, your best foot forward and making sure that you. That you're creating authentic things and, you know, having a good design sense. Those are all strong qualities.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, talk to me about authentic. I don't know which one of you would like to tackle this word, but it seems to be something that we, we hear a lot more. Why. Why is being authentic so important and what does it really mean?

John Turner:

I mean, to me, this, like, authenticity of Maine all These, you know, these companies are making great Maine goods, and they want to give someone an authentic experience of Maine or a flashback of Maine. It's funny that so many people have some kind of connection to Maine, whether they were here for camp one year or whether they have a camp here or whether they met a friend in Maine. There's so many different elements or connections to Maine. And I think that to create an authentic product, when that person holds that product or experiences that product, they're coming back to. To Maine. In their mind, they're remembering an experience they had here in Maine. I mean, that's kind of what I think about when I think about authentic product, Maine products.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What about you, Nate? You do SEO work, so you know that you're trying to make sure that people find the actual authentic thing that you are offering. What types of words and phrases and what types of things are people searching for when they're looking for authenticity?

Nate O’Leary:

Yeah, I mean, just Made in Maine, obviously, is a big one that comes to mind. You know, there's a variety of keywords that people search for, and many times they're unique to them because they're searching what comes to mind to them. So it's. It's very diverse. And, you know, just to their point, again, the story behind all of these products is really what I think makes them authentic. So that's not something that you can easily replicate or duplicate. So the story behind each one of the products, we try to tell as best as we can for each one of the makers that we include in the crate.

Chris Avantaggio:

Yeah, I think that's a great. Of who a brand is. I think. I think we've done a great job with just the relationships we've already established. Each brand has such unique stories, from, like, Alana Marie's bait bag clutches to, you know, like Jess's soap company. There's. There's so many unique businesses out there that have these really cool stories of how they started. I mean, John, for example, with his straps, eyewear.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's.

Chris Avantaggio:

I mean, all these are kind of. I think all that adds to authenticity.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it's not that you can actually put in a search engine authentic main or that even people would do that in the first place. They're. They're looking for something more specific. Specific that will then lead them to these authentic products.

Nate O’Leary:

Yeah, I think so, for sure.

Chris Avantaggio:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Chris, you went to school in Boulder, and you are a snowboarder. You've. You've transitioned from this very active outdoor self into, I would say, probably more cerebral and more Inside, at the very least. And now you've become an entrepreneur. So describe the various aspects of your personality that are kind of contributing to where you are sitting today.

Chris Avantaggio:

Wow. Okay. So I'm not very good at sitting still. So even if I am at my desk, I'm up, like, every hour walking around. Anyway, I think the transition from snowboarding into advertising into entrepreneurship all stems from having a lot of passion for things and really stems in creativity. So when I was snowboarding, it was, you know, trying to pick a line through the park and set up a run for tricks or thinking about my next move on a jump. That transitioned into, okay, now we're. Now we're coming up with ideas for brands and businesses that, you know, it's a creative innovation coming up with these new ways to market a product and then. And then from there, getting into just fun ideas or a new way to start a business. So I guess it all stems from, I don't know, just having a passion for something. And with me, that. That, you know, started with snowboarding. I. And kind of got into Maine because it's a part of who I am, where I came from. And when I was in Colorado, I always missed the ocean. I wasn't sure when I would come back to Maine. I knew I would want to, but I met a girl back on the east coast that's now my. My wife, and that definitely drew me back. But, yeah, I guess I just.

Nate O’Leary:

I'd probably say not wanting to settle and always wanting to improve. I mean, I feel like we're all like that. We always want to do better and improve on things, so.

Chris Avantaggio:

Yeah, that's absolutely right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, now we know about Chris's snowboarding, and we know about John's building forts on the beach. What's your backstory?

Nate O’Leary:

Wow. I've got a pretty diverse background. I've done everything from race cars across the country and the Gumball 3000 and the players run to day trading stocks and building websites. And when I was like, 14 and 15 years old. So I've always been drawn to technology. I saw the evolution of cell phones because one of my first jobs was working in a cell phone store. So I saw everything from the bag phones all the way to the iPhone, and then, you know, just, you know, growing a business online has come somewhat naturally to me. So that's kind of where our skill sets kind of work together. Chris being the. The branding expert and John having a great connection to a lot of these main makers, and then my background with marketing and the website. So we're able to really come together and launch this thing rather quickly. We only had literally, like, three or four weeks to get this thing off the ground when we really decided that we were going to do this. We had sat on the idea for a while, almost six months, just to figure out if we had the time or if this is something that we wanted to pursue. And then we kind of came together, and we're like, all right, let's do this. And then we set Black Friday as that launch date. And I literally didn't even go to my family Thanksgiving dinner because I was building the website that weekend.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what was the spark? Why did you all of a sudden, after sitting on it for so long, why did you all of a sudden say, oh, we have to do this now?

