In ELLE’s Office Hours series, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. This month, we feature Erin French, the visionary chef behind The Lost Kitchen in Freedom, Maine, and the author of three cookbooks, the latest of which, Seize the Supper, publishes today.
French may be wildly successful today—she and her restaurant have also been the subject of a TV series, The Lost Kitchen, and a spinoff, Getting Lost with Erin French, and she’s been a James Beard Award semifinalist four times. But before all of the acclaim, she struggled with addiction and depression, which led to the end of her marriage, the loss of her first restaurant, and her nearly losing custody of her son. French ultimately sought treatment and rebuilt her life from scratch—and The Lost Kitchen is the delicious result.
Since opening in 2014, the restaurant, set inside a restored 19th-century grist mill in French’s hometown, has become renowned for being the hardest reservation to snag in the world—to have a shot, you must send a postcard. The first year that The Lost Kitchen switched to taking reservations by postcard only, it received 20,000; now it averages about 60,000 annually. “I keep them all,” French says. “I might have the largest postcard collection in the world. I’m trying to figure out what to do with them all. But for now, we have hundreds of thousands of postcards in my attic.”
Below, French shares how she started over, the moment that changed everything for her, and when she knew she made it.
My first job
My very first job was working for my dad at our family diner. He taught me everything. I started working there when I was 12 and worked my way up from the fry station to the grill station. Everything I know about a kitchen I learned from my first job.
My worst job
My worst job was probably that same job at the diner. It was brutal. Cleaning the grill, cleaning the fryolators—and there was nothing romantic about cooking on the line. If anything, it made me want to run away and not live in Maine or be a part of anything restaurant-related. So it’s still comical to me, after all these years, that that is exactly what I’m doing now. My worst job ended up being what pushed me into what I’m now doing for a career.
How I got my start in the restaurant industry
The joke around work is that I was born in a fryolator, so I had no choice, being born into the restaurant business. But when I started to buck against my dad at the diner, I started working for catering companies and for other restaurants. And that’s when I really started to see that food wasn’t one-dimensional—it wasn’t just lobster rolls and fried fish baskets—it could be this beautiful, colorful world of whatever your imagination would allow you to design and create. And so I started teaching myself. I started making wedding cakes and found great joy in that, in a project that would take an entire week to make. And then at the end of it, you’re a part of someone’s celebration and this big moment in their lives. After I found the power of that feeling through food, I was hooked.
The moment that changed everything for me
Losing my first restaurant really changed everything. I really thought it was the end. But it ended up just being my beginning, because it made me have to dig deeper and re-create all over again. And if I hadn’t lost that first restaurant, I never would’ve moved back home to Freedom, found the mill, and created my second restaurant there that became even bigger than my first restaurant. So suffering that great loss really was the pivotal turning point of my career.
How I started over
I was like, “My life is over.” I really believed that, because I lost the building that I’d worked so hard for and fallen in love with. I didn’t realize then that I could just go and reinvent it in a different building. I remember in the first year at The Lost Kitchen, I was cooking at my stove and I could see a waterfall out one of the side windows. And I’m like, “Oh my God, who would’ve thought that all of that would’ve brought me here? All of that loss and all of that pain brought me to this place where I’m now cooking and looking out at this waterfall.” It was like it took all of those tears to get to this place. I still pinch myself.
The biggest risk I ever took
The riskiest thing I ever did was open a restaurant in the middle-of-nowhere Maine, a town of 700 people. Everyone told me that there’s no way that it would succeed. They were like, “What the hell are you doing? Restaurants are already hard to open and you’re going to open one here? This is a teeny tiny town. There’s no foot traffic. There’s no way this is going to work.” But I was just like, “No, this is it.” I felt very dialed in. I was in survival mode. I just had to do it. And here we are 13 years later; it’s still the hardest restaurant to get into in the world.
The moment I felt like I made it
The moment when I was like, “Oh my God,” was in 2017 when Martha Stewart Living magazine came to the restaurant and did a photo shoot. And then when the magazine came out, my shortcake was on the cover and I just started crying. Growing up, Martha—she was my God. People in my little teeny tiny town used to call me “Little Martha” because I would collect all of her magazines and cookbooks and cut out all of the recipes and keep them and have little pretend dinner parties and fake restaurants.
I remember the photo shoot was right after we bought our house and I was terrified they were coming over here. I gardened like an animal for a week straight. I was like, “Oh my God, I’m going to die if they see this house like this.” I repainted rooms. I replanted everything. Now, when I have a photo shoot, I’m lucky if I put on a clean shirt. But that one—Martha Stewart—it was a whole different story.
What I am most proud of
I’m most proud of the fact that I have kept everything small. The restaurant has remained unchanged. We’ve been given every opportunity under the sun, and yet I’ve really just stayed small and true to this one space that I created. I feel so protective of it. And it’s really hard to grow and not make big changes. We’ve managed to grow a little, while making small changes that were authentic and still felt meaningful to me. But it can be a really hard thing, when the world comes at you, to continue to stay small and true.
