Transcription of Hospitality, #109
Speaker 1: You’re listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Download past shows and become a podcast subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle on iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine, Marci Booth, of Booth Maine; Apothecary by Design; Premier Sports Health, a division of Black Bear Medical; Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists; Sea Bags; Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of ReMax Heritage; Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes; and Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial.
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you’re listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, show #109, Hospitality. Airing for the first time on Sunday, October 13, 2013. Today’s guests include Jonathan Cartwright, Executive Chef with the White Barn Inn, and Raymond Brunyanszky, co-owner at the Camden Harbour Inn.
Autumn has arrived, and with it, the leaf-peepers. Leaf-peepers are a wonderful class of tourist who enjoy traveling to northern climes in search of brilliant fall foliage. Maine, home to thousands of acres of deciduous trees, offers a special treat at those who would peep at leaves. Maine is a special place to visit for much of the year, and those who offer hospitality to our visitors are, in large part, responsible for this fact.
I’ve had my share of experience offering hospitality to Maine visitors. As a high school student, I manned the counters at various Freeport retail establishments, and waitressed at the now defunct Downeast Village Restaurant in my home town. Later, I became an in-state visitor, and have had memorable moments at many fine Maine eateries and hotels.
It feels good to take care of people and to be cared for by others. These experiences offer a unique type of healing from which we might all benefit. Executive Chef Jonathan Cartwright of the White Barn Inn and Camden Harbour Inn Co-Owner, Raymond Brunyanszky, can attest to this. They have delivered healing hospitality to thousands of Maine visitors and locals. Though people may come to this state for our autumn leaves and beautiful vistas, they return, again and again, for our healing hospitality. What a gift it is that we may offer this to the world. We hope that you enjoy today’s Hospitality show and think about you, yourself, have benefited from and offered hospitality to others. Thank you for joining us.
Dr. Lisa: One of the first, best restaurants I ever went to in the state of Maine was the White Barn Inn. I remember walking in as a young 20-something, not even out of medical school with barely two nickels to scrape together, and being amazed. Amazed by the setting, amazed by the wait staff, but even more amazed by the food. As it turns out, Jonathan Cartwright is the wizard behind the amazement when it comes to the White Barn Inn Restaurant. So, we’re very privileged today to have Jonathan with us to talk about what it means to be a great chef at one of Maine’s restaurants.
Thank you for coming in.
Jonathan: Oh, you’re very welcome. Thank you for having me, and thank you for those kind words. You know the White Barn Inn is a special, special place. It’s a place I’ve been there for 18 years, and when I first came there, it was just as you explained there. It took my breath away. It took my heart and kept it there, and it really is a beautiful, beautiful setting with a great vision of an owner that was Laurence Bongiorno, that I came to work for, who was an Australian.
We tried to continue the vision of what he had for the place, and that is really to everybody do their job and to make people just have a couple of hours of happiness and away from the world that we live in. Transported to relax, to have conversation, to enjoy good food, enjoy good wine, and to have a wonderful experience here in Maine.
Dr. Lisa: Now, Laurie Bongiorno had passed away, and I think that the timing must have been pretty close. How long had you worked for him before he had passed away?
Jonathan: I came in 1995, Laurie passed away in 2007, so we’d been about 12 years together. He was a wonderful boss. He was a fantastic friend. He was a workaholic. He really poured his heart and soul into the White Barn Inn and what he created there, and other properties here in Kennebunkport. But I got to say, he was the most genuine, passionate, hospitable person that you would ever meet. He could make the most humble person, the person that stretched to come to the White Barn Inn, because it’s obviously not cheap to come there, and it’s expensive what we put on, but he would make someone that would save a long time for that experience and want to come for a special occasion feel so at home and so welcome and so special. He was an amazing chap.
An honor to work for him, and I was so lucky. I always feel that in life you go around and sometimes you wander and you look for a job, and you look for something that pays well and takes care of you and can handle your standard of living. But when I found Laurie or he found me, that connect that was so wonderful and the White Barn Inn stage to perform on is so special, so I was so lucky. I was so blessed to meet him; so sad that he passed away so young, and really is missed. What a great guy. Still at the White Barn Inn, many things that we continue to do and strive to do are all based on his vision and his passion for the business.
Dr. Lisa: He was somewhat of a visionary because I know that having spent quite a lot of time in Kennebunkport myself, now Tim Harrington and a lot of people are behind this wonderful revitalization that’s happening. But the White Barn Inn came before all that. I remember driving down to Kennebunkport and just the property sort of opens up and there’s this beautiful house that’s there, and this beautiful restaurant, but it came before this resurgence that happened. I wonder what that must have been like for him to kind of want to create this award-winning hotel and restaurant in the middle of the woods.
