Finding Freedom A Cook's Story Remaking a Life From Scratch by Erin French

 For me food wasn’t a competition about who could make the best dish. It’s greatest power was to take taste and turn it into a long-lasting memory.~ from Finding Freedom by Erin French

I had never heard of The Lost Kitchen or Erin French before I read an excerpt of her memoir on BookishFirst. The author described her idyllic childhood in Maine with such detail and love, I was charmed. 

Erin French's memoir made me recall how much we loved Maine, leaving behind Philadelphia with its yellow haze and heat and noise and rush. We spent seven years vacationing in Maine, one year for a whole month, tent camping at Acadia National Park. We loved sitting along the pink cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, watching the lobster boats pulling up and setting their traps.  

Mostly we ate around the campfire, but several days we would splurge on a meal of lobster on the beach or steamers in a diner. One year we went to a post-season, $5 dinner of lobster, rock crab, and corn on the cob  at a little diner. We were surrounded by locals who coolly watched me struggle to cracking open the crab. Finally, a grizzled man in a cap and denim jacket stood up, and grabbed the crab from my hands and expertly cracked it, shaking his head.

French lovingly describes the food of her childhood, made by her grandmother or by her father at his diner. Building on these roots, she took simple, wholesome, locally sourced foods,and with a artist's creative twist, served culinary delights.

But French's story was not all pink Rugosa roses and wild berries. She grew up in a dysfunctional family ruled by her father, a man who worked hard running his diner and drank too much, a distant, judgmental, controlling man. French planned to escape life in small town Freedom, Maine, by going to college in Boston. Instead, she returned to her family home, an unwed mother.

French had built a life for herself and her son when an older man pursued her and she fell in love. When she finally started her dream restaurant, her marriage became strained along with her health. Her husband was a man much like her father, controlling, selfish, a drinker.

A physician over-prescribed medications to help her cope with her pain and depression, which lead to rehab and her husband ceasing the restaurant--and her son. When insurance ran out before she was fully recovered, broke and in despair, she returned to her family home to start over. 

Again.

French needed to prove she could support her son. She worked hard and created her pop-up restaurant, using locally sourced foods and building a clientele. She remembered the foods served by her grandmother, recreating the joyous experience for others. 

The Lost Kitchen became famous, people lining up for a chance to experience French's cuisine.

French's vulnerability and openness about her struggles allows readers to become immersed in her sorrows and her joys. It is a story of the ways women are victims and how women can fight for self-determination. 

French credits her New England heritage of hard work as the root of her success. But also the eighteen-hour days working at her father's diner, even while pregnant, even when he was having a private drinking party with friends on the back porch as she ran the restaurant, for he taught her the basics of cooking.

If you love food, if you love a story of a woman's resilience and success, if you like a family drama of pain and healing, if you enjoy books about healing and finding wholeness, you will love Finding Freedom.

I received an ARC from the publisher through Bookish First. My review is fair and unbiased.

Finding Freedom:A Cook's Story Remaking a Life From Scratch

by Erin French

Celadon Books

Publication Date: April 6, 2021

ISBN: 9781250312341

from the publisher

Long before The Lost Kitchen became a world dining destination with every seating filled the day the reservation book opens each spring, Erin French was a girl roaming barefoot on a 25-acre farm, a teenager falling in love with food while working the line at her dad’s diner and a young woman finding her calling as a professional chef at her tiny restaurant tucked into a 19th century mill. This singular memoir—a classic American story—invites readers to Erin’s corner of her beloved Maine to share the real person behind the “girl from Freedom” fairytale, and the not-so-picture-perfect struggles that have taken every ounce of her strength to overcome, and that make Erin’s life triumphant. 

In Finding Freedom, Erin opens up to the challenges, stumbles, and victories that have led her to the exact place she was ever meant to be, telling stories of multiple rock-bottoms, of darkness and anxiety, of survival as a jobless single mother, of pills that promised release but delivered addiction, of a man who seemed to offer salvation but in the end ripped away her very sense of self. And of the beautiful son who was her guiding light as she slowly rebuilt her personal and culinary life around the solace she found in food—as a source of comfort, a sense of place, as a way of bringing goodness into the world. Erin’s experiences with deep loss and abiding hope, told with both honesty and humor, will resonate with women everywhere who are determined to find their voices, create community, grow stronger and discover their best-selves despite seemingly impossible odds. Set against the backdrop of rural Maine and its lushly intense, bountiful seasons, Erin reveals the passion and courage needed to invent oneself anew, and the poignant, timeless connections between food and generosity, renewal and freedom

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About the Author

Erin French is the owner and chef of The Lost Kitchen, a 40-seat restaurant in Freedom, Maine, that was recently named one TIME Magazine’s World’s Greatest Places and one of “12 Restaurants Worth Traveling Across the World to Experience” by Bloomberg. 

A born-and-raised native of Maine, she learned early the simple pleasures of thoughtful food and the importance of gathering for a meal. Her love of sharing Maine and its delicious heritage with curious dinner guests and new friends alike has garnered attention in outlets such as The New York Times (her piece was one of the ten most read articles in the food section the year it was published), Martha Stewart Living, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and Food & Wine. 

She has been invited to share her story on NPR’s All Things Considered, The Chew, CBS This Morning, and The Today Show. Erin was featured in a short film made by Tastemade in partnership with L. L. Bean, which won a James Beard Award, and The Lost Kitchen Cookbook has been named one of the best cookbooks by The Washington Post, Vogue.com, and Remodelista and was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award.