WESTPORT ISLAND

I t seems like a remote ideal — the historic island inn and upscale farm-to-fork restaurant, where free range eggs are an arm’s reach away and you can sample ripe cherry tomatoes as you mosey to a garden side dining room.

It may be closer than you think.

The Squire Tarbox Inn and Restaurant on Westport Island is just 8 miles from U.S. Route 1 in Wiscasset. Headed by the DePietro family since 2002, the husband and wife team of Mario and Roni left their jobs in New York City to take over the centuries-old inn. The carriage house — now converted to an airy sitting room — dates back to 1763, and the main part of the inn was built in 1824.

A classically trained chef with extensive experience managing kitchens, Mario established the inn’s white tablecloth restaurant, praised in both regional and national publications. Joined in the kitchen in 2011 by his daughter Lara, a nutritionist and budding herbalist, the restaurant now has a gourmet menu with a philosophy.

“Let food be thy medicine,” said Lara, echoing Hippocrates as she sat in the inn’s wide-planked carriage house on a recent morning. “A lot of people take that phrase just to mean they should eat well as a preventative strategy.

“I take that one step further and actually say put your medicine in your food,” she said. “It shouldn’t have to be a separate thing that you have to choke down.”

Since taking over as head chef in 2012, Lara has woven medicinal herbs and natural remedies into the traditional menu offerings. Though vacation is typically thought of as a time to cheat on diets — a meal at the Squire Tarbox Inn’s restaurant may mean you can cheat and still get ahead.

The family was first attracted to the property, which was once the homestead of Samuel Tarbox, Westport Island’s first selectman and postmaster, because it was a “blank canvas,” said Lara.

“All back here was wooded,” she said, gesturing toward a slope tiered with gardens and fruit trees. “My father played and played, made garden beds here and there, which he filled with perennials just for aesthetics.”

The property is also naturally resource rich, said Lara, noting that there were wild blueberries and blackberries growing near the gardens. There are also naturally occurring black trumpet, chanterelle and lion’s mane mushroom patches.

“My idea is to have as much food produced here as possible,” said Lara. “It’s more than just farm to table. You can go out to a restaurant that’s farm to table, but you don’t see the food until it’s cooked — you don’t see it growing.”

It has meant displacing some of her father’s perennials — vegetable gardens are now scattered across the 12-acre property — for kale beds set off from the parking lot and tomato plants around the earthenware oven Lara built, to the kitchen garden and large vegetable garden located between the inn and a quiet salt-marsh shore.

“We make as much inhouse as possible — yogurt, bread, pastas, whatever I can,” said Lara, who also strives to serve up a seasonal menu based on offerings from her gardens. This season, Lara estimated that approximately $200 was spent purchasing produce from her brother’s Westport Island farm, the Squire Tarbox Farm — the rest was grown on-site.

“I actually found my old application for college just a few months ago and sure enough I mentioned this place,” said Lara. “I don’t like clinical nutrition — counting calories or counting vitamins. It’s appropriate in certain circumstances, but in most cases you shouldn’t just take a multivitamin or drink (a nutrition shake) and say, ‘I’m healthy.’”

Healthy lifestyle

For Lara — as for proponents of the slow food movement who encourage regional, seasonal eating — the question of crafting a healthy diet begins with crafting a healthy lifestyle and creatively using endemic resources.

“It requires a certain creativity in the kitchen, particularly in an attempt to incorporate medicinal herbs into the type of cuisine my dad offers,” said Lara. “For example, you can use slippery elm as a thickener instead of flour to make gluten-free sauces.

“But you have to ask, what taste does it transmit, what flavors does it work well with?” she said. “What would be a nice, high-end, gluten-free sauce that uses slippery elm?”

This thought process is replicated across the menu, said Lara, inching recipe by recipe toward her food-asmedicine ideal.

“I put hollyhock in the apple butter to aid digestion,” she said. “I made a rosehip simple syrup, so when you’re having a cocktail, OK, you’re suppressing your immune system, but you’re bringing it back up again and getting vitamin C.”

Recent culinary successes include a green coriander brown butter sauce Lara made when the cilantro went to seed, a bee balm pesto recipe she created, and also a swordfish offering with daylily drunken noodles.

“There’s a fair amount of trepidation,” said Lara, noting that some guests have been incredulous at the sight of a lily or Johnnyjump up on their plate. “That’s normal. If you go back to when we were wild, we were only supposed to eat what our mother and father ate.

“But after that trepidation, people get pretty excited, the novelty is fun,” said Lara. “That’s probably my favorite part of the job — for someone to say, ‘This pesto is delicious,’ and I can say, it’s made with bee balm and it aids digestion.

“You could use the word ‘teaching,’ but I don’t want to point my finger and tell people what to do,” said Lara. “It’s really about sharing and letting people feel the satisfaction of eating this way, which creates an incentive to then adopt certain lifestyle changes.”

There is still a lot of work in store before Lara gets the gardens to her desired production level, and some fruit bearing trees and bushes are still years off from producing.

“It’s probably a five- to ten-year project to really get everything the way I want it,” said Lara, adding that she has plans to increase her chicken count, get milking goats and meat birds. “It’s a beginning though.”

The Squire Tarbox Inn has 11 guestrooms and the restaurant is open by reservation. Culinary classes are also offered seasonally. For more information, visit www.squiretarboxinn.com or call 882-7693.

rgargiulo@timesrecord.com

Inn info

THE SQUIRE TARBOX Inn on Westport Island has 11 guestrooms and the restaurant is open by reservation. Culinary classes are also offered seasonally.

FOR MORE information, visit www.squiretarboxinn.com or call 882- 7693.