Arrows: When Dinner Comes Straight From the Backyard

Long before "organic" and "local" were hot culinary buzzwords, chefs Clark Frasier and Mark Gaier had already built a national following, based on those principles, in their quiet little corner of Ogunquit, Maine.

For the past 19 years, the pair has run Arrows Restaurant with the philosophy that fresh is best, especially when dinner comes straight from the backyard. Every meal served in the eighteenth century farmhouse originates on the restaurant’s grounds. Frasier and Gaier even cite the carefully groomed apple orchards, flower gardens, and one-acre organic vegetable garden as their greatest inspirations for their award-winning cuisine.

"We try to do things the way they would have been done two hundred years ago," Frasier says. "We grow ninety-five percent of our vegetables and cure and smoke our meats. Our cheeses, ice cream and breads are all made in-house."

Frasier and Gaier’s decision to cultivate their own ingredients was in and of itself organic. The two met while working at Jeremiah Tower’s Stars Restaurant in San Francisco. When they moved east to open Arrows Restaurant, the pair was hit with a cold, New England reality: Coastal Maine didn’t have the produce to which they were accustomed. Undeterred, Frasier and Gaier started a small vegetable garden and expanded it over the next few years.

Today, "the Arrows experience is a little like when, many, many years ago, you lived on a farm and were self-sufficient—though this would be a really elegant farm," Gaier says.

Before dinner, guests often stroll the grounds while enjoying champagne and some tasty amuses-bouche. Once the lettuce, herbs and berries offer an ample preview of the dishes to come, diners head inside to the plank-floored, candle-lit dining room where expansive windows overlook the grounds.

The menu changes frequently, based on what’s available in the garden, but specialties include such dishes as lobster with foie gras croutons and mashed potatoes in a crème fraîche sauce with house-cured bacon; roasted duck breast with duck confit, onion and cabbage pie, grape jam, Belgian endive salad and au minute duck essence. The extensive wine list offers 650 selections. And the dessert menu includes such homemade delights as warm olive oil cake with cranberry glaze and fresh basil and honey cake with lemon vanilla panna cotta and candied kumquat compote.

Given the pristine country setting and the fine fresh food, it’s no surprise that rehearsal dinners and weddings at Arrows are elegant and romantic indoor/outdoor affairs with menus customized to the couples’ tastes.

"Coming to Arrows is an escape to the beautiful," Gaier says.

Written by Heather Eng