Warren Busteed steps over a section of concrete flooring that buckled from flooding in the January storms at the former Contented Sole restaurant near Fort William Henry in New Harbor. Busteed and Beth Polhemus, owners of the restaurant, salvaged what equipment they could from the restaurant and opened it in a new location on the east side of New Harbor. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer When the first storm hit on Jan.
10, Warren Busteed got a call that the river was rising. He raced from his home in Pemaquid to Bred in the Bone, a restaurant that he, his wife Beth Polhemus and a business partner had opened in downtown Damariscotta less than a year earlier. The restaurant, in the historic Gilbert Gay building on Main Street, is precisely one built-on-fill town parking lot away from the Damariscotta River.
“We better get in front of this,” Polhemus recalled saying, and soon it was all hands on deck. “Sure enough, the water came up 4 feet in the basement. It was a lot.
It was a lot .” The storm still hadn’t let up when Polhemus went home to let out the couple’s dogs. She decided to swing by their other place, the seasonal Contented Sole on Pemaquid Harbor, to shut off the power.
In the nearly two decades the couple had run it – serving local seafood and pizza in the former lobster pound and cannery in Fort William Henry State Park – it had never once flooded. “Nothing. Not even a little bit,” said Polhemus, who found to her astonishment that the storm had ripped off a long handicapped ramp (it floated out to sea) and its access door, leaving a giant gash in the building’s side.
“There were rollers coming through, 4-foot rollers,” she said. “It was like the ocean had come into the restaurant.” Warren Busteed and Beth Polhemus, co-owners of the Bred in the Bone restaurant in Damariscotta, said the water level from flooding in the parking lot behind the restaurant during the January storms came up about halfway to their deck.
It didn’t reach the dining room, but it caused major damage to the basement prep kitchen. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer Even then, Polhemus felt sure things would turn out all right. Sure – as she saw once the storm had passed and the tide retreated – seaweed was everywhere, and the restaurant’s entire contents were askew.
It looked like a volcano had erupted. Still, “I always think everything is fixable,” she said. “The building was kind of rough and ready anyway, and we’d lived with that for 18 years.
It just seemed indestructible.” Just three days later, another ferocious storm battered the Maine coast, a one-two punch. For a second time in less than a week, the basement kitchen at Bred in the Bone flooded; some half-dozen members of the town’s fire department helped to pump it out.
As for the Contented Sole, “That’s when we knew,” Polhemus said. “It was all over.” WORSENING STORMS Seasonal seafood restaurants like the Contented Sole dot Maine’s coastline from York to Eastport.
They date back about a century. Like lighthouses, rocky beaches and lobster (which they inevitably prepare), they are practically synonymous with Maine. From lobster shacks (with decks, walk-up windows and picnic tables) to their plusher siblings (with roofs and dining rooms), these scenic, quintessential eateries are imprinted on the memories of generations of Mainers and visitors.
But as the string of storms that pummeled the state’s coastline last winter demonstrated, such cherished summertime destinations – places like Harraseeket Lunch & Lobster in South Freeport, Chauncey Creek Lobster Pier in Kittery, Young’s Lobster Pound in Belfast – are at grave risk from climate change. (And not just the physical structures, either; the fast-warming waters in the Gulf of Maine threaten their menus of local fish and seafood.) Warren Busteed pulls a rack out of a box in the basement of the Bred in the Bone restaurant in Damariscotta.
The basement of the restaurant was flooded twice during the January storms, and the restaurant lost a large freezer and the entire contents of the walk-in refrigerator. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer Sea levels here are projected to rise between 1.1 and 3.
2 feet by 2050, according to the scientists who advise the Maine Climate Council. While no data exists on how many feet above sea level such restaurants are on average, anyone who has ever dipped a boiled lobster into drawn butter or savored a steamy, creamy cup of clam chowder on a wharf can probably tell you: not many. Though successful restaurant owners are resilient, and Mainers famously so, these storms are putting them to the test.
