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A chef who spent her youth in Belfast, Northern Ireland, is getting ready to open a new breakfast and lunch spot in the Maine city of the same name.
Sharon Kull, who recently moved to Maine after previously working as a chef in other parts of the world, hopes to open Spring Street Eatery in the coming weeks. It will take the space at 2 Spring St. that previously held Crumbs Provisions, a downtown cafe that closed late last year.
The restaurant will offer European-influenced cuisine, including traditional dishes from England and Ireland, according to Kull, who noted it’ll diverge from the standard American fare and lobster rolls available in many Maine restaurants.
“It’s really different, very, very different,” said Kull. “It’s not a burger place. I’m not frying. There are no French fries. I’ll have roasted garlic mashed potatoes, small new roasted baby potatoes, poppy coleslaw … And then I’ll have specials for the day, a side of maybe quinoa or couscous, things like that.”
Kull will only have one sandwich on the menu: a corned beef sandwich.
In opening her own restaurant on the midcoast, Kull said she has hopes of “giving something back to Belfast.”
“I love the histories that Maine has,” Kull said, noting the original Wabanaki residents of the region, followed by European settlers including “the Irish, Scottish, the British, the Dutch, the French. So I’m incorporating all those cultures kind of into the menu.”
Kull also hopes to bring out the history of the area through her business, including by offering a guest book in which Mainers can describe their own family histories. “They might find cousins, they might find — you just never know,” Kull said.
Kull was born in Italy to a half-Irish, half-Filipino mother, she said, and spent her childhood in Belfast, leaving there at the age of 15. She has also lived in Japan, Norway and other countries. For years, she worked as a chef on yachts traveling the globe.
According to Kull, she is a wanderer who arrived with her partner in Belfast and ended up staying “completely by accident.”
As a business owner, she also hopes to collaborate on programming with two local groups: the But Still I Am One program, which supports homeless youth in Waldo County, and Camp Jinka, which is for children who have lost a parent.