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How Erin French Started “The Lost Kitchen”

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Erin French is a well-recognized American chef famous for her difficult-to-book eatery “The Lost Kitchen,” which she established in 2014. In addition to that, she is an author and inspirational personality.

She has authored three books, namely Finding Freedom in the Lost Kitchen, The Lost Kitchen: Recipes and a Good Life Found in Freedom, Maine: A Cookbook, and her newest one, Untitled French Cookbook Fall. She is also a TV host for her show “The Lost Kitchen,” in which she starred since 2021.

Apart from that, she has also made appearances in many other shows like CBS This Morning: Saturday, Guy’s Grocery Games, Weekends with Yankee, and Be My Guest with Ina Garden.

Erin French

Erin French is a 1981-born author, media persona, and self-taught cooking master. While the famed chef hasn’t revealed her exact date of birth, several sites believe she was born in 1981, making her 42 years old.

Along with her sister, she was brought up in the tiny Maine community of Freedom. The town is home to a total of just 719 individuals, as per the 2010 US census. Her sister, Alicia Richardson, is a sales representative and an inspirational nutritionist.

As her dad owned a café in the neighborhood, she gained a passion for cooking there. In her dad’s restaurant, she learned to cook herself.

Image of Erin French

She had worked a number of tasks at her café, including serving tables, cooking pancakes, and cleaning. She is the child of Jeffrey Richardson and Deanna Richardson. While her mom was accommodating and caring, she claimed that her dad was a volatile regular drinker.

French transferred to Boston so she could further her medical studies at Northeastern University. She ultimately dropped out of university when she unexpectedly became pregnant by her high school partner. She thereafter came back to Maine.

Erin was previously married to Todd French, her first husband, who was around twenty years older than her. He was a grizzled old boat builder who conned the impressionable young Erin into getting married when she was a single mother.

Upon delaying Erin’s work for a while, this person eventually got envious of her accomplishment, broke her morale, wrecked her business, and abducted her kid. While Todd as a whole high-fived and grinned at Erin’s suffering.

Nevertheless, the famous chef is happily married today to her current husband, Michael Dutton, since August 2018, who, according to her, is a caring and understanding husband.

French’s “The Lost Kitchen” Journey

Erin enjoyed hosting private meals at her apartment in Maine. She sold her own baked products and served for a neighborhood restaurant for years; later, at the age of 30, she founded an unofficial eatery outside of her flat in Belfast and dubbed it “The Lost Kitchen.”

In 2014, she established the forty-seat eatery in an unused mill in Freedom, Central Maine, featuring an entirely female crew. She practiced a lot and read recipes voraciously. Her monthly meals quickly sold out as a result of her rigid autodidacticism.

Upon purchasing their former bank-turned-building with her ex-spouse, French built a restaurant underneath after refurbishment and reconstruction for five months. She first had struggle a lot at first to create her restaurant a huge, stunning accomplishment.

The restaurant discreetly launched in 2014, but as word got out, guests started traveling great distances to eat there. The famous American chef who has no professional training employs just a handful of items in inventive and vividly pleasing mixes to produce simple, amazingly tasty meals.

She is steeped in legacy and doesn’t depend on fanciful sauces or cutting-edge cooking methods. Her mother and grandmother have given her a few of their recipes, which she has improved and made her own.

Her eatery only provides seasonal cuisine that she obtains directly from her farmer acquaintances, and practically all of the staff members are female. French was even recognized with a “James Beard Award” in 2016.

She has EVEN welcomed stars like Martha Stewart. She obtains over 20,000 cards annually, ranking it among the most challenging places to reserve in the nation. She started her postal lotto program in 2022 to help those harmed by “PFAS Contamination,” such as Maine Farmland Trust and Maine Organic Farmers.

The Lost Kitchen” was named among the global top destinations by Time Magazine and one of the “12 Restaurants Worth Traveling Around the World to Experience” by Bloomberg. She was additionally highlighted in magazines like The New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Martha Stewart Living, Food & Wine, etc. Her New York Times story was one of the 10 leading food stories of the year in terms of readership.

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