Big news!

We are so pleased to offer guests and friends from the community a fine dining experience at the inn this year. Chef Devin Finigan has joined us and will be delighting diners with her food as she incorporates Maine fare—the freshest seafood, local free-range chicken and eggs, local meats and produce—into dishes with a European flair. Chef Devin is new to the inn but not new to the area. She has trained with Jonathan Chase, of Buck’s Restaurant in Brooksville, and traveled to Italy with him as a sous chef numerous times. She has also worked at the Lookout Inn and the Brooklin Inn. Growing up, she worked with her father, a chef at a Relais and Chataeaux inn in Vermont.

She was a guest chef with Thomas Keller (of the French Laundry and Per Se) at a charity event in Deer Isle and participated in an intense training week at Per Se in Manhattan, with other up and coming chefs in America. Chef Devin’s husband, jeweler Luke Hartmann, fishes in the summer and supplies the inn dining room with the freshest lobster available (and the innkeeper with handsome beach glass and silver jewelry, now available at Handworks Gallery in Blue Hill).

We'll offer dinners Monday through Friday nights, beginning May 31. Call and make a reservation now; we have an intimate dining room.

We attended El El Frijoles's season kick-off at Edgehill in Sargentville. Edgehill rambles along in the great Maine farmhouse style. It's available for weekly rentals--it sleeps 18!--and comes with a barn, a mill pond, and ocean access (check out the view down Eggemoggin Reach). Michael and Michele, of El El Frijoles, launched their catering company, We Bake!. We've loved their Latin-inspired food for years and now we're hooked on the desserts, the sushi, the garlic dip for the potatoes... I wonder if they offer chocolate-dipped macaroons by mail order?! You can see photos of the event on their Facebook page.

Farmers market season opened and I'm enjoying Millbrook Bakery's olive rolls. You can find Jill Smith's bakery offerings, both sweet and savory, at the Castine, Blue Hill, Ellsworth, and Stonington farmers markets.

Other than the Blue Hill Inn, breakfast choices have been fairly limited in Blue Hill. Friends took me to Marlintini's this weekend to try their new breakfast venture--delicious! Even the eggs benedict, which has many opportunities for less-than-perfect-ness, got raves. We also had dinner at the Fish Net one night. I adore their fried scallops.

All this great food and the beauty of spring with the fuzz of impending blooms, the forsythia and daffodil yellows against the increasingly more vibrant green. Life is marvelous here in Blue Hill. If it isn't where you are, let us share!