Asked how their restaurants fared last winter and whether they are preparing for the fiercer, more frequent storms that climate scientists predict, owners had different thoughts. At least one thinks the weather is no worse than it ever was. Another is “hardening” his restaurant in the hopes of making it safer and saleable.
Several recognize, but believe they can live with, the growing threat of floods and storms. A few considered, for the merest heartbeat, retiring. Maybe it was time.
Warren Busteed and Beth Polhemus, co-owners of the Contented Sole restaurant, moved it to this new location in New Harbor after flooding from January storms damaged the original restaurant. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer For its part, the Contented Sole got a happy ending – really, a new beginning. A combination of luck and very hard work enabled its owners to move the business this spring to a seaside location less than 2 miles away from its original home.
It opened for the summer season in late May in its new spot in New Harbor. “We have a long sloping lawn,” Polhemus said with relief. “There is no impact from storm surge possible where we are.
” STORM PREPAREDNESS It was about 100 years ago that Mainers started to open restaurants just feet from, or above, the state’s 3,000-plus-mile jagged Atlantic coastline. Their development went hand in hand with the growth of the automobile, according to tourism historian, writer and Ellsworth resident Peter Dow Bachelder. Before the car, Maine’s restaurants were restricted to cities or grand hotels, where guests arrived by train or steamship and stayed put for their meals.
But once tourists could tootle about the state in their own automobiles, they required convenient food wherever they roamed. “In the ’20s, we began to have these restaurants spring up all over the place,” Bachelder said. The menus drew crowds with mostly casual food: lobster, already an iconic Maine treat; fried fish; fried clams and such.
Their appeal, then and now, almost goes without saying: “The food and the view combined,” Bachelder said. Or, as the Contented Sole’s Instagram hashtags have it: #dockside #timetorelax #watersunset #summereats. A lobster roll at Harraseeket Lunch and Lobster in South Freeport.
Derek Davis/Staff Photographer Owners of restaurants in these beautiful, vulnerable spots have always taken steps to defend against storms. When the summer season ends, furniture and equipment may be stored in higher, drier locations. “We basically take anything that isn’t nailed down and pack it up,” said Gina Longbottom of Five Islands Lobster Co.
in Georgetown. During storms, owners may open windows to let waves wash in and out and rake seaweed from parking lot drains to keep them from backing up. After storms, owners (and anyone else willing to lend a hand) haul away sand, pull up carpets, wash and bleach floors and equipment, replace busted freezers, and blast the heat to dry things out.
“Listen, you gotta have guts if you are going to be in the restaurant business, especially where I am located in the flood zone,” said John DiSanto, owner of the soon-to-reopen Anjon’s Ristorante in Scarborough, started by his grandparents in 1957. “You rebuild. I’ve done it before.
To rebuild is something that goes with the territory.” Anjon’s sits on Route 1 in the middle of Scarborough Marsh. Though the road was closed to traffic by floods at least once last winter, DiSanto said the restaurant did not flood.
“If you knew the history and tradition and nostalgia of everything that has transpired in that building,” he said. “I’ve been through fire, floods, death, divorce, bankruptcy, recession. But guess what? What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
” Seaside (and riverside) restaurant owners have learned the hard way to move wiring and electrical outlets out of harm’s way, as Busteed did, in last winter’s storms. By the time he reached Bred in the Bone on Jan. 10, several feet of water stood between him and the circuit breaker panel.
He perched on the stairway that leads down to the basement prep kitchen and watched in horror as a low-to-the-floor electrical outlet began to spark and smoke. There was no way he could walk through the water to shut off the power now; he’d electrocute himself. Busteed phoned the town, Central Maine Power and finally his electrician, who talked him through wading outside in water up to his knees and shutting off the power at the exterior meter.
“I was terrified!” Busteed said. “Four hundred amps are coming into this building!” The very next day, he had the outlets in the basement moved several feet higher. SANDBAGS AND HOPE For some, these familiar steps, if a lot of work, are oddly comforting – a reminder that, over many decades, Maine’s seaside restaurants have faced and survived many storms.