John Turner:

I guess the timing was right. And, I mean, obviously the time of the season helped. The holidays were coming. Black Friday. We thought if people were going to be really into this product, that was a good time to launch it out there. And we had great validation. Like Nate said, we ordered a certain amount of product from these makers originally, and I think we had to reorder four or five times. So we saw that this was a good concept, and now we're building out these different themes, and we're excited to see where this company is in a year or five years from now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As I'm interviewing the three of you, John, I'm noticing that you're looking around, you're looking out the window. It's like your path, your creative pathways are constantly, I don't know, exercising themselves. And I know that Chris has described sort of the same thing, and so have you, Nate. So what's that like for the three of you to try to get all your creative pathways to kind of connect, I guess, and move this business forward?

John Turner:

I mean, you know, obviously, we all have diverse backgrounds, but they're all fitting backgrounds to make a successful business. Like Chris, I grew up skateboarding and snowboarding, and just going back to that point, like, you know, skateboarding and snowboarding is, like the ultimate freedom. You know, no one's telling you what to do. You're really, like Chris said, choosing a line, choosing whatever you want to do. And I think that has helped me develop businesses because I really feel, like, passionate about, you know, doing my own thing and creating out a niche. And also, you know, skateboarding and snowboarding. I really learned about, like, product collaboration and brands working with other brands, that you're like this juxtaposition of these two brands, like, make no sense. But then it makes sense somehow. So I really draw a lot of inspiration from that background, for sure. But going back to, you know, us all having different, you know, not necessarily passions, but skill sets, it just. It all just makes sense. It, like, works. It works super well. As far as the business that we're looking to create, you know, I have these good relationships with these makers. You know, Chris is an awesome, you know, art director. If we need something as far as branding goes, he's done it in, like, 15 minutes after he's asked him to do it. So, like, we're so lucky to be able to streamline that process. And especially Chris is like, knowledge and, you know, he's been shipping products for a long time. He's been doing packaging for a long time. Nate's been doing websites for a long time and SEO for a long time. When this guy's doing SEO, before, like, SEO was even around. So it all just. It works.

Chris Avantaggio:

Yeah. We definitely all have our own strengths, and I think collectively it's an awesome team. So we've been working hard to kind of chisel out those roles and figure out how we can and be more efficient and more effective with our time because we don't have a lot of it all having other things going on right now. So we're excited when we do get the opportunity to get together and kind of carve out those tasks, but we're also excited for what this project holds for the state and what it can do for all these people that are involved with it. The end of the day, we want to help all these other businesses grow and get them new exposure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How can people find out about Crateful of Maine and each of you as individuals in your. In your own pursuits?

Nate O’Leary:

Yeah, just visit cratefulofmain.com we're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. You can sign up. For our newsletter. We feature different Maine makers that we're going to be highlighting in the boxes or the crates.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And also Crate Full of Maine will provide some sort of information on why each of you were interested in doing this.

Chris Avantaggio:

Yeah, on the. On the website, there's a. An about section that gives a little bit of our background and how the project started.

Nate O’Leary:

And we've been fortunate to have some great press as well. So there's links to articles in the Press Herald or we're featured on Fox Good Morning Maine and things like that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I give you all a lot of credit. It sounds like in addition to having jobs that you already did and having lives that you already had, you've now brought together all of these all of these creative energies and your own strengths. And you're really bringing something into Maine that will be good for not only your organization, but also the rest of the state. So thank you for doing that. We've been speaking with Chris Avantaggio, John Turner and Nate o', Leary, who are the owners of Crateful of Maine. I encourage you to go to their website and find out more about these wonderful products that they're offering and hopefully put in an order. Thanks for coming in.

Nate O’Leary:

You can use the coupon code SAVE10 to save 10% off your order.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Excellent. Thanks so much for coming in.

John Turner:

Thank you.

Nate O’Leary:

Thank you for having me.

Harding Lee Smith:

Thanks.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to Love Maine radio show number 239, Taste of Maine. Our guests have included Harding Lee Smith, Chris Avantaggio, John Turner, and Nathan o'. Leary. For a preview of each week's show, sign up for our e newsletter and like our LoveMain Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter as DRLISA and see my running travel, food and wellness photos as bountiful1 on Instagram. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Bellaio. I hope that you have enjoyed our Taste of Maine show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.