Jonathan: He was an amazing chap. You’re right there. A visionary. An entrepreneur. He was very passionate about what he did. He worked for a large company, worked for Hyatt Hotels, here in America, and he’d been to Kennebunkport, and he’d seen the White Barn Inn, and he’d said to a local Realtor that if that ever comes up for sale, I want to buy it.
He had the vision to become a Relais & Chateaux member, which is an affiliation of hotels. They’re all privately owned, but they all come together as members of Relais & Chateaux to market themselves and to promote what individual hotels do, so the Relais & Chateaux brand, the organization, the affiliation comes from Routes du Bonheur, which was the route of happiness in France, which were four little auberge on the way from Paris down to Nice to the Cote d’Azur for wealthy Parisians to take vacations. The White Barn Inn has a history that really, really blends into that, and really is, it was a little auberge for people to stop off on their way from New York to go up to Bar Harbor or to spend summer in Kennebunkport, things like that. He had the vision, “Okay, I’m going to refine this. I’m going to make it a grand little hotel, a little gem in Kennebunkport, when things were a little old-fashioned, to say the least.
Now it’s very modern, as you mentioned Mr. Harrington is doing a fantastic job with livening the place up, and keeping it alive, really. Keeping it alive, because it is very much alive and it’s a wonderful place to vacation, whether you’re young or old. We have a wonderful town gentleman called President Bush, our 41st president, and he’s a great guy, and he really put Kennebunkport on the map. He’s a great supporter of all the businesses in Kennebunkport, and the restaurants in particular, and a lovely chap.
I think now we have a wonderful town really built around him, and I think Laurie had that vision that Kennebunkport was a destination, a place where many, many Americans and international people want to come and vacation. And President Bush, in his tenure at the White House and other things has really put it on the worldwide map because the media cover him so much, and it’s a wonderful, wonderful place. I can’t say just about the restaurants and the fun things to do. It’s a wonderful area to bring up the family. I have young children, and it is a beautiful, beautiful place to have a family and have a life. It really is. He was a great guy, and sadly very missed.
Dr. Lisa: You’re obviously not from around here. People who are listening, I hope that they’ve gleaned that perhaps that you have a little bit of an accent. You’ve come from across the pond, shall we say. What made you decide that Maine was going to be your home, at least for the last, I guess you’ve said, 18 years?
Jonathan: 18 years, I’ve been here. Yes. Well, that’s a very good question. I’m a very lucky chef that came from England, that came from a town called Sheffield that is quite famous for its steel, in particular, its cutlery, silverware now. More recently, more famous for the movie “The Full Monty” where some male strippers decided to make some money after the mines and steel industry went a little south.
But, what made me come to Maine? I’ve been to America, and had the fortune to work for the Savoy Hotel in London. I’d been to America on a promotion. We did New York and Los Angeles, and I really enjoyed my time in America and honestly, just felt, “Wow. What a great place.” I thought, then, this was ’89, and I thought this was, “Wow. You know, the food is very good but it’s got a long way to go.” I think America is really now, the fastest moving food place on earth.
I haven’t been everywhere in the world, but I think our customers really appreciate good food. We have a good customer base all around the country. I’m not just talking about Kennebunkport. We have wonderful, wonderful restaurants that are advancing so quickly compared to France, Italy, Germany, England. England’s not so well-known for it’s food, but we have wonderful restaurants. It’s very historic industry, and restaurants are landmarks, and to make a mark in America, it’s much more understanding and young people open restaurants and they’re wonderful and they really understand their customers and we get great customer feedback, I think, in America. So, it’s a wonderful place to cook and to work in.
Going back to the real question, how about Kennebunkport and Kennebunk. I’d been to America. I really wanted to come back. Visas are very hard to get, and I had worked in Lenox, Massachusetts, at a place called Blantyre, another Relais & Chateaux member. I had to leave because my Visa ran out.
I went back to Switzerland just to do a winter season, and lucky enough, on virtually the last day of my Swiss contract, the phone rang and an Australian chap was on the other end. It was Laurie Bongiorno, and he said, “Hey, I heard you want to come back to America.” I said, “How’d you get my number? How’d you get a list?” It was so funny and you mentioned coming across the pond. I said the funniest thing to Laurie, and I’m sure knowing him now and getting to work with him and everything, he probably took three or four puffs on his cigarette and thought long and hard about the answer and probably thought, “do I really want this crazy guy?” Because I said, “How about meeting me half way?”
I don’t know. He was just like, puffed on a cigarette and went, I’m not sure I want this guy. Does he know … “What do you mean by half way, Chief?” He said. And I said, “Well, I’ll get to Boston, can you pick me up?”