Several restaurateurs mentioned the blizzard of 1978. The long histories of places like Huot’s Seafood Restaurant in Camp Ellis in Saco, Barnacle Billy’s in Perkins Cove in Ogunquit and Anjon’s give their owners confidence that they will survive. Alan Waugh says he and his four partners did consider climate change when they bought Huot’s from the Huot family in 2022.
Camp Ellis, a former fishing village, has been losing the fight to floods and erosion for years. But the seasonal restaurant has an exceptionally long track record, dating back to 1935. In March, 2018, floodwaters surround Huot’s Seafood Restaurant in Camp Ellis in Saco.
Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer, file In the fall, the owners readied for winter storms by placing sandbags around the restaurant and plywood around the back perimeter, where it faces the ocean. Still, the year’s first storm flooded the restaurant’s basement. The next storm got the dining room and kitchen, too.
The partners cleaned up, Waugh said, helped by the tight-knit community as well as “mops and buckets and squeegees and such.” It took “a lot” of time. Later, Huot’s replaced two entire freezers and the motors of several others.
But Waugh and his partners remain hopeful. “We try to stay positive,” he said. “We really can’t predict the future per se, so .
..” his voice trailed off.
“We continue to look forward to striving and persevering in the future.” Up the coast at Five Islands Lobster, Longbottom faces the possibility of more intense storms with a sort of Zen acceptance. This past winter, the town-owned floats and dock at Five Islands wharf were badly damaged, she said.
Even though the water did not get inside her restaurant (in a building she leases from the town), for the first time, the threat of climate change “really hit me in the face.” “It occurred to me finally ..
. this could just melt into the ocean,” Longbottom said. And while that makes her anxious, she also knows it’s beyond her control.
Longbottom’s husband , Keith, who was her partner in the business, died of brain cancer five years ago. “That has changed my perspective on a lot of things, about how much worry you can put in,” she said. “You can prepare as much as you can and feel is necessary, but in the end things are going to happen.
” PREPARE FOR THE WORST Dennett’s Wharf in Castine sits at the “prepare as much as you can” end of the scale, readying itself for potential future weather. Just two summers ago, the entire town got in on the effort to keep the beloved waterside restaurant open. Kip Oberting had bought the building in 2017 when the previous owner died.
Oberting said he’d never intended to hold on to it for the long term, so he was pleased when he found a buyer in January. Dennett’s Wharf restaurant in Castine was flooded by the January storms. Photo by Susan Adam The papers were being drawn up when the first storm hit.
Taken together, the storms last winter flooded Dennett’s Wharf to the depth of 2 or 3 feet, Oberting said. The pier is gone. The three-season deck and covered porch washed away.
At first, the deck underneath that porch looked salvageable – until a third storm hit. “That was a kick to the gut,” Oberting said. As for the sale? No surprise, the interested buyers backed out.
Dennett’s Wharf reopened June 30. The restaurant will run for a shorter season than usual. And it will operate on a smaller scale, with a more modest menu.
Oberting’s 18-year-old son, Miles, and three buddies will be running the place . Meanwhile, Oberting is “hardening” the property against future climate threats. His plans include rebuilding the deck and jacking up the building four feet, which will require building a new foundation and redoing the pilings.
He’s already moved some of the kitchen equipment – the griddle, hood, fryer and prep tables – to a shipping container. The idea is that at the end of the season, rather than risk valuable items in a storm, “we can just wheel it away,” Oberting said. The repairs won’t come cheap.
“It’s going to add up,” Oberting said. “Half a million dollars or a million? I have no idea. It’s going to be painful writing these checks.
” Even so, he said, “We are going to invest the money in making it resilient for the future.” Five or six years ago, similar work was underway at Barnacle Billy’s in Perkins Cove. The restaurant’s foundation was redone.
New I-beams were installed. The pilings were “sistered,” with new pilings placed next to the old ones. Tim Tower, who, with his siblings, owns the restaurant that was founded by his father, thinks the work cost about $250,000.
But climate change wasn’t the driver. “Buildings get old,” he said. Barnacle Billy’s, Tower said, fared better than many others up the coast last winter.
