Michael A. Gagne finds religion in fine dining, is blessed with success

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan 1, 2001 by Robin Lee Allen

Nearly 15 years ago, Michael A. Gagne traded a decade of Caribbean, California and Virginia adventures for the comforts of his home state of Maine. Well, sort of After working for several years on the Maine coast, the chef decided to move further into the woods and onto his own venture at the historic Robinhood Free Meetinghouse, a former church. The 145-year-old building had no septic tank, no running water, few other modern amenities and no commercial kitchen. Luckily, Gagne is as comfortable in a tool belt as he is in an apron. After restoring and renovating the building, Gagne, during the past six years, also transformed it into a regionally renowned fine-dining restaurant and catering business. It is sought out for weddings, business meetings and -- the thing Gagne enjoys most --fun.

Title: chef-owner, Robinhood Free Meetinghouse, Georgetown, Maine

Birth date: Sept. 29, 1953

Hometown: Biddeford, Maine

Education: bachelor's degree in psychology and philosophy from University of Maine at Orono; no formal culinary education, 33 years in the business.

Career highlights: Red Fox Tavern, Middleburg Va., from 1978 to 1986; Osprey restaurant, Georgetown, Maine, from 1986 to 1994; Robinhood Free Meetinghouse from 1995 to present.

Why did you decide to return to Maine?

I was doing the Red Fox Tavern in Middleburg, Va., for over seven years and my boss opened another place. I had burned out at the Red Fox, and that's the long and short of it. My ex-wife -- we had two kids and still do -- wanted to move. I always wanted to end up at home and raise my kids here. When we moved here, my kids were four and two. Now they're 19 and 17, so I really did raise [them] here. My wife and I divorced in 1998.

Why did you decide to open a restaurant that was so isolated?

It was a combination of ego and stupidity. The ego was thinking people would come here for my food. The stupidity was that the restaurant should have been closer to Portland or another metropolitan area. We have no drive-by traffic. Eighty percent of our customers are within a 60-mile radius. We truly are a destination restaurant. Luckily, we have a very loyal clientele.

We restored the Meetinghouse and replaced the 10-foot windows. We kept the chapel intact, but gutted and repainted the dining room. It was still active until 1989, not as church, but as a storage-and-rummage place for the Methodists in Bath, Maine. The building only had five or six years left before it was going to dilapidate. We put in smoke detectors, sprinklers, a ballsy kitchen and a loading dock.

Given your background at the historic Red Fox Tavern, do you seek out antiquity in establishments?

It takes a whole bottle of bourbon to tell you how I ended up at the Red Fox Tavern. It was a woman. I was working at the Castine Inn in Castine, Maine, and I had a girlfriend who broke my heart. We were in the middle of the season and she went to Middleburg to raise horses. I kept going to Middleburg to win her back and met the owner of the Red Fox. She was living with his girlfriend.

The Red Fox Tavern was a peanut-soup-and-country-ham kind of place. They had Southern fried chicken and everything was served with a fruit sauce. We made it upscale. We brought everything in-house and did renovations on the kitchen. Since then, I've made my own ice creams, sorbets and sausages. We're famous [at the Meetinghouse] for our cream-cheese biscuits, which we're gearing up to sell mail order. We have 9,000 people on a mailing list receiving our schedule of events. From May through October, we're open seven days a week for dinner only. The rest of the year we're only open three days a week, but I do special events and cooking classes.

How did you get into cooking?

I wanted to be a lawyer, but I put myself through college by cooking. Since I was broke and starving, cooking was the way to go. Since then I've infinitely regretted it. I spent five years at Old Orchard Beach in Biddeford, Maine, and managed a staff at 17. In college, I was on the six-year plan. I dropped out when I ran out of money and would go back to school once I'd saved. I met the [aforementioned] woman in college. When she broke my heart, I swore I would leave Maine and pursue adventure. I went to Florida and worked on a yacht for a year and then to La Costa [Country Club in Carlsbad, Calif.] for a year and then to the Red Fox.

When I left for Florida, my choices were graduate school or cooking, but I was out of money. I was 24 years old. Can you imagine what kind of chick magnet a $3-million yacht was?

How did working on a yacht and at a spa prepare you for the Meetinghouse?

It was a 107-foot motor yacht out of Louisiana. It slept eight and crewed seven. It was very high service -- three meals a day for 15 people. That's when we were on charter or chartered to the owners. We traveled the intercoastal waterway out of Fort Lauderdale. [It] was owned by LaCosta Country Club. La Costa had 600 rooms, 29 tennis courts and held the women's LPGA tour. We did catering events for up to 1000 people. The spa was only one of five restaurants they had there. I was a butcher for four or five months. That's really where I learned production technique. Before La Costa, I learned pretty much how not to cook.