I came on the 19th of April, 1995, had dinner at the White Barn Inn. He sent someone to pick me up, he welcomed me in his usual way, very hospitable and wonderful chap. I sat down on a table that I still consider my favorite table in the restaurant – I have many funny stories about that too – and I just looked at the window, looked at everything, felt what you explained when you first opened up the show today. How nice and warm the feeling of being taken care of and the quality of the food was amazing. I was like, I just looked to sort of out the window and whispered to myself, “Okay, Smarty-Pants. How are you going to improve this if you get the job?”
And, you know? Laurie and I hit it off and a kinder guy you could not meet. A fairer boss you could not have, and always wanting to push and really strive to go forward and to … If yesterday was good, we can be better tomorrow. If yesterday was bad, we gotta pick ourselves up and really buckle down and fix everything up, and make sure that, he wanted everybody to love their experience and enjoy it, and that’s still the motto right now. Try to take care of everybody, and it’s really enjoyable when it all goes right, and when it goes a little wrong, it’s very disappointing, but you know you have to stand up and face the facts and be really kind to those people and make them want to come back.
It’s a great business and he was a great guy, and I was very lucky to end up here. It’s beautiful being in Maine because of the wonderful farmers we have, the wonderful fish that we have here. Foragers, everything, the product that we have is wonderful. You only can cook good food with great product. You can’t make a good dish out of something that’s bad, and Maine has got that. The wonderful thing for being a northern European person, like me, is that we have the distinct four seasons here. It’s great to cook through that.
That was my background when I spent some time in Puerto Rico, a winter in Puerto Rico, when it’s very, very warm, 95 degrees every day. It’s very difficult to apply cooking techniques and ethic from northern Europe in that kind of weather condition. Maine is beautiful and it’s really a great place. It’s my home. I was very, very fortunate to meet Laurie and to have that opportunity to come to the White Barn Inn, because it was a fantastic restaurant before I ever set foot in it and that first meal was amazing.
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Dr. Lisa: I believe it seems as though food has become the new religion. It seems as though here, in America, we’ve somehow elevated the things we put in our mouths to this much higher level than perhaps ever before. I don’t know If you have that sense, and if you do have that sense, I wonder if you can answer why that might be. Why has food become so important to us?
Jonathan: Wow. Very, very difficult question, but good questions. I think Americans have always traveled. They’ve always gone to places to … Paris has been very popular for Americans and it’s very well-known for its cuisine. Italy is very popular for Americans and the cuisine there is fantastic. I think now Americans want it on their doorstep. They don’t want to have to go so far to get it. So there’s now a great market for that, and that, as in America, the country embraces it and feeds the market. Therefore, it is really down to a customer base, and the willingness of people to try new things and wanting to have that on their doorstep that does that.
So, yes, I think it is a great place – I mentioned that earlier that I think it’s growing very fast and that it’s down to our customer. Why have that? I think they’ve always searched it further a field, but now they really want to spend time at home, want to do it on their doorstep, and when you think about here, in our little part of southern Maine, how many wonderful, wonderful restaurants we have and how many customers we have at those restaurants is always amazing. We just want a little part of America.
You go around America, you find every little village because the customers really, really enjoy that. I think the media has helped us immensely and spread that around. Like President Bush putting Kennebunkport sort of on the worldwide map, I think food is being put on the American map by the shows on television whether you like them or not. But people really do. I mean, we do. People that really want to come and buy a couple of hours in the kitchen just to see what we do is amazing and it’s so popular right now, and they understand about food and have questions.
When we do a cooking class, you mentioned coming to one with a guest chef of ours, but I’m always amazed about the people putting up their hand and asking questions about where do I get this from? And it’s like, have you ever had this? Have you ever had that? I’m thinking, Wow. That’s not just supermarket general food that you buy. That is really interesting stuff, and I think they’ve seen it on television or they’ve read it on menus, they’ve had it at other restaurants that they’ve traveled to, and really want it here in America. That’s why it’s a wonderful business to be in, it’s wonderful to listen to the customer feedback.
There’s nothing greater than when a guest comes in the kitchen and the bartender invites them in the kitchen to have a tour around or something, and they say thank you, thank you. The young kids hear that and really makes their day satisfying and worthwhile, and there’s a goal at the end of it. Really don’t know truly why we have these great customers in America, but it is a great country. And food, I think, was suppressed a little bit for some years. They are now, seems to be the boom things, and I think eating, dining out, entertaining is really, really important.
I think you wanted to talk about Share Our Strengths. The schooling system, I think, needs to catch up to where we are in the dining and the hospitality world and put that as part of the curriculum for children. Lunch breaks are too short at school, and they’re not embraced. They’re not a part of the schooling system. It’s in, out, you need to eat to have energy to go off and do something else, to do your schooling, which I think was cuisine many moons ago in America.