The restaurant never lost power, although the Jan. 13 storm did put 2 feet of water in the dining room. “We had a lot of cleanup to do afterward,” he wrote in “Billy’s Journal,” on the restaurant’s website.
Still, in a telephone interview, Tower ticked off worse storms the restaurant has survived – in 1975, 1978 and 1991. He is a climate change skeptic. “Something is changing,” he said, “but how or why or what, I don’t think they have a handle on it.
” “My biggest worry is insurance companies are using this as a lever to not insure people and make endless amounts of money,” he said. RISK VS. COST If a restaurant is at risk for flooding and the owner borrowed money in order to open it, the bank has almost certainly required insurance to cover storm damage, possibly for floods, wave wash or piers and wharves, explained insurance agent Rob Wheeler at J.
Edward Knight Insurance in Boothbay Harbor. Such coverage is available from private insurers and through the federal government. Its price depends on many factors – including where the property lies on government flood maps, the structure itself, its elevation, the existence (or not) of a seawall.
Ashley Rosborough, chief operating officer at J.T. Rosborough insurance in Ellsworth, has seen commercial policies that range from $26,000 to $60,000 annually (compared to under $1,000 for a restaurant that is not considered at risk of flooding).
“In some cases, the pricing on the flood insurance has gotten so astronomical that’s it’s not doable for a business to be paying an annual premium,” she said. Neither Longbottom, at Five Lobsters, who leases her building, nor Oberting, at Dennett’s Wharf, who owns his outright, carry it. Bred in the Bone is insured for floods, which costs about $8,000 annually, Busteed said.
The restaurant did not file a claim “because we just we did not want to raise the specter of increased premiums, which I’m sure will happen anyway because of where we are,” Polhemus said. Beth Polhemus and Warren Busteed talk about the flooding in the basement of their Damariscotta restaurant Bred in the Bone. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer She and Busteed did not carry flood insurance on the building that housed the original Contented Sole, because it’s owned by the state.
Busteed puts a value on the loss of equipment there, combined with nearly two decades of sweat equity, at $100,000. Barnacle Billy’s was recently dropped by its insurance company. Tower doesn’t know why.
The restaurant had never made a flood-related claim, he said, and he was able to secure new marine insurance for a comparable price. Huot’s is insured for floods, but insurance companies, Waugh said, “are just not writing blank checks, you know what I mean?” At Anjon’s, DiSanto described flood insurance as “a necessary evil.” When he closed the restaurant in 2019, he was paying about $3,000 for it annually.
In 2024, his bill will be closer to $5,000, he said. Both Rosborough and Wheeler say many more commercial clients are asking about flood insurance now than in the past. Still, balancing the risk against the cost is as hard as ever.
“It’s just one of many things that particular industry is facing, from food costs to labor costs to real estate costs,” Wheeler said of restaurants. “You have to make some tough decisions: You can’t not pay your employees. You can’t not pay your rent or your utilities.
But if you have a choice? That’s what makes (flood insurance) a difficult cost. “And the closer you are to the water, the lower your elevation, the higher your rates are going to be,” he said. “The people that need it the most? The cost is the highest.
” LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE? There is at least one restaurant in Maine with terrific harbor views and, presumably, no climate change worries whatsoever: DiMillo’s. The 42-year-old restaurant is housed in a former car ferry docked at Long Wharf in Portland. “They’re not going to flood,” DiSanto joked.
“They’re going to ride it out.” In the face of ever-gloomier climate change predictions and realities, a sense of humor helps. Polhemus has added a new drink to the menu at Bred in the Bone: The Wrecked not Ruined, with dark rum, Campari and sweet vermouth.
But it would take more than a few drinks for diners to drown their sorrows were these classic Maine coastal restaurants ever to disappear. Their loss would be deeply felt. “We’d lose the history.
...
” said Waugh, of Huot’s. “Memories have been created at these locations for generations.” Looming flood threat: Maine coastal infrastructure at risk as soon as 2030 January storms leave many working waterfronts in Maine adrift Modify your screen name Please sign into your Press Herald account to participate in conversations below.
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