Fine dining restaurant The Chametz is set to open next month in a secret location in the Western Maine mountains.
Co-owner Lina Mamut said reservations are open for the first dinner at The Chametz, set for May 16. The venue offers prix fixe dinners on Fridays and Saturdays, with up to 10 guests per seating.
Mamut said the $220 cost for each dinner includes a seven-course menu with alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverage pairings, as well as round-trip van transportation from within an hour of the restaurant. Guests can also choose to drive themselves, and park in a nearby satellite lot.
“It’s a little bit different,” Mamut said. “It’s very much more like an experience, so that the folks know that when they get picked up, that’s when the experience starts, and we take care of them all the way through, dropping them back off at their homes.”
The menu at The Chametz will change weekly, composed entirely of ingredients sourced within 100 miles. The Chametz is a worker-owned collective, and also has an experimental farm on site, growing heirloom crops like yellow, tropical fruit-like tomatillos.
Chef Jared Rudnick, who is also Mamut’s life partner, has cooked at Boston-area restaurants, including Craigie on Main and Journeyman.
Mamut said if their dinners prove successful, they hope to buy a much larger property to operate on in western Maine — equidistant from Rangeley, Sugarloaf and Farmington — that also would offer luxury guest accommodations.
This story was originally published by the Maine Trust for Local News. Tim Cebula can be reached at [email protected].