But, think about how much business, how much work, how much life is done over the dining room table out of that. If you teach a six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen-year-old child what food is, what the values are of that, and also how to sit at a table, not fidget around, not run off, have that conversation. Who trains you for a cocktail party? We go to many cocktail parties. You’ve got one glass in one hand and someone’s trying to give you food, and you’re trying to have a conversation at the same time and not have food around your mouth and look … I mean, it’s so difficult, but if you train that at a young age or had those kind of sessions at school, they’d think much more healthier about snacking, about things to do. And really, I think we would solve a few of the problems we have of children being hungry or eating wrong, binging on wrong things.
You know you should eat everything, of course. I love food and I cook a lot of food that perhaps isn’t the healthiest if you eat a lot, lot, lot, lot of it over and over and over again, but you need to try things. You need to know the path and the cause of that, and what will happen, and I think if I put that in as a curriculum for young children, we’d have a … I mean, I wish we did it at my school. Maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to be a cyclist, I probably would have wanted to be a chef from a very young age rather than from, well, lost and not knowing what to do in life.
Dr. Lisa: Well, I’m glad you brought up Share Our Strength because I did want to make sure that people are aware that in addition to being a high end, maybe one of the highest end restaurants in Maine, and being a special occasion place for many, you also support the organization Share Our Strength, which is a hunger-relief organization for children, not only here in Maine, but across the United States. This has been a priority for you for many years. In fact, I know that Billy Shore was at your restaurant, having a meal in honor of Share Our Strength, the proceeds of which went to Share Our Strength. So, ending childhood hunger is very important to your organization as well.
Jonathan: It most certainly is. I mean, Mr. Logothetis is a wonderful man and we have committed, as a whole company with the Grace Hotels worldwide to donate a certain amount of our proceeds from certain dishes and certain cocktails and room stays to go to local charities and our Rhode Island property and our Maine properties. The money goes to Share Our Strength. And I think, you know, for me, I have young children and I could not imagine it. I’m fortunate and Kennebunkport, the White Barn Inn, Laurie Bongiorno has been very kind to me, and Mr. Logothetis is very kind to me as well, but there’s some things we have to say to the children, no we can’t have those. You’ve got to go without, but I could not imagine putting my two little girls to bed hungry and night.
I think that is so sad in a country where we have so much and we do so much for relief of anybody in the world that gets into difficulty, anybody in the country, but we don’t look out for our little children that are our future, that are everything. I mean I’m not sure that my children will be chefs, but they will be something in the country, and they will contribute to the growth of the country and the continuity of America, and hopefully they will do it always with a good meal in their tummies. I think that’s very, very important and I’ve always had the good fortune of being well-fed and had the opportunity to try a lot of things.
I really couldn’t imagine how to do life, to continue in life to be positive about life if you were hungry every day or for days on end. I think it is really, really important, and again, I go back to school and I think I do funny things at my daughter’s school because they ask me to do those things and I really, really enjoy that. I really think that we should focus on from a young age, really teaching children about dining and the importance of that, and the importance of a meal.
And the importance of that time. What you can discuss, what you can do. Feelings over that, and I think going back to the White Barn Inn, that’s the great thing about it. You can be on a little table in our restaurant with many, many people going around. You can people watch, or whatever. But also you can go with a partner, a friend, a relative, a parent or something, and really just have that time where … enjoy food, enjoy the atmosphere, but enjoy each other. And I think if we taught that to children at a young age so they respected what they eat or what they harvest and everything, then I think we would stop a lot of it.
Definitely supporting Share Our Strength. Billy Shore, an amazing chap and again another visionary, a great man and the people that work for him and carry out this and do all that and try to spread the word and everything. We’re still a long, long way to go and I think he’d be the first to admit that, but we’re trying a little bit, and we’re happy to support that and we’re proud to support that, and I think we are getting somewhere. Really.
Dr. Lisa: Jonathan, how do people learn more about the White Barn Inn?
Jonathan: Ah. Well, now we have the World Wide Web, so definitely we have a wonderful website with a lot of information on there at www.whitebarninn.com. We also have a US hotels website. We also have Grace Properties on there, and you can find them all on the Web, and we’re expanding around the world with that. We’ll probably we will most certainly bring the Grace Brand into Kennebunkport, Kennebunk soon. That’s high on the priorities of the Logothetis family and we can really learn about the White Barn Inn on there.
