Co-owner Victoria Barthelmes talks with customers seated at the outside deck area of Finestkind in Saco’s Pepperell Square. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer Like clockwork, the noon lunchtime crowd filed into Rapid Ray’s in downtown Saco on a recent weekday. Students, downtown employees and workers from a nearby construction site all bellied up to the counter to place their orders for “Big Ones” (double cheeseburgers), fries, sodas and “chocs” (chocolate milk), as throngs before them have done for decades.
Ray’s has been a local staple since 1953, starting as a proto-food truck, then opening its now landmark brick-and-mortar shop in 1986. Downtown Saco is pretty rich with old-school dining institutions. There are also the Golden Rooster for breakfast and lunch, Vic & Whit’s sandwich and wine shop, and Pizza by Michael, each of which has been open for more than 50 years.
But a fresh batch of eateries and food businesses has opened on and around Main Street over the past year, infusing the town with new energy and making locals hungry for even more highly craveable, modern options. Perhaps getting the most buzz is the town’s newest restaurant, Finestkind, in Pepperell Square. It’s a casual breakfast and lunch spot launched in September by chef-owners Tom and Victoria Barthelmes, a young couple with serious Portland and New York City fine-dining pedigrees (Central Provisions and Per Se among them) who pride themselves on making practically everything in-house, .