Out of the farm fields and farm shops in Cumberland Center is a growing list of purveyors who are integral to Maine’s food lore. My list includes Pine Ridge Acres farm store, Spring Brook Farm and Cumberland Food Company. The latter has now become a destination for dining-in for dinner known as Dara Bistro.
Their “Story” best describes the change:
“Dara Bistro, formerly named the Cumberland Food Company, started on January 1’st, 2017 by Chef Bryan Dame and myself, Kelsey Pettengill. We serve as a community meeting space in the form of a casual neighborhood Coffeeshop by morning, and then as a more formal dinner service space at night. Located at 371 Tuttle Rd, the building dates back to the late 1800’s and was originally utilized as a jersey cow dairy farm. It has gone through a handful of transitions over the years, most recently when it was remodeled into a restaurant space and run as Doc’s cafe until 2017 When we leased the space and made it our own!”
Several comfortable dining areas including the open kitchen and service counter
Personally I miss the old Cumberland Food Company as a morning and daytime coffee shop, café and restaurant serving breakfast (house made bagels and English muffins are superb), coffee cakes, omelets, sandwiches including the best chicken salad, but the outdoor and indoor dining spaces still evoke country dining, even at the simplified breakfast menu. And you are just 10 miles from Portland in a verdant landscape of farm fields, farmhouses and twisty, leafy winding roads off of Route 9.
The old Cumberland Food Company still operates Monday through Friday from 7 AM to 11 AM. The morning menu is an abbreviation, however, from what it was. Gone are the shelves of homemade jams, sauces, condiments, English muffins, breads, ice creams and pies. The room used to be chock-a-block with all these items, contributing to the country charm of the space.
After the breakfast hour the restaurant is the Dara Bistro, serving dinner from Thursday to Sunday, a schedule that is similar to many restaurants in Portland who try to operate within the new landscape of staff shortages. No one, it seems, wants to work anymore, especially in restaurants. If the effects of Covid were not enough, the local restaurant industry now has to grapple with staffing issues.
That’s one of the reasons why the Cumberland Food Company shortened its daytime menu and supply of home made goodies and created the dinner bistro. Chef and owner Bryan Dame now does it all by himself (I miss those great breakfast pancakes). He said he was lucky to find a qualified young assistant right out of cooking school who takes some of the burden of running a serious dinnertime restaurant.
I went there recently and absolutely loved the dinner we were served. There’s a basic simplicity to Dame’s cooking. Nothing fancy but the use of the finest ingredients, however, prevails. When I once commented to a former friend on her use of ultra-pasteurized cream found in the refrigerator she snidely commented, “You shouldn’t be spending your money on designer cream.” Now I know why her cooking is so ordinary. You have to use the best ingredients you can afford, cooked simply and the results will be divine.
Incredible rosemary scented pound cake toasted and served with raspberry sorbet and “designer” whipped cream
Dame has cooked in many restaurants in the Portland area. From David’s to Tiqa he left his mark there before creating the Cumberland Food Company where the principle of “simple country cooking without boundaries” is served forth with plates piled with taste and texture, two elements that I find important in cooking of any stripe. The ingredients are mostly local and in season. Once you taste the toasted rosemary pound cake with raspberry sorbet–a feature that night on the menu– you’ll appreciate what I say.
We started off with salads of the day, one with asparagus and the other mixed greens topped with a corn crisp. For entrees we had roast half chicken–divinely tender pieces of chicken breast meat and thigh on a bed of beans, sautéed radish, biscuit and gravy. And the salmon ‘n peas was a sophisticated dish of pan seared roast salmon atop a potato cake with a bright and luxurious sweet pea puree and carrots. Every taste of both dishes was the simplicity of good cooking personified. Yes, there might have been “designer cream” in some of the dishes, but there was also designer care in how each dish was cooked and presented. This week’s upcoming menu, for example, includes cured artic char with Johnny cake, a luscious panorama of desserts and entrees that fit the bill for country dining.
Mixed greens with corn cake and roasted asparagus and arugula
Half chicken with super moist chicken breast and thigh on a potato cake , gravy and biscuits
Roast salmon on potato cake with “peas and carrots”
We need more country style restaurants in our region. You’d have to travel far and wide to find one, but we have it nearby now in Dara Bistro in Cumberland Center, offering good cooking at reasonable prices in a no-frills space evicting that void of mediocrity everywhere else. I shall think of that inane comment from a former friend who deemed my desire for “designer cream” as foolhardy whenever I eat food that is honestly and wonderfully conceived.
Dara Bistro, 371 Tuttle Rd., Cumberland Center, ME 207-829-4250, reservations necessary
Rating: 4 fine stars. Excellent cooking, using mostly local ingredients in an imaginative menu
Ambiance: Better than a department store changing room, more like the main salon in a country roadside dining room or the secret garden at a country house
Service: Thoughtful and respectful
Parking: On site
$$$: Reasonably priced, good portions
