By Will Grunewald
Photos by Cait Bourgault
From our August 2025 issue
With its fast-food joints and big-box stores, the bustling stretch of Route 302 near Sebago Lake probably isn’t where you’re expecting to encounter a refined farm-to-table dining experience. Stepping into the tranquil dining room at Yolked Farm to Table, though, you quickly get the sense that’s precisely what you’ve found (and that the name of the restaurant is not a fib). The design and décor aren’t subtle about signaling a dedication to the fresh-off-the-farm philosophy. High ceilings and wood beams evoke a barn — albeit a very nice one. The far wall is hung with old farm tools: pitchfork, rakes, wooden ladder. And likenesses of a chicken adorn the room. That’s not just any chicken, by the way, but rather Doris, from Yolked owners Jesse and Mindy Bouchard’s own flock.
The Bouchards used to be able to source all the eggs they needed from their own chickens, although they now get them from a small flock in nearby New Gloucester. A quick scan of the menu indicates that plenty else comes from nearby too: tuna, oysters, and lobster from the Gulf of Maine; greens from Bumbleroot Farm, 15 minutes down the road; sirloin from Pineland Farms, in New Gloucester; potatoes from Green Thumb Farms, in Fryeburg; blueberries from Passamaquoddy growers in Columbia Falls. The farm-to-table label probably gets overused, and the concept can feel like a bit of a gimmick (and like code for expensive — which the menu at Yolked certainly is, with most main courses touching or exceeding $40). But when it’s done in earnest, it has undeniable benefits. You, the diner, get to experience the vivid flavor that comes with real freshness. Meanwhile, the fact that ingredients don’t have to travel far takes a dent out of their carbon footprint, and small, local producers generally employ more sustainable practices than do industrial monoculture operations. The result is a meal you can feel pretty good about eating.
As for this particular meal, it began with mussels in a garlicky white-wine broth. As I often wind up feeling with mussels, the star of the dish was in fact the broth, plus the house-made focaccia that served as an ideal sponge for sopping. Mindy, in addition to filling the role of general manager, is Yolked’s baker, pasta maker, and pastry chef and is responsible for that wonderfully springy focaccia (for sandwiches, potato rolls from Waxwing Bakery, right next door, are used).
A quirk of the menu is that the several salads are all sized like entrées and automatically come with grilled chicken. Intent on saving our appetites, the two of us instead steered toward the “avocado stack” for something green as a second appetizer (we later learned that you can request a side Caesar or garden salad, sans chicken). The avocado stack, which is essentially a stylishly plated, slightly deconstructed take on guacamole, made for a refreshing interlude, with creamy cubes of avocado and bright notes of lime and onion. While the Bouchards strive to source locally as much as they can, they also don’t let it completely constrain their eclectic predilection, hence the avocado. In the kitchen, Jesse, who’s the executive chef, tends to follow his taste buds, and culinary influences range from Italian (pork ragu) to Hawaiian (poke nachos) to regional (clam chowder) to Mexican (skirt steak dressed up elote style). Yolked started in 2019 as a food truck, before moving indoors four years later, and its grab-and-go heritage is preserved on the menu too, with the likes of a Cubano panini, a buffalo-chicken sandwich, and a burger.
For main courses, we ordered a roasted half chicken and salmon spanakopita. The chicken, from Maine Family Farms, more or less dropped off the bone, and it came atop a silky bed of mashed potatoes accented with house-roasted poblanos. The potatoes were possibly my single favorite bite of the night, especially when swiped through the puddle of gravy. All the better if a mushroom, from Mousam Valley, an organic grower in Springvale, wound up in the same forkful. The salmon (from the Cutler Cove sea farm, in the Gulf of Maine) pleasantly brought to mind the classic French salmon en croûte, but with Greek-inspired hints of feta, lemon, marjoram, and dill.
Portions were ample across the board, to the extent that we would have skipped dessert were we not dining in the interest of research. The strawberry-rhubarb cake that Mindy made was light, subtly sweet, and layered with a decadent mascarpone frosting. By the time we finished it, I wouldn’t have minded ordering another slice. And with that locally grown rhubarb, it would be for a good cause, right?
