A new restaurant combining Italian and Southern food is scheduled to open this week in Biddeford.
Yeto’s,at 299 Main St., will open from 4 to 9 p.m. Wednesday to serve Valentine’s Day dinner, then open for good the following Tuesday, according to manager Jackie Hardin, who co-owns the restaurant with her fiancé, chef Bryan Casale.
The food will reflect their family heritages, Hardin said. Casale’s Italian family is from New York, Hardin said, and he learned to cook from an “off-the-boat Italian.” Her family hails from Alabama and Kentucky, where traditional barbecue is king. Yeto’s menu will serve comfort food that is a blend of the two, with “a big focus on smoked meats and everything being made as much in-house as we can,” Hardin said.
It’s not as unusual a combination as one might think, Hardin said. Smoked meats are popular in the Trentino region of northern Italy, typically served with hearty pastas. “They marry really well,” she said, “but it’s not one that people tend to think to put together.”
The dinner menu includes dishes such as a carbonara-inspired mac and cheese; pasta with brisket pizzaiola in a pepper- and onion-filled red sauce; country fried pork; and chicken and biscuits. Pasta dishes range from $11-16, and large plates $14-20. Yeto’s plans to have a pasta night every Thursday.
Hardin and Casale have lived in Maine for about four years. Before Yeto’s, Hardin worked as an accountant and Casale worked at small cafes in Saco and South Berwick.
The name of their new restaurant is inspired by a story from the video game “The Legend of Zelda,” Hardin said. “It really encompasses how we approach food,” she said — using mostly local ingredients free of hormones and antibiotics.
The story is about two yetis named Yeto and Yeta. One day Yeta falls ill, and Yeto sets out to find a cure, gathering pumpkin from a nearby pumpkin patch, cheese from a local goat farm, and fish from the local river. Yeto uses the ingredients to make soup, and the meal heals Yeta.
The story is reflected on the lunch menu in “Yeto’s Superb Soup,” a blend of pumpkin, goat cheese and whitefish.
Yeto’s will be open from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and 10:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. It will be closed Sunday and Monday.
Meredith Goad can be contacted at 791-6332 or at:
mgoad@pressherald.com
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