Restaurateur Starts Farming, Opens Third Business

Harding Lee Smith, Chef/Owner of Portland's Front, Grill and Corner Room Restaurants is farming

From WMTW, NEWS8

Reported by Jim Keithley
June 15, 2009

WINDHAM, Maine -- A Maine restaurateur is bucking the trend at a time when most business owners are cutting back and laying off.

Harding Lee Smith, chef-owner of two Portland restaurants, is opening his third restaurant in 10 days -- his third restaurant in four years. In all, Smith employs of more than 100 employees.

With so many restaurants, Smith figured he would start a farm to supply his eateries with the freshest produce, giving new meaning to the culinary trend from farm to table.

Smith has a 3½ acre family farm in Windham, where he showed off multicolored eggs laid by his very own chickens.

"My fiancee has had this house for a while. We were talking last summer and said, 'Well, if we're going to be opening No. 3, we have this land, why don't we turn it into a farm? We have a need for all these eggs, we have a barn, let's get some chickens," Smith said. "We started with 18. Now, we have 350-something chickens."

Smith said he has enough chickens to produce 200 to 300 dozen eggs each week -- more than enough to provide for all three of his restaurants. He believes the freshest eggs are the key ingredient to the dishes he serves up at his first restaurant, the Front Room on Munjoy Hill.

"(The eggs have a) beautiful, beautiful orange yolk, it's just spectacular as opposed to eggs at the supermarket (that are) two to three weeks old," Smith said. "We're going to be using them when they're dead fresh, maybe a day or two days old."

Smith opened his second restaurant, the Grill Room in the Old Port, a little over a year ago. Just a block away, construction is under way for his third food venture, the Corner Room.

"People said, 'You're crazy' because the economy is tanking, but this is a great opportunity to do this because we can use it to our advantage because the plan all along was to offer good value," Smith said. "Eat in a nice space, get a nice bottle of wine for inexpensive, eat a bunch of food, walk out for $20 to $25 without checking your credit card balance."

Back on the farm, a 48-foot greenhouse will eventually produce a variety of herbs, lettuce and other vegetables -- totally sustainable by the end of next summer.

"We are lucky to have this land and to be able to do this," Smith said.

Smith plans to hire 30 people for his third restaurant.