I Lived in NYC for a Decade but the Pizza I Dream About Is in Maine

I lived in New York City for a decade, but the pizza I dream about is not in the five boroughs, it’s in Maine. Yes, Maine.

And not in Portland, the northern state’s city that has been enjoying a rich culinary renaissance. The pizza that haunts my dreams is in a part of the state Mainers refer to as “Down East,” in a rural community on the Blue Hill Peninsula called Brooksville, population 923. For over a decade, Tinder Hearth has been a destination unto itself, serving fresh, seasonal pizzas to those who make the trek to its hidden corner of the world, and it’s what I think about all winter long. 

Those who have been lucky enough to eat at Tinder Hearth tend to get a little misty around the eyes when they talk about its charms. Sourdough pizzas, made with the freshest local ingredients, and baked in a Quebec-style clay oven, are served on mismatched dishes collected at local thrift stores and donated by neighbors. Dozens of picnic tables are spread across a multi-acre garden surrounded by vegetable and flower beds abutting farm fields and meadows. A bird’s eye view would show you a mowed postage stamp of grass in the wild landscape of Maine bordered by the Penobscot Bay not too far away. 

The magic of Tinder Hearth is the alchemy of Tim Semler and Lydia Moffet, husband and wife Mainers who began their business by selling homemade sourdough bread at local farmers markets and shops. Eventually they started making sourdough pizzas for events around the area, and in 2012 they transformed the grounds of Semler’s childhood home into a casual al fresco restaurant.

News spread locally in Brooksville and the surrounding Blue Hill Peninsula, an area with deep ties to the farm-to-table movement, and today Tinder Hearth serves upward of 300 people per night during the short high summer season of July and August. “It wasn’t that we set out to make the best pizza in the world,” Semler says. “You try to do your best with the materials you have, and we’re really lucky to be in a place where there’s just really great farmers around.” 

Inclusion on the 2023 New York Times’ Restaurant List brought in people from farther away in the state and “from away.” Yet despite their increasing recognition, Tinder Hearth’s remote location—about half an hour from the closest inn or motel—has reigned in the popularity, slightly. While the Blue Hill Peninsula sees nowhere near as many tourists as elsewhere in the state, such as Kennebunkport of Acadia National Park, like much of coastal Maine, Brooksville’s population swells in the summertime. 

Those who make the trek to the rural restaurant have a small selection to choose from—there’s a meat pie, a veggie pie, and a special, all dependent on what the area farmers and purveyors have told Tim and Lydia they have fresh that week. The produce shapes the menu, which always also includes salads, freshly shucked oysters from Deer Isle Oyster Company, wine, and ice cream.

Reservations go live once a week, on Monday mornings, and book up almost instantly. Those looking for a slightly quieter experience, which doesn’t involve Olympic-level efforts to score a reservation, might visit in the shoulder season of June and September or even in the winter when they serve pizza once a week on Friday and breakfast pastries twice a week on Wednesday and Saturday. 

“One of the things I really love about pizza, specifically, is that you don’t have to explain to anybody what pizza is,” Semler says. “All different kinds of people are really passionate and obsessed with pizza.” 

And it turns out a lot of them are willing to travel for it.