DIY: Refreshing Cooling Cloths from The Lost Kitchen in Freedom, Maine

This week we’re revisiting among the hottest summer time tales from the archives. Right here’s one:

These fortunate sufficient to eat at The Misplaced Kitchen in an previous mill constructing in Freedom, Maine, say there are 1,000,000 tiny issues all through the evening that can keep on with you: the lengthy picket footbridge it’s a must to cross to get there, the sound of the creek working exterior the mill home windows, and the second that nightfall falls and Erin French herself, the chef-owner-visionary behind the place, comes round to every desk to gentle a candle. It’s particulars like these that immediate 20,000 individuals everywhere in the world to mail in a postcard every spring, hoping to be drawn for a seat on the desk. (Learn in regards to the restaurant’s story in The Misplaced Kitchen: A Glimpse Inside Maine’s Most Wildly In-Demand Restaurant.)

However among the many most considerate of those particulars—for diners who’ve traveled 139 miles north from the Maine border by winding again roads, or from a lot additional afield—are handmade cooling cloths, one at every place. Laid on the again of the neck or dabbed on the wrists, they’re a respite from the Maine warmth and an invite to decelerate earlier than the meal. Nancy, a member of the almost all-female crew, prepares them earlier than every night’s seating; we requested her for directions, for re-creating a sliver of the expertise at our personal dinner events. Right here’s what she mentioned.