Last week, a chef who has cooked at Michelin-rated restaurants and his partner opened Washington County’s only authentic French cafe and bakery.
La Laiterie, a French-inspired cafe owned by chef Ross Florance and his partner McKenna Koledo, debuted on April 23 in a historic Route 1 building in Jonesboro.
The cafe offers homemade breads, pastries and classic French dishes — from almond croissants, pain au chocolates and kouign-amanns, which is a type of caramelized butter cake, to buckwheat crepes with ham and cheese and escargot made with local whelks, a type of sea snail native to Maine.
Many of the cafe’s rotating selections draw from Brittany, a region in northwestern France with a climate similar to Maine’s, Florance said.
On opening day, the bakery sold out by noon and two days later, on Saturday, it was cleaned out by 11 a.m. Since opening, it has sold more than 900 baked goods, Florance said.
The couple, who live in Roque Bluffs, are prioritizing locally sourced ingredients, including a pork pate made from a pig raised at Rockweed Farm in Jonesport.
“Our menu is constantly going to be changing based on what’s in season,” Koledo said.
Florance, who is from New Jersey but spent his childhood summering by Acadia National Park, has worked at acclaimed restaurants around the world, including three-Michelin-star Le Bernardin in New York City and Noma in Copenhagen, before opening La Laiterie in Washington County.
In 2023, Florance, 39, opened the cafe’s first location in a retrofitted barn in Machias, but, after a successful first year, he decided he needed a permanent storefront that was better suited for his operation.
Once the Machias location was shut down at the end of 2024, Florance and Koledo searched for properties from Eastport to Steuben, eventually settling on Jonesboro, a town of 579 people, according to the US Census Bureau.
The Jonesboro property was built in 1890 and “has had a lot of different lives:” it’s been the site of a general store, post office and barbeque restaurant, according to Koledo, 30, who oversees the cafe’s front of house.
The couple hope to host community events at their cafe as well, like a World Cup screening this summer, an art gallery night showcasing local artists and morning yoga sessions.
La Laiterie’s Machias location featured an eight-course dining service on Fridays, which Florance said he will resume at the Jonesboro cafe in July. The farm that housed the previous cafe also hosted a Sunday farmers market, which Florance isn’t sure if he can replicate in Jonesboro, though he noted the region needs more markets.
“Having a farmers market and place to organize farmers and artisans is a really great value for a town,” Florance said. “There are some great farms around here, but nobody’s organizing them. There’s one big farmers market in Lubec, and then Bar Harbor and Ellsworth are the next biggest ones.”
