Nebo Lodge

Summer is in full swing! Check out some July 4th photos & Nebo specials…

The island is hot and hazy today and Penobscot Bay is flat calm after a great weekend of North Haven July 4th celebrations.  Visitors and islanders alike will likely venture into the cold Maine waters this afternoon to cool off.  The island flowers and gardens are in full bloom and the nasturtiums on Nebo’s second floor deck are beginning to swirl down in a cascade of green and yellow and orange. North Haven is beautiful in early July –the perfect time and place to be on vacation.

The first Equinox supper run from Rockland to North Haven last Thursday night was a huge success!  The trips will continue every Thursday night through July and August, leaving Rockland at 5pm and returning by 10pm.  The cost is just $20 per person for the round-trip ride across the bay. Make sure not to miss this special trip. Call 207-867-2007 for details as well as boat and dinner reservations.

Also, don’t miss our summer three-night special at the Nebo Lodge bed and breakfast. Come and stay for three consecutive nights and enjoy one free Nebo Lodge dinner for two on us, including an appetizer, main course and dessert (tip and alcohol excluded). Enjoy this special and take three days off to relax, bike the quiet island roads (we offer bike rentals), enjoy the beaches or seaside golf course, and take a sail around Penobscot Bay with a local island captain.  A wonderful daily homemade breakfast is included with your room.  Be sure to mention the “three-night special” when you book your room. Call 207-867-2007.

We look forward to seeing you this summer!

Some photos from the July 4th weekend…

First Days of Summer Update & Specials!

We did it!  After a winter of renovations we opened to overflowing dinner crowds on Memorial Day weekend and we haven’t look back since.  Due to the very hard work of A & P Construction, Pete Cabot and his crew, Pam Mountain’s landscaping, and David Wilson’s painting, we have a beautiful new year-round bar and dining room, a beautiful garden patio and deck, two new guest rooms with private baths, and an amazing island mural in our 1912 dining room. And our newly expanded kitchen is allowing us to serve more diners with more amazing, local options. We are so grateful to our great crew for helping us take the inn and restaurant to a whole new level – and we look forward to serving and hosting you this summer and fall!

And now that we are open – it is time to enjoy summer with a night out at Nebo or a few days of restful vacation on the island of North Haven.   So a few new special things to help you enjoy Nebo!

1)   Our new bar dining area has allowed us to add a no-reservation section of the restaurant.  So walk-in and enjoy our new “lighter fare” menu or the full menu in this new cozy space.  This weekend’s sausage pizza and fish tacos were instant crowd pleasers.  The bar is stocked, as always, with creative cocktails.  This weekend featured fabulous rhubarb and basil drinks at the bar, as well a great beer and wine list.

2)   Summer Special — come stay for three nights and get a free dinner for two on us! Dinner includes appetizer, entre and dessert (alcohol and tip excluded).  Just mention the 3-night summer special when you book!  Remember our bed and breakfast offers a great free breakfast every morning with your room!  Book now at 207-867-2007.

3)   Every Thursday in July and August we will do a round-trip Equinox run from Rockland to North Haven to help our mainland friends enjoy dinner on the island and still sleep in their own beds!  The boat will leave from Journey’s End Marina in Rockland at 5pm and it will arrive on North Haven by 5:45 with time to take the 3-minute walk up to Nebo, enjoy a drink on the deck, dinner, and then the boat will leave back for Rockland by 8:45pm. It is just $20/person for the round trip-cruise across the bay.  Call for dinner reservations and make sure to let us know you plan to come on the Equinox! 207-867-2007

4) Rides from Vinalhaven – if you are staying on Vinalhaven we’d be happy to pick you up at the Vinalhaven-side of the Thorofare at the town dock.  Just mention you need a ride from Vinalhaven!

So why should you come visit North Haven Island for dinner or an overnight bed and breakfast stay THIS SUMMER?

The island is blooming and green and absolutely beautiful. The beaches are quiet and warm. And the farms and gardens around the island are already producing wonderful greens and herbs faster than we can eat them – which bodes well for a good summer of eating on North Haven.

The Turner Farm, where Nebo gets much of our produce, is producing bumper crops of kale for our special Nebo crispy kale and lots of wonderful lettuce, chard, and radishes.  We are already looking forward to the baby bok choy next weekend and the peas and tomatoes that will come early this summer.  We are especially excited for the new Turner Farm chevre – soon to be gracing the Nebo menu – with the help of local cheese makers Jamien Shields and Jeff Dec (and their goats).  Three times a week the Turner Farm is offering farm-visiting hours.  While you are on island you can go see for yourself where so much of our wonderful food comes from!

