Day Boat Café, the newest addition to downtown Waldoboro, is filled with mismatched decor, with random tchotchkes artfully filling every available space, from stacks of vintage books to a massive antique mirror. There’s a Michelin Man serving tray, too, which co-owner Kelsey Woodworth pointed out, joking, “We’re Maine’s only Michelin restaurant!”
That’s the vibe of the place: A fun, somewhat chaotic mix of quirky and nostalgic.
The menu — which consists of sandwiches, soups and salads, plus to-go items like pot pie, lasagna and desserts — is much the same. There is a mix of deli favorites with a very homey touch here and there, like the crumbled potato chips included on a tuna sandwich.
One super nostalgic menu item even manages to bridge food and decor: Along one wall, carefully stacked dry goods fill wooden shelves, and conspicuous among the cans and jars are several four-pound jumbo tubs of Marshmallow Fluff. These, of course, are necessary for making that New England staple of packed school lunches, the fluffernutter sandwich.
Co-owners Woodworth and Anna Hymanson match the energy of their shop, which opened mid-March. The two come across like best friends, constantly laughing and joking with each other with casual ease and greeting every customer who enters the café with genuine enthusiasm and delight. The duo said the decision to include the more nostalgic sandwiches, including the fluffernutter, was based on a combination of factors.
In part, it was to create a menu with options for all ages.
“We designed our menu so everyone who walks in can find something that they want to eat,” Hymanson said. “We always say the sandwich is the great equalizer.”
Another factor was how they wanted the combo neighborhood café and retail market to feel: familiar, comfortable and playful.
“We want you to be able to come in here and be like, ‘oh, this place is for me,’” Woodworth said. “We wanted this place to feel like parts of all of us.” And you can’t really get more New England than a fluffernutter.
The sandwich traces its origins back to the 1910s in Massachusetts, the state which is also the birthplace of marshmallow creme. That was when Melrose resident Emma Curtis, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Paul Revere, published a booklet of recipes including the “Liberty Sandwich:” bread, peanut butter and Snowflake Marshmallow Creme, which she made and sold with her brother Amory.
Since then, the fluffernutter has become so popular in New England there are food festivals in its honor, and legislation has been proposed to name it the state sandwich of Massachusetts.
In other parts of the country, however, it can be a challenge to even find fluff at your grocery store. Growing up in Minnesota, Woodworth was not familiar with the sandwich. “I’m like, ‘What the hell even is this?’” she said.
But at 19, she left the Midwest to spend the summer cooking at a camp in Maine, and she became very familiar. “Every day we had to have lunch,” she said, “but then we also had to have a whole bar of fluffernutters and peanut butter and jellies because kids are just hungry all the time. So I just made a kajillion of them.”
Now, the fluffernutter always reminds her of that summer. “It’s just nostalgic,” she said.
Hymanson grew up in Maine, so for her a fluffernutter evokes fond memories of being a kid. “It’s just such a classic from our childhood,” she said. “And it’s so fun.”
The large tubs of Fluff on the shelves are both storage and decorative. And like many of the other embellishments around Day Boat Café, it ended up there because Hymanson and Woodworth thought it was funny.
“It’s just silly, so we had to have it, which is kind of who we are,” Woodworth said.
“And now we have these giant tubs of Fluff,” Hymanson said, laughing. “So much of this restaurant is just a bunch of inside jokes between Kelsey and I.”
Smaller jars of the marshmallow creme are for sale in a basket with the market goods, in the middle of the shop on a wooden table. But if any Fluff enthusiast wants to buy one of the big boys, they’re not not for sale.
“You could buy anything in here,” Woodworth said. “I’ll check the price and we’ll sell it to you.”
This story appears through a media partnership with Midcoast Villager.