But the best way to learn about it is to come on down and talk to one of our staff, really, and enjoy a meal and find out some of the history and some of the things that go off. You want to really learn a lot more about it, come and do a cooking class with us. A day in the kitchen is also a lot of fun for those people that are passionate about food and about hospitality in particular.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Jonathan Cartwright, the Executive Chef at the White Barn Inn and also with his new restaurant, Amuse, by Jonathan Cartwright and the Vanderbilt Grace Hotel in Newport. I do encourage people to spend some time in your restaurant. I’ll have to go down to Newport. I haven’t been there yet, but the White Barn Inn is truly … It’s beyond just having a meal. It’s an experience, so I hope that people have a chance to go down there and eat the food that you prepare for them and have a chance to really experience the hospitality that you put out there.
Thank you for bringing this delicious cuisine and experience, wonderful experience to the state of Maine.
Jonathan: You’re very kind. Thank you very much, and thank you for today. It’s really nice to chat with you and to be here. Please, I hope everyone comes to the White Barn Inn and has an enjoyable time. Love to meet everybody.
Dr. Lisa: As a physician and small business owner, I rely on Marci Booth from Booth Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marci.
Marci: Loosely-defined hospitality is the relationship between the host and the guest. It’s the host’s job to make certain that everything is well taken care of, but when needs aren’t met and details are missed, the experience becomes the exact opposite. It becomes an uncomfortable, bad memory. As I think of it, there are times when my team plays the part of host. We make sure financial details for businesses and individuals are taken care of, and that things run smoothly because when it comes to finances, happy memories are the best kind.
I’m Marci Booth, let’s talk about the changes you need. BoothMaine.com
Speaker 1: This segment of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is brought to you by the following generous sponsors: Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of ReMax Heritage in Yarmouth, Maine. Honesty and integrity can take you home. With ReMax Heritage, it’s your move. Learn more at rheritage.com.
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Dr. Lisa: Maine is fortunate to have many wonderful places to stay and to eat. Up and down its coast and into the interior and up to the very tip of Maine, but there are really only a few places that I think of when I think of luxury and true luxurious pampered hospitality. One of these places is the Camden Harbor Inn, which is a joint venture of Raymond Brunyanszky and Oscar Verest. Both, originally, who are Dutch.
Raymond has been a friend of mine for a while, as is Oscar, and I’ve had the good fortune to stay in their inn and also eat their restaurant, Natalie’s. I’m so pleased that you came to talk to us today, and I’m also so pleased that you brought the Camden Harbor Inn to Midcoast Maine. It’s a wonderful, wonderful jewel.
Raymond: Well, thank you, Lisa. I’m really happy to be here, and excited to talk a little bit about what we’re doing and the product that we have and the luxury that we try to give to our guests. It’s been an interesting seven years.
Dr. Lisa: Well, tell me about that. Obviously, you and Oscar are Dutch, and you’ve had many other things that you’ve done before now. I believe that you worked in the tour industry for a while, and Oscar was a pharmacist for a while. You’ve done different things, you’ve been to different places. Why did you choose Maine?
Raymond: I think we were at sort of a crossroads in our lives. I had been consulting hotels in the Far East and the Middle East. Oscar, as you said, had a pharmacy that he owned and run for 10 years. He was ready to sell his pharmacy and I was ready to do something else. We were vacationing in Maine in 2003. It was a leaf-peeping trip and we did a three-week tour from Boston to New Hampshire to Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, and the truth is that I fell in love immediately with New England in general, and when I was in Vermont, I had this vision that I should start writing and buy a house in Vermont, and Oscar was like, “There is no way that we’re going to do that because it’s not practical. You have to fly for seven hours to Boston, and if you so desperately want to write, then buy a house in France, which is only five hours driving, and you can do that in the weekends.”
But we both liked the area, and almost by coincidence, we were able to … Well, we were also too early that year. I mean, we were mid-September, and there was no foliage yet, so we didn’t see anything really. We just saw the beautiful New England. A year later, we were actually off about the same time at the beginning of October, and we said, “Well, let’s try it again and now actually see the foliage.”
At that point, Oscar was more thinking about really selling his business and I remember we were standing on a beach in Ogunquit and for the manyith time, I said to him, “Why don’t we move here?”
He said, “Well, I can see myself living here on the ocean. I don’t see myself living here for long, but I can see myself living here on the ocean.”
That was the beginning. That was when we decided, okay. Now I’m going full force and it took us another four years, three years, before we were able to find the right property. I think we looked over a hundred properties, and we went to Vermont and New Hampshire, and all the other states. Finally we run into the Camden Harbour Inn, and I, at least, instantly knew that it was the perfect place for us. I had an immediate vision with this property and how it should be.
Camden felt right. It is a year-round community. As most coastal towns are closing down for the winter, Camden is vibrant in the winter as well, with lots of restaurants and with Rockland nearby with the Farnsworth Museum and people living there year-round. It felt comfortable. So we bought Camden Harbour Inn.
