Home Kitchen Café is one of our favorite breakfast/brunch/lunch places in Maine. Everything is made on premises and everything we’ve ever had there is delicious. It’s one of the few places that I look forward to having eggs Benedict (and they have many varieties), mostly because they make one of the best restaurant Hollandaise sauces I’ve ever had.
They used to do the “bennies” every morning, but the Hollandaise is tricky, made in small batches, and even though we learned that everyone who works in the kitchen knows how to make it, they just don’t have enough workers to offer it except on the weekends. The other thing that makes their bennies special is the option of replacing English muffins with grilled polenta, which is such a good idea everyone should do it.
The first weekend morning we made it to Home Kitchen there was an interesting special of Scallops Benedict. The scallops were fresh off a boat and served with bacon and tomato. We were blown away with how good it was! The last Sunday we were in Maine we didn’t get there until about 2:00 and were so disappointed to find out that there were no more “bennies” that day! We were so looking forward to another batch of the scallops, but no. I decided to try a burger, the Stella Bleu.
One bite of the burger and any thoughts of eggs Benedict vanished. It was perfectly cooked and what made it better than a regular blue cheeseburger was that they used blue cheese dressing instead of crumbled blue cheese. This gave it a nice creamy topping which went beautifully with the sauteed onions and bacon. A truly great burger!
Another “old favorite” is the Bahn Home, their version of a bahn mi. It’s a huge hero, holding a bunch of great pork meatballs, pickled daikon and carrots and hot chili mayo. You’ll want to finish it because it tastes so good, but it’s not bad reheated the next day.
The service is always friendly and you have a chance to sit inside or up on their roof deck on nice days. James, the chef/owner, stopped and chatted with us on the last morning we were there (somehow it’s always Home Kitchen for breakfast on our way back to NY, even if it’s the complete opposite direction). Because of the service crunch, this summer they’re closed Mondays and Tuesdays and the line for a table may be longer than usual, but it’s always worth the wait.
I wish there were better photos of the great food, but we could hardly wait to eat it!
