Brooklin Inn, Brooklin ME

Brooklin Inn, Brooklin ME
Brooklin inn was written up in many places, so we were excited about giving it a try even though it was late and we had to drive 30 minutes. The Inn is in Brooklin which is about 30 minutes from Blue Hill. It’s a very small town and the inn is in a farmhouse. Out back are some run down out buildings and when we walked into the front of the restaurant it smelled of damp and old house. But the restaurant looked cozy, with tables in several rooms and windows looking out over the yard.
We had a table in a back room and talked briefly with the host about the wines. Apparently, they do wine tastings occasionally and had recently done a Zin. We picked the Dry Creek Zin for dinner because I’d had it before and he said he’d met the owner of the vineyard and he was quite excited that he had eaten there. It seemed like a good beginning, but it was downhill from there.
We started with some peekytoe crab (like at Arborville) and it was supposed to be dressed with a lmeon vinaigrette but all we could taste was the lettuce and the crab, which was okay because the crab was very tasty and sweet but it would have been nice to taste some lemon. Marci and I were joking that there was a wisp of lemon we might have smelled. Perhaps, we wondered, it was the emphasis on farm to table and the food was supposed to stay as unadorned as possible.
I ordered a caprese salad after asking if the tomatoes were local. They were. The caprese was fine but clearly lacked salt (pepper or any other flavor other than tomato, mozzarella and a few slices of basil—I couldn’t even taste the olive oil). For mains, we had a Risotto that was nicely cooked al dente and very creamy, but again, it lacked salt or pepper. By this point, Marci and I were taking the lid off the salt shaker and practically pouring the salt on the food. It was sooooo bland.
Marci’s meal, a chicken cooked under brick, had very little flavor and was overcooked. Marci poured on the salt, but it couldn’t’ be salvaged. We barely ate it. We were so hungry, we decided we’d have dessert. We selected a vanilla custard and a chocolate molten cake. The vanilla custard said it had caramel and fleur de sel. We were quite excited by the thought of salt, but couldn’t detect any. The chocolate molten cake was burned almost to a crisp and shouldn’t have even been in the same room as “molten”. Marci had a very small bite and we left it untouched. No one even asked us whether the food was okay; they just whisked the food away, smiling at us and brought the bill.
Overall, it was a very unsatisfactory experience, one that we had high hopes for. But, the dry creek Zin was as good as we expected.