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Primo, Rockland

<p>Co-owner and James Beard Award–winning chef Melissa Kelly drew on two influences when she opened her Italian restaurant in this renovated 1880s Victorian in 2000. First, as a onetime apprentice of Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, Kelly maintained a focus on the freshest possible meat and produce, using seasonal ingredients from her four-acre garden: roasted cardoons, sweet, grilled peaches, caramelized purple cauliflower, jade-hued linguine made with sorrel. (Even her simple salad of summer lettuces and fresh-picked herbs is in a league of its own.) Kelly also takes cues, however, from her Italian ancestry, adapting classic Italian recipes like saltimbocca—a lusty mélange of spinach, mashed potatoes, house-made prosciutto, pork cutlets in mushroom Madeira sauce—from her grandfather, a butcher from Bologna. Since opening the restaurant, Kelly and co-owner/pastry chef Price Kushner have also opened Primo Tucson and Primo Orlando, but nothing compares to the garden-to-table ethic and homey patina of the original location.</p> <p><strong>Insider Tip:</strong> Ever the purists, Kelly and Kushner even keep Italian bees, whose honey is used in desserts, cheese plates, and tisanes.</p> <p><em>Open Wednesday - Sunday</em></p>

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From Travel + Leisure , AUG 2006

But tucked within were powerful herbs from Primo's own garden—verbena, basil, mint, fennel, cinnamon basil—so that each forkful was like slamming hits of herbal extract. Mark sat dumbfounded for minutes, ruminating over a shiso leaf....MORE>>

– Peter Jon Lindberg Maine Course

From Food & Wine , MAY 2006

When chef Melissa Kelly was growing up on New York's Long Island, she was embarrassed that her mom packed minestrone in her lunch box. Today she's a minestrone master, creating fantastic Southern Italian–inspired recipes for her flagship restaurant, Primo, in Rockland, Maine...MORE>>

– Jen Murphy Why Italian Women Don't Get Fat

Last updated August 2006