Lil Chippy’s namesake fish-and-chips, with slaw, tartar sauce and ketchup. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer Since I started writing Dine Out Maine, I’ve reviewed three restaurant whose owners all gave the same cagey, one-word answer when I ask about their business’s overarching concept or theme. “Restaurant,” they’ll reply.
“The theme of my restaurant is ‘restaurant.’” Not one of that trio of restaurant-themed restaurants lasted longer than a year. Without a coherent sense of place, space, food and drink, what you’ve got isn’t a restaurant; it’s an improv group.
Clarity of purpose matters. You don’t have to tell that to Lil Chippy’s co-owners Ashley Wolf and Will Durst (both formerly of the acclaimed Hen of the Wood in Waterbury, Vermont). The married duo operate their 32-seat, counter-service fish-and-chip shop with an unambiguous and rather elegant credo: “We’re in Maine, where we’re lucky to have beautiful potatoes and beautiful fish, and we put the two together,” Wolf said.
Beyond the simplicity of the couple’s culinary philosophy, they have plenty of goals for the Washington Avenue shop they opened in the quaint space formerly occupied by Radici. But mostly, Wolf tells me, they want to “highlight our fish and chips, sandwiches and small plates, while keeping this the kind of place people can go to regularly.” By that, she means both rotating small plates with the seasons and keeping prices affordable — no easy feat on one of th.
