By J.W. Oliver
The Chart Room at The Bradley Inn features antique nautical charts, custom lighting, and tables made by Pennsylvania Amish craftsmen using recycled barn board. (Photo courtesy Jim Amaral) |
Pemaquid Point’s Bradley Inn restaurant has reinvented itself with an updated menu, a redesigned bar and dining room, and a more
comfortable, less formal atmosphere.
Second-year Head Chef Florin Ungureanu and husband-and-wife proprietors Warren Busteed and Beth Polhemus masterminded the
reinvention.
The Pemaquid Point restaurant has long been perceived as “the most expensive fine-dining place” on the Bristol peninsula,
Busteed said. Now, the inn wants to expose more people to its cuisine and “make it a little bit more accessible to people.”
Busteed wants people to think of The Bradley Inn as more than a “special-occasion place” for anniversaries and birthdays.
“You can just drive in and pop in and go into the bar and have a drink and an appetizer,” he said.
The first change returning patrons will notice as they enter the restaurant is the appearance of the place – without a
white tablecloth in sight.
Instead of simply The Bradley Inn restaurant, patrons can now choose between The Chart Room and The Slippery Hitch Pub.
The rooms have the same menu with a slightly different atmosphere – more intimate in The Chart Room, more lively in the pub.
“People like to come in here and they can sit down and they can eat a couple of $8 items and have an $8 glass of wine,”
Busteed said of the pub.
The Chart Room – named for the late 19th and early 20th century canvas nautical charts that hang on the walls – has live
music by local jazz pianist Doug Houston Wednesdays and Fridays.
Busteed, Polhemus, and Ungureanu describe the new-look restaurant as more comfortable and contemporary; less formal and
“stuffy.”
“It’s more us,” Polhemus said. “We are not stuffy at all, and for
us to go ‘off with the cloth’ and just express ourselves, food-wise, is more authentic to who we are.”
The restaurant continues to offer an extensive wine list and gourmet fare, each with a wide range of prices.
Food prices range from $6 “noshes” to $35 for cioppino, an entrée of local lobster, clams, mussels, and baby octopus in a
roasted tomato broth. Ungureanu describes the dish as a New Harbor fisherman’s stew.
The menu is divided into three sections: noshes, starters, and mains. The noshes or “snacks” menu includes duck liver
popcorn – fried pieces of duck liver served with chipotle and onion aioli – for $8 and the house pickles for $6.
The starters section includes oyster steam buns with kimchee butter and Asian slaw ($16) and
scallop crudo with ginger scallion ($13).
Entrée choices include top butt steak – a lean, “underappreciated” cut, according to Busteed – with eggplant fries and
salsa verde for $27.
The proprietors describe the menu as “craft-style Maine food” with a focus on local, sustainable ingredients.
The menu is largely the creation of the head chef. Ungureanu, 27, draws on influences as wide-ranging as his childhood on
a farm in rural Romania and his time at fine restaurants from Chicago to Portland.
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Bradley Inn Head Chef Florin Ungureanu holds up a leg from a pig, which he will salt and hang in the restaurant’s charcuterie room to make prosciutto, June 5. The entire pig will make its way onto the menu with no waste. (Photo courtesy Jim Amaral) |
“One of the big reasons we’re feeling so invigorated here is that he’s bringing so much passion to the table and it’s
kind of breathed new life into us,” Polhemus said. “We’ve definitely helped him with his career, but it’s come back at us in a really
big way.”
Six years ago, Ungureanu traveled to Maine through a U.S. Department of State exchange program.
Ungureanu started at The Contented Sole – Busteed and Polhemus’ restaurant at the Colonial Pemaquid State Historic Site –
as a dishwasher. With Busteed’s guidance, he worked his way up in both restaurants, becoming the head chef last year.
Ungureanu has a law degree from a university in Romania, but has no intention to practice law. He enjoys being a chef and
spends the offseason honing his skills at fine restaurants around the country.
His résumé includes stints at Alinea, a Michelin three-star restaurant, and The Dawson in Chicago, and Eventide Oyster Co.
and Hugo’s in Portland.
Ungureanu’s food draws equally from his upbringing. On the farm in Romania, his family would slaughter their own animals.
There was no refrigeration, so they would also cure their own meat and pickle vegetables to last the winter.
Ungureanu applies this knowledge in The Bradley Inn kitchen. The restaurant cures its own meat in a new charcuterie room
and pickles its own vegetables.
Ungureanu butchers the meat himself. “For our charcuterie program, everything is made in-house and we utilize absolutely
everything from nose to tail,” he said. “There’s no waste – absolutely no waste.”
Ungureanu might start with a side of pork and use a jowl to make guanciale, a shoulder to make coppa, a back leg to make
prosciutto, the ears and skin to make chicharrones, the pork belly to make bacon, and even the bones for stocks to add flavor to
various dishes.
Large-scale operations use cultures or nitrates to speed the curing process – not The Bradley Inn. “The old-school way is
really natural” and takes time, Busteed said. For example, a prosciutto takes six to eight months to cure and find its way onto the
menu.
The changes come as Busteed and Polhemus prepare to celebrate 20 years at The Bradley Inn this fall.
The couple was working for a management company in the mid- 1990s. After returning from a gig in the Caribbean, they
accepted a contract to manage The Bradley Inn for a year while the owner was in the process of selling it.
About two weeks from closing, the would-be buyers backed out. The owner approached Busteed and Polhemus and asked if they
wanted to buy the inn.
“We hadn’t even thought about it,” Busteed said. “We had our stuff packed up. We were ready to go … the rest is
history.”
The 19th century inn has 16 rooms and three cottages, as well as the 75-seat restaurant and the pub. For more information,
call 677-2105, email info@bradleyinn.com, or go to www.bradleyinn.com.