Dr. Lisa: What was it about the Camden Harbour Inn specifically out of all the places that you looked at in these various New England states?
Raymond: I think it was a growing process. We started with a six-room bed and breakfast in Ogunquit we looked at, and the idea was that we would just run it for the summer and close it down in the winter, and maybe go to Thailand and enjoy the beaches in Thailand in the winter and then come back in the summer or in the spring to run the business. The more and more we looked at the business, and we were not looking for a lifestyle. We were looking for a business, and more and more we started looking at the properties and the asking prices and the money that you were able to make with those smaller properties.
We realized that it was a lifestyle and you were banking on the property becoming more worth over years, the real estate, but the business itself was hardly sustainable. And you had to nickel and dime everything. You almost had to calculate how many muffins you were going to give for breakfast, and that’s not who I am. It didn’t feel right.
So, slowly in the years that we were looking for the right property. The business got bigger and bigger and at some point we realized that we needed more privacy. We were staying at a lot of hotels or small inns and bed and breakfasts, but there was no privacy where the owners would constantly be on top of you. Where you had breakfast every morning with all the people at the same table, and I don’t do well in the morning with other people at the same table. I don’t want to talk to other people. I just want to have my privacy when I’m vacationing.
So, more and more we understood that while we wanted to run, you should be able to offer privacy. It should be able to feel like a luxurious, Ritz Carlton, but at the same time have that feeling of a small bed and breakfast as well. The small warmth and coziness of a smaller property.
Slowly, bit by bit, our property got bigger and bigger, and our vacations to Thailand in the winter got completely eliminated in the process. We also realized that we wanted to have a restaurant, if we wanted to be open year-round, and so I think when we walked into Camden Harbour Inn, Oscar was still very hesitant about Camden Harbour Inn, but when I walked into that building, there was space for restaurant. In the past 10-15 years ago, they were running a restaurant there, and everything was so dated in that building. It was such an old Victorian building with tons of curtains in front of the window, and flowery wallpapers and everything was a big mismatch, and it just … I understand why people would walk in there and say, “Oh, my God. I’m not even starting with this property.”
But it had one thing. It was on, as you said before, it’s on the hilltop overlooking the entire harbor and Mount Battie and all the highlights of Camden, and the views are just sensational. When I walked into that building, I was like, “We just need to open it up. We need to just open it up to the outside again and we will be fine.” Everything else is just renovating and updating and I can do that, but I cannot find a better location than this, so I convinced Oscar that this was the right property, and we bought it.
Dr. Lisa: The goal of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is to help make connections between the health of the individual and the health of the community. The goal of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes is to deepen our appreciation for the natural world. Here to speak with us today is Ted Carter.
Ted: I have a beautiful biodynamic garden, and it was quite abundant this year. My biodynamic landscaper, Bennett Steel, told me about Max Gerson. He died, I think, in the late 50s but he spoke about a plant-based diet, and how the enzymes in raw fruits and vegetables really work to heal us and Max Gerson really worked on cancer therapies with using new diet, I guess you might say, with vegetables and fruits. It actually was quite successful.
Interestingly, nature does nothing but really reach out to us and heal us. When we consume these plants, they really work in concert with us, bringing us balance, and bringing us a sense of peace. When I go down the garden, I pick all my fresh vegetables, and I squeeze them through a juicer that I have. They’re incredible, and you can just tell your body is resounding in great happiness. I think it’s important that we understand just how much plant-life is here to really work with us and give us balance and stasis in our lives.
I’m Ted Carter, and if you’d like to contact me, I can be reached at tedcarterdesign.com.
Speaker 1: We’ll return to our program after acknowledging the following generous sponsors: Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine. At Orthopedic specialists, ultrasound technology is taken to the highest degree. With state-of-the-art ultrasound equipment, small areas of tendinitis, muscle and ligament tears, instability and arthritic conditions can be easily found during examination. For more information, visit orthocareme.com or call 207-781-9077.
Dr. Lisa: We at the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour know that our listeners understand the importance of the health of the mind, body, and spirit. Here to talk about the health of the body are Travis Boyer and Jim Greatorex of Premier Sports Health, a division of Black Bear Medical.
Travis: Jim, you pull those socks up any higher, and I’m pretty sure I’m not hanging out with you anymore.
Jim: Travis, they’re compression socks. You know, like the medical ones, only they’re for for athletes. Oh, so now you’re calling yourself an athlete. This keeps getting better.