Amanda and Amelia spent the winter perfecting some new treats for supper and dessert and the expanded menu has already showcased some their favorites.  Amanda’s new pizza topped with roasted leaks, fresh micro-greens, or local sausage has been an instant hit. I haven’t figured out whether it is the crust or the sauce or the cheese but something makes this pizza special. And Amelia has perfected the art of homemade ice cream and has added numerous new flavors and semifreddo’s to the menu. Last week’s favorite was the rhubarb ice cream. Come out and judge for yourself!

We believe our bed and breakfast experience will make your island stay, or your trip to coastal Maine, memorable. With tastefully outfitted rooms with a blend of original inn antiques and Angela Adams rugs, we have both a historical inn with modern touches that don’t fit the traditional bed and breakfast mold. And our homemade breakfast is always amazing with North Haven fresh eggs and bacon, seasonal fruits, and piping hot scones and muffins.

While the island of North Haven offers the kind of peace and solace you look for in a vacation, there is still plenty to do. The island roads are beautiful — ready for bikers and walkers (we have bikes for rent, too!).  The public beaches are great for exploring or launching your kayak and the island golf course is in full swing.   We are also excited to recommend Penobscot Passages – a new North Haven based sailboat service that can take guests for day or evening cruise aboard a beautiful boat with local captain Joel Rowland.

So, what are you waiting for…book your vacation or dinner today!

Crispy Kale!

When we first discovered kale cooked this way, on an outdoor patio, accompanied by a juicy flank steak and an amazing glass of red wine, we couldn’t get enough of it. Three of us devoured a sheet pan of the crispy, salty, melt-in-your mouth roasted leaves in what seemed like seconds, and in that moment we knew it had to be a regular on the Nebo menu.

That first batch was made with the traditional curly kale you usually find in grocery stores (or garnishing hotel buffets in the 1980s). Winterbor, Ripbor, Starbor are different varieties of this kind of kale, and because it’s so widely available, it’s what we imagined we would use at Nebo. But then the Turner Farm (the island farm where much of our produce comes from) showed up with some other beautiful varieties, and we started serving those as well—mainly Red Russian and Toscano, which I think is almost the same as Lacinato, which I often find and buy at Whole Foods. This latter variety emerged as my favorite for the way it cooks as much as the way it tastes.

We were thrilled at the response this seemingly unique appetizer received, and indeed there were times when we couldn’t keep up with demand! We nibbled it in the kitchen and knew we’d had enough when our tongues started to feel tenderized by all the salt. It was only toward the end of the summer that we started to hear requests like “Could we make the kale with less salt” or even with “no salt.” I have to admit that at first we pooh-poohed these comments, saying “it’s meant to be salty—that’s the point.” But though its beauty is its likeness to potato chips, I started to worry that maybe we weren’t preparing it very consistently. So we started some internal experiments in which we started measuring the salt for the first time. Lo and behold—the perfect version calls for a LOT less salt than we were usually using.

We regret that some of our customers got bowls that were just too salty last summer, and if you were one of those people, let us know and we’ll send out a complimentary bowl of the new and improved recipe for you to taste test. Just to be clear, we still like it salty, and we’re using more olive oil than we did before, but we think it’s a big improvement and we thank all the people who had the courage to speak up and let us know when it wasn’t right!

So, without further ado, here’s the recipe for the “perfect” crispy kale:

1 bunch lacinato or toscano kale (though any variety will do)
olive oil to fully coat all the leaves
¼ tsp kosher salt (if you have to use table salt, just use a bit less)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Tear kale from stalks onto a standard-size cookie sheet or into a 9×13 roasting pan. Drizzle olive oil over it and toss with your hands to fully coat each leaf. Sprinkle salt over and toss again to make sure there are no pockets of salt. Kale should fully cover pan surface and should only be 1-2 leaves “deep.” Roast for 12-15 minutes, till kale is dark, almost black, and fully wilted—it should be crispy, not soft, and there should be very little green left.

Scoop off the pan and into a large bowl to serve. Surprisingly it’s great the next day, so feel free to make lots. Our daughter, Hella, loves it!