The Good Table will close on a sale next month, and longtime owner Lisa Kostopoulos says her family is leaving the Cape Elizabeth restaurant in good hands. Drew Johnson / The Forecaster
The family-run Good Table restaurant, with its community spirit and healthy, locally sourced meals, became an institution in Cape Elizabeth over its nearly four decades of operation.
“We have seen people have their first date here, get married, have kids, and their kids come and work here,” said Lisa Kostopoulos, who opened the business with her father, Tony Kostopoulos, in 1986. “The connections we’ve made over the past 38 years with this community are far-reaching.”
The family will close on the sale of the restaurant to Prentice Hospitality Group on Nov. 2 in what Kostopoulos said is “a match made in heaven.” She’s not worried about the restaurant’s future because it feels to her like the buyers are “the people who were supposed to end up carrying on The Good Table legacy.”
Much of that has to do with the Prentice group’s Executive Chef Matt Ginn, who Kostopoulos said shares not only her passion for feeding people healthy and delicious meals but also has a connection to the community.
“I grew up in Cape Elizabeth,” Ginn told The Forecaster, recounting picking strawberries at Maxwell’s Farm as a child and working at the IGA as a teenager.
The Prentice group owns the Evo Kitchen + Bar and Twelve restaurants in Portland and the Chebeague Island Inn and operates a catering service.
“What I always longed to do was a restaurant that’s not ‘over the bridge,'” Ginn said, in reference to the commute from towns north and south of the Portland peninsula. “I’m excited to continue the great tradition and reputation that Lisa more than laid the foundation for, but built.”
His goal is to reopen the Ocean House Road restaurant in February and said it will remain “a very family-friendly, welcoming restaurant with a modern lens to it.” The name won’t be changed.
Kostopoulos looks forward to seeing what the new owners do with the place and said she plans to be a customer.
She’s proud of what she’s leaving behind and what her family has achieved, from working with local farms to raising money for local charities. She’s also proud that they’ve overcome a number of challenges, including a fire in 2001 that burned the restaurant to the ground and then, 20 years later, the COVID-19 pandemic that put a halt to business as usual.
The pandemic was overwhelming from a business standpoint, Kostopoulos said.
“I called my father and I said, ‘I just don’t even know how to handle this.’ He said, ‘Just think of it as building a new business.’ So, we thrived during the pandemic. Go figure,” she said.
Kostopoulos said the ability to adapt to the pandemic and their loyal customer base were key to their survival.
“It was a different way to feed people, a different way to think,” she said.
She knew the day would come when she’d decide it was time to sell The Good Table, and now that she has, she has no regrets.
“I don’t think I’m going to retire,” she said, and writing a cookbook or opening a bakery in the future are some options she’s considering.
For now, Kostopoulos is “enjoying not knowing what day of the week it is.” She’s grateful for a rewarding 38 years that included countless dinner rushes handled by a great staff. And, she said, she had the best customers.
“We are so grateful for the best – I mean, I call them customers, but they really are friends,” she said. “We’ve just had the best of the best. They’ve been so good to us; they’ve forgiven us for our mistakes and always come back around.
“I’ll miss my people.”
From left, Prentice Vice President Alexander Wolf; President Casey Prentice; The Good Table’s Lisa Kostopoulos, Jessica Kostopoulos and Tony Kostopoulos; and Prentice Corporate Executive Chef Matt Ginn. Contributed / Prentice Hospitality Group
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