Travis: Well, they actually work. They increase blood flow in your legs by at least 40% and you know what that does. Let me guess. It allows you to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Jim: No, they allow more oxygen and nutrient-rich blood to my muscles, which reduces muscle fatigue, and allows me to train harder. Plus, I’m not as sore after those long runs, and they also flush out lactic acid and keep my feet cool and dry. And, of course, they’re stylish!
Travis: Jim, I’m actually wearing some right now. I wear them every day, even when I’m not training. I noticed a huge difference in how my legs feel. But Jim?
Jim: Yes, Travis?
Travis: I actually am wearing pants over mine since we are in the office.
Jim: Hey, pays to advertise.
Travis: I suppose it would. Maybe you ought to promise the listeners that if they stop down to our store on 275 Marginal Way in Portland, they can see firsthand what an athlete in his compression apparel looks like. Or they can visit BlackBearMedical.com and read up a little more.
Jim: Hey, that’s a great idea. Come by 275 Marginal Way location today or visit us at BlackBearMedical.com and see our entire line of compression apparel and other sports medicine equipment. Life can be a bear. Attack it with Black Bear Medical.
Dr. Lisa: One of the reasons that I’m able to spend time in various places is through 48 hours, which is associated with Maine Magazine. There was a 48 Hours Issue that recently came out. Kevin Thomas, the publisher, and I spent time in Camden on our 48 hours, and it was not the nicest of weekends. The weather wasn’t so great, but we did stay in the Camden Harbour Inn, and we stayed in this amazing room that had a sauna, and a shower, the likes of which I had rarely seen. An enormous bathtub and a fireplace, and it was … to think we have this in Maine. It was surprising, and it almost made it so well, do we even need to leave to go anywhere else? And other people have said the same thing. They said we read the 48 Hours issue, and we kind of did your 48 Hours Camden, and we spent time at the Camden Harbour Inn, and they found the same thing, that just staying at the inn was enough of a draw that they might not have even had to leave.
Raymond: Right. Well, I’m glad to hear that and I hope we achieved that always with our guests. We’ve worked very hard, first of all, to create a place where people feel comfortable, where they feel like they can be theirselves. I don’t like stuffy, snobby hotels. Even when we are on the higher-price level, for room grades and also dining, I don’t think it should mean that you have to sit up, or that you have to behave to a certain degree. I still think that you should be able to walk in your shorts in our hotel. I still feel that you should not be forced to wear a jacket when you go to a dining room for the men.
I think we should create something, and I think we succeeded in that where people are just beautiful. If you dine in our restaurant, regardless of what you’re wearing, you will look beautiful and the lights that we chose, and the colors that we chose. You will be as beautiful as you can be, even when you wear shorts, and it’s fine. Come in as you wish because it’s about you. It’s not about me and my rules and regulations, how to walk around my building or inside my building. In the process, we tried to give people all the amenities and things that we think that will help them to make their experience nicer. The suites have saunas, steam showers, iPads, sound systems, I think the grand suite has trees, flat screen televisions. I mean, even one in the bathroom.
At the end of the day, the amenities are not the important part of our product. At the end of the day, there could be another hotel opening up next to us with newer rooms, with newer amenities, and you can’t simply constantly keep up with especially in big cities. Hotels are opening every week there. There is no way that you can keep up with all those amenities, improving them and keeping up with what the competition is doing.
What makes a really great experience is our staff and how they treat our people. We have over forty people working for us, taking care of our guests. That, for me, the way they work and their hearts work and their commitment and their desire to make sure that all our guess individually have an amazing time. That makes it, in my opinion, that guests don’t want to leave, that they want to stay because they feel so pampered and taken care of, and nothing is scripted, nothing is forced. It’s all intuitive, almost. If somebody’s sitting in the lounge, there’s always one of our staff members going there and, “Would you like to have a cup of tea?” We don’t even charge them for that. It’s just being part of our family. It’s like the great mom taking care of her 40 children while we’re fully-booked, and making sure everybody’s happy.
Dr. Lisa: When I’ve eaten at Natalie’s, I’ve noticed a lot of people there enjoying their meal as kind of a special occasion. When I think about special occasion places, birthdays, anniversaries. We were once there for a child’s, I think it was his, 20th birthday. Is that one of the things that you had hoped to do, is to create a place that people could really make memories in?
Raymond: Yeah. I think everything we did at Camden Harbour Inn was to make memories and to bring experiences home, and to not necessarily see something you would see somewhere else. I think traveling is about making memories, about experiences that are new and different and coming home with new refreshed ideas, get inspired, and maybe implement a couple of the things that you saw during your travels in your own life.
Natalie’s has been an interesting experience. It’s very difficult to run a restaurant, especially when you are in a remote area like Camden, Maine. More so when you decide to have a fine dining restaurant. Our price point is high. It’s high for the local community, but also the commitment, the time commitment that you need to make when you dine at a restaurant. It’s not a restaurant where you walk in, have a quick bite and walk out again.
