Using All His Palette Chef Tom Gutow creates works of art with Castine Inn ‘dining experience’

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Wassily Kandinsky. That’s the artist I think of when I eat at the Castine Inn. Sometimes there are zips of sauce across an artist’s palette-shaped plate. Sometimes there are shavings of fish and herbs in an Asian spoon. Or celery-gin soup in a champagne flute. And, like modern art, it stops you straight. What does it mean?

Modern art on the dinner table. There’s a concept.

When it comes to everyday dining out, most of us go for something familiar: a place you trust, a booth you always sit in, a favorite dish, a modest tab, a full stomach.

But when it comes to eating at the Castine Inn, where Chef Tom Gutow has garnered national attention for a menu guided by classical French cuisine, infused with innovation and inspired by respect for locally produced food, the tables get turned in all sorts of directions.

There are fewer choices on the menu, smaller portions, higher prices and set dinner hours. The combinations of flavor, texture and color can be both enticing and puzzling. An abundance of silverware and a variety of wineglasses, not to mention the geometrically shaped serving plates made of Corian, only add to the sense that something unusual is going on.

And that doesn’t even account for the sweet aromatics served at the end of the meal to delight your sense of smell.

It’s not exactly lobster rolls and blueberry pie.

Frankly, that’s not such a bad thing. While Gutow has received praise from national food writers – the inn has been featured in Gourmet, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, The New York Times, The Boston Globe – he hasn’t always been understood at home. Given the popularity of Maine summer fare (i.e. that beloved lobster roll and blueberry pie), a menu where the food is provocatively deconstructed – the saffron poached skate is separated on the plate from the sauce and combined with glazed beets and caramelized oranges – is sometimes dismissed as pretentious. It’s OK to think about it that way.

But I’d like to suggest another way. What if Gutow’s food is intellectual, esoteric, operatic? It may not always be easy to understand, but it is – take it from me – easy to eat. And let’s face it: Is it always important to understand everything in life?

In fact, let’s go back to the modern art analogy. The key may not be in understanding each line, art critics tell us. It’s more useful to go with impressions, give yourself over to intuition and allow sensation to happen. What does that squiggle suggest? How does the red set off the yellow? What does the stroke of black make me feel?

Now let’s apply it to food.

What do you taste? How does it feel on your tongue? Is it crisp or tart or sweet or salty? Did you expect it to be cold when it was hot?

If you open yourself to the questions and to the possibilities, or even if you don’t – that is, if you simply allow Gutow to make all the culinary decisions – there’s a good chance you will have what he calls a “dining experience.” Think of it as a director wanting you to be rapt in a play or a conductor moving you into the music.

Imagine that at a restaurant. With locally produced food. In a country inn setting with gardens and harbor views. And that’s Gutow’s approach.

“If you come here just to have a salad, then the reason you come here is to sate your hunger rather than to have a dining experience,” said Gutow, who might have been a soccer player if he hadn’t gone into food. “We want people to come here to have a dining experience. That doesn’t minimize the need to sate. Ninety-nine percent of the time I eat, it’s to sate my hunger. But that’s not what we are doing. The intent is not for diners to think about it. They can still have their beautiful social event. But because of how we combine flavors, they can have more of an experience.”

And that’s not even as radical as Gutow gets. Another time he said this: “We conceptualize the dining room experience. My idea is that you barely converse with the people at your table, except about the food. There’s more sensory perception in eating and drinking than in any other art form. You smell and see and taste. Sometimes you can even hear it, too.”

Experience, indeed. Each night, Gutow directs his kitchen in the service of up to 45 dinners. That’s about 12 to 15 people an hour. The inn could do a greater quantity, but the smaller numbers, said sous-chef Josh Tomson, “allow near perfection and superb quality. And the diner gets the table for the whole night instead of being rushed.”

Tomson prepares the food with cook Matt Demery and pastry chef Jacob Lapoint. But it’s Gutow’s discriminating eye that runs the place. One recent night, he watched Lapoint prepare a salad of mixed organic greens with a lemon vinaigrette. “It’s supposed to look like it was just thrown on the plate,” Gutow explained as Lapoint meticulously shaped the lettuce into place. “But it’s put on the plate to look as if it were thrown on perfectly.”

The nightly menu, which has a fixed price of $65 per person, plus drinks and gratuity, has fewer than 10 items to choose from, but there are five courses, beginning with an amuse bouche – a small flavor kick to begin the meal – and followed by an appetizer, a salad, main course and dessert. Diners also have the option of ordering the seven-course tasting menu at $85 per person or $115 with half-glass wine pairing, or the 12-course chef’s grand tasting menu: $125 per person or $200 with wine. The five-course meal, with libational guidance from sommelier Victor Van Keuren, can take two hours. The grand menu can take four. If you can walk at the end of this experience, which one diner called “orgasmic,” you walk away sated, if not transformed.

The format is the realization of the dream Gutow and his wife, Amy, have been building since they purchased the inn in 1997. Before that, Gutow worked in New York with David Bouley at Bouley, David Burke at Park Avenue Cafe, and Diane Forley at Verbena. He also trained in France with Michel Guerard at Les Pres d’Eugenie and the late Bernard Loiseau at La Cote d’Or, both Michelin three-star chefs.

“My job as a chef is to have concepts, create dishes that are well conceived, carefully executed and well-presented in a beautiful setting,” said Gutow, who also has a degree in English literature. “I may be an odd restaurateur in this location. I do realize I’m in rural Maine. I’ve picked a locality that’s challenging. So I try to keep it within reason. But unlike a lot of people who cook and run restaurants, I don’t cook because I love the homey feel of the table and how it brings people together.

“I could say I grew up in a tight Jewish family and we ate together every night. I did Passover and Hanukah. All of those things are true about my life and I think they’re cool. But that’s not why I do this. I do this because I’m fascinated by the flavors of food. It’s fun to think about flavor and texture. For me it’s about the creativity of the food and the flavors and the textures.”

Those who fall under the spell of the Castine Inn don’t ever look back. Yes, they still go to down-home restaurants, those favorite places that cost less and fill you up and are easy in every good way.

But a meal at the Castine Inn is a treat. It’s like a visit to a museum or a symphony or an art gallery. Not for everyone. Time consuming. Heady. Rich.

Here’s what some diners say:

“It may be Beethoven,” one man said of the food, “but it’s John Cage, too. It wouldn’t do to lick this plate, but I want you to know, I’d like to.”

And another: “Jewelry is precious and beautiful. Poetry fills the soul. This meal is jewelry and poetry.”

Others, of course, complain of the price, the portions, the unfamiliarity.

And that’s fine. The Castine Inn may not be for them.

“I understand why it’s misunderstood,” said one Castiner who eats at the inn several times a season. “People may not get it because of the portion size. But it’s delectable. Tom’s food is performance food. And that’s a small venue. He’s a talent. What he does is for foodies.”

What it comes down to for Gutow is not necessarily the foodies but the food.

“You have to put stuff in your body, man!” he said in a wave of excitement. “You have to smell and hear and taste it. Wouldn’t it be neat if flavors and textures could make you have an emotional response? What if I could make a dinner that’s a comedy?”

One suspects if Gutow takes that on, there will be laughter.