WILLOW CREEK — The smell of wood smoke and simmering stock drifted across Main Street last week as Dean Moreau opened the doors of the Dry Dock, a farm-to-table restaurant occupying the renovated Thorne & Sons boat shed at Thorne’s Bend.
Moreau, 38, left Willow Creek at 18 for culinary school in Portland and spent 15 years working kitchens in Portland and Boston, most recently as a sous-chef at a James Beard-nominated restaurant in the North End. His return represents the most significant private investment in downtown Willow Creek since the mill reopened in 1990.
“I spent half my career cooking food flown in from places I’d never been,” Moreau said. “Meanwhile, there’s Henry Farr milking cows three miles down the road, Niall O’Flaherty’s father tapping maples up on Sugarhouse Road, and nobody in Willow Creek was eating any of it in a restaurant.”
The Dry Dock seats 48 in the main dining room and 12 in the Lydia Barnes Room, a private dining space named after the last sloop launched from the boat shed in 1882. Moreau kept the original hewn beams exposed and hung period photographs of the shipyard.
The menu changes weekly and sources beef and pork from Farr Family Farm, produce from three gardens within a 20-mile radius, and maple syrup from O’Flaherty’s Maple. Moreau forages mushrooms in season himself.
Opening weekend drew diners from Bangor, Houlton and as far south as Ellsworth. Maeve O’Donnell of the General Store said the lunch crowd has already changed the rhythm of Main Street.
“I’ve sold more coffee in the last two weeks than I did all of May,” O’Donnell said.