In the beginning, when I started operating a restaurant, it’s in my genes, it’s in my personality to please everyone. I’m like, everybody should be happy and I think in the beginning, it’s sort of the focus was not there, and it was unclear for people what we were because in the winter, we tried to get the entire community in, and in summer we were fine dining restaurants, and it took me a couple of years to figure out that we are a fine dining restaurant, and it’s okay that people, the locals are not coming in three times per week, but they come in maybe once every two weeks to celebrate something or have a special dinner, and that they have to pay a little bit more to get a sensational experience.
When we finally understood that, we were able to really focus the restaurant in the right way, and now when you look at reviews and what people say about our restaurant, they say, “It’s expensive, but it’s probably the best experience I’ve ever had in my life.”
Dr. Lisa: In some respects, I think that you even have to get to the place where you value your own self enough to stay in a place like the Camden Harbour Inn or to eat at Natalie’s and you have to say, “You know what? This is going to contribute positively to my well-being. It’s going to give me something that I enjoy doing, a chance to stay with somebody, or eat with somebody. So even the guests have to decide, “This is worth it to me.”
Raymond: Right. I think the danger in this industry is that the industry is changing really fast right now. If you go to New York, Miami, you have all those club hotels where people, you know, where you’d still get charged $500-$600 dollars to start with at a King-sized room, but the staff is too cool to really service you. They think they’re more important than you are unless you are Madonna checking in, but otherwise they don’t care about you, so I understand that more and more Americans, people all over the world get a little hesitant paying so much money for a room because how do you know that you actually get worth what you’re paying for? I think that is a challenge for a lot of hotels, even for a Ritz Carlton nowadays and Four Seasons to find a way to make sure that the people understand what they’re doing is worth paying for and that you actually should go there.
You should do both. You should stay at an inexpensive hotel when you’re on a trip, and then pamper yourself at a luxury hotel, but then pick one that is really going to pamper you; don’t pick one where you get charged $600 because it’s high season on the coast and you get a lousy experience. With trip advisor and all kinds of review pages and magazines printing about hotels, I think if you do your research, you can figure it out.
Dr. Lisa: Raymond, I’m sure after listening to us have this conversation about hospitality and what the Camden Harbour Inn, and Natalie’s have to offer, that people will want to go and visit you and Oscar up in Camden. How do people learn about the Camden Harbour Inn?
Raymond: Well, we have, obviously, our wonderful website, CamdenHarbourInn.com and NataliesRestaurant.com. Our website is actually amazing. You have so much information on our website, not about all the rooms and hotels and experiences that we have, but about Camden. We had over 14,000 visits per month on our website, Camden Harbour Inn website. People use the website also to just get information about Camden, which is great, and I think they have something in the industry that’s called hotel porn. I’m not sure if I can say it, but there are a lot of people out there that just go to hotel websites, especially the high end ones to just look at pictures and imagine themselves living there or staying there and start saving for years to come.
To be honest, we have a lot of VIPs and famous people staying with us, but for me personally, the couple that is in their early 30’s and saved three years to stay with us and sent us six emails to make sure that their experience is going to be just amazing. That makes me so happy and I’m just going, really, we all are at our entire team’s is going the extra mile for those people, especially for those people because I know how hard they’re working to stay with us and I really appreciate that they spend so much money at our place.
Dr. Lisa: I’ve been speaking with Raymond Brunyanszky, who along with his partner Oscar Verest, owns the Camden Harbour Inn, right here in Camden Maine. Thank you for bringing your positive view of the world to the coast of Maine and also to our studio. Thanks for coming in today.
Raymond: Thank you, Lisa. It was a pleasure.
Dr. Lisa: You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast show number 109, Hospitality. Our guests have included Jonathan Cartwright and Raymond Brunyanszky. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit doctorlisa.org.
We invite you to join us for a very special upcoming event. Senator Angus King will speak about Maine and the global environment at the Physicians for Social Responsibility Maine Chapter Annual Dinner on Tuesday, October 15. The dinner is a unique opportunity to participate in an interactive discussion with Senator King and learn about PSR Maine. The dinner is being held on October 15th at the Italian Heritage Center in Portland. For more information, go to PSRMaine.org, or the PSRMaine Facebook page, or email [email protected].
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This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Hospitality show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine, Marci Booth, of Booth Maine; Apothecary by Design; Premier Sports Health, a division of Black Bear Medical; Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists; Sea Bags; Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of ReMax Heritage; Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes; and Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Our executive producers are Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. Our assistant producer is Leanne Ouimet. Our online producer is Katy Kelleher.
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