You’ll know when it gets here,” the woman behind the counter at Chase’s Daily says as she hands me a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin.

She’s talking about the produce, and she’s not kidding. It’s late in the morning, so most of the breakfast crowd has left the caf?, and it’s too early for lunch. But midway through the muffin, people start filtering in, making their way through the dining area, past the lunch counter, to the back of the Belfast building.

In the time it takes to drink a coffee, the previously empty space transforms into a bustling marketplace filled with buckets of flowers, baskets of onions, bunches of herbs and a row of metal bins full of artfully arranged tomatoes. The air is heavy with the aroma of herbs and onions and baking bread.

In one corner, upside-down bouquets of soybeans beckon the health-conscious. In another, slender radishes peek out of their containers like red and white ballet slippers. Silver dollar-size artichokes nestle in a crate next to bins full of potatoes: tiny French fingerlings, the blushing King Edward, and Ozette, a variety that looks like crumbled feta cheese.

“For me, a good produce place is like walking into an art gallery,” Belfast resident Louise Nadeau said as she picked out vegetables for her lunch. Nadeau walks to Chase’s frequently from her nearby home. “I just take my shopping bag and off I go. I love the selection and the atmosphere.”

Since it opened last June, Chase’s Daily has attracted tourists and locals with its unique hybrid of restaurant, bakery and produce stand. It’s a fresh idea, and freshness is key here. In the summer, Freedom farmer Addison Chase, his wife, Peggy, and daughter, Megan, start picking vegetables and flowers at 6 a.m. to arrive in Belfast around 10:30. The Chase’s other daughter, Phoebe, starts baking bread and pastries at 1 a.m. Food in the restaurant is prepared with potatoes dug that morning or basil picked the night before.

“That’s why it’s called Chase’s Daily – these foods are picked to eat today,” said farmhand Karin Spitfire as she arranged the labels in the bins of vegetables.

A half-hour away in Freedom, at the kitchen table of the farm, Addison Chase described his philosophy on fresh food.

“The quality, sweetness, complexity of flavor – that’s the advantage – we pick them ripe,” he said. “We don’t like to sell anything more than a day old.”

In the early ’70s, soon after they moved to Maine from New York, Addison and Peggy Chase bought their first 300 acres in Freedom. Addison started farming almost immediately and Peggy taught. For years, the Chases sold vegetables and baked goods at the Belfast farmers market, and when they were teen-agers, Meg and Phoebe took over the market end. It was fun, but they wanted to do something more. They didn’t realize how much more, though.

“The farmers market didn’t work in the end; it limited us,” said Meg, now 25. “We felt like we could be better and bigger. … Now it’s a three-ring circus.”

It started small enough, though. Phoebe, now 27, wanted to open a bakery and caf? in downtown Belfast. Peggy and Addison looked into it, but the only building they could afford was the giant old Odd Fellows Hall, which had apartments above that would provide rental income. With all the extra space, a full-service restaurant became a viable idea – they had plenty of fresh produce, and Meg’s boyfriend, Ted LaFage, had cooking experience. And the space out back seemed perfect for a market, where the Chases could sell vegetables and flowers every day.

For their regular customers, the extended schedule made up for the Chases’ absence at the farmers market.

“It’s nice to know they’re here every day, not just Tuesday and Saturday,” said Carol Holmes of Belfast as she picked up some flowers for her mother’s birthday party.

The Chases have tried to make the shopping experience as similar to the farmers market as possible. The staff can suggest certain vegetables or tell people how to prepare something they’ve never cooked before, such as the baby artichokes for sale during a recent visit. They aren’t prepared like regular artichokes, Spitfire explained. First, cooks should remove the dark green leaves, cut the artichoke in half, saute it with a bit of olive oil and garlic and serve it with a starch such as potatoes or pasta to absorb and disperse the somewhat bitter flavor.

“That’s the element of the farmers market we wanted to bring inside,” Meg Chase said. “I know a lot of our customers and I can tell them what they ought to buy.”

For cooks, the market at Chase’s is like a candy store, filled with the old favorites (lettuce and carrots) and unusual treats, such as Ozette potatoes or jaune flamme, a tangerine-colored tomato. Those who don’t cook can eat in the caf?, which serves dishes using the same ingredients that are for sale.

All of the Chases know how to cook what they grow. Before they opened Chase’s Daily, they would prepare delicious meals at the farm, using whatever was fresh. This much hasn’t changed, and because the farm’s focus is vegetables, rather than beef cattle or chickens, the menu is vegetarian.

It’s something the family likes to downplay because they don’t want Chase’s Daily to be pigeonholed as a place that just serves tofu and veggie burgers. People often associate vegetarian restaurants with health food and meat alternatives, but while the food at Chase’s is healthy and light, the family’s main concern is flavor.

The menu changes weekly, with choices such as a creamy cucumber soup with cilantro, a rice noodle saute with Vietnamese pesto or bruschetta with rosemary-sage-white bean puree. Meg Chase said many customers have eaten at the restaurant several times before they realized there was no meat on the menu.

“At this point we don’t even think of ourselves as a vegetarian restaurant,” Addison Chase said. “It’s a different focus. It’s not a moral choice. It’s just the way we eat.”

The way they eat has translated into the way they cook. In the winter, the restaurant stays open, using winter staples such as squash and root veggies, supplemented with the freshest ingredients the Chases can find. This is when the cooks get to try out more complex, time-consuming dishes.

Things really heat up in the summer, with an influx of tourists and a larger restaurant crowd. It doesn’t leave him much time to experiment with intricate meals, but Ted LaFage couldn’t be happier, even if it gets pretty hectic in the kitchen.

“We had the confidence we could do it without any professional experience because we ate so well at the farm,” LaFage said. “It’s so wonderful to be able to cook with something that fresh. … You can go wrong, but you can’t go too far wrong.”

Chase’s Daily is located at 96 Main St. in Belfast. Breakfast is served from 7 to 10:30 a.m. Tuesday-Saturday; 8 a.m. to noon Sunday. Lunch is served from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Produce comes in around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday-Saturday. For information, call 338-0555.