Wine, Whiskey, Chocolate, Great Food and Great Community
For the Bockmans' Table Salt, starting Bar Harbor businesses is about coming home
BAR HARBOR—Angelica Bockman’s eyes grew both wistful and excited when she explained the last few whirlwind months that saw her family uprooting themselves from their lives and businesses in Nashville to Bar Harbor, months that saw her moving twice in town and renovating a giant restaurant space with her husband. Months full of busyness. Months full of joy and stress.
“And I’m a million years pregnant,” she said with a laugh.
But it’s more than that which was making Angelica happy.
She smiled as she motioned at the space she was renovating and the world beyond it. “I’m coming home.”
Bockman grew up in Maine, went to school here before her mom—a nurse—took a job in Arizona. New England, she said, has always called her. There’s a yearning for winter and that honed down lifestyle that she grew up with that isn’t quite there in Nashville. There’s a yearning for home for herself and her family, including her two-year-old son Liam and the baby, Maddy, on her way.
In Nashville, she said, “I’m yearning for home. I’m yearning for small town community, a place where I need to have him grow up safe. All I could think of was home.”
Home, for her, is Maine.
“I wanted to come home to raise my family the way I was raised. I chose home,” she said. “We’re very excited to be here.”
As Angelica and Daniel Bockman create a new restaurant in downtown Bar Harbor, they’re also very cognizant that they are building some other things, too: a family, a life, a place in a community, and experiences for customers to have fun, to have ideas, to have a moment. They are building it, piece by piece, and with intention.
Bar Harbor Fine Chocolates @barharborfinechocolate is an experiential part of their newest concept Table Salt @tablesaltbarharbor. Like Angelica’s chocolate shop in Nashville, Tempered Fine Chocolates, they’ll offer small batch truffles and bars in their tasting room. They plan to open in mid-May.
If you look at it right now, the building at 195 Main Street that last hosted China Joy might not feel like it might be one of Bar Harbor’s newest and coolest restaurants and tasting bar. Paint possibilities line the walls. The floor is being fixed. A bar is being constructed.
But if you wait a moment and listen to these restauranteurs, you instantly get it.
You won’t just believe in how cool the restaurant is going to be; you’ll believe in the couple’s vision. Table Salt is going to be more than a restaurant. It’s going to be the kind of experience that will keep guests talking and returning.
A mimosa cart where you can pick your own fixings will be a brunch staple. A lit wine bar will greet connoisseurs. Inside in the tasting room or on the outside patio, patrons will be able to choose a whiskey or wine flight with chocolates crafted by Angelica herself. She’s a former designer and master chocolatier, a woman capable of creating experiences and fine chocolate and with Daniel, renovating the beloved Chinese restaurant into something fresh, new, and gorgeous: a legacy in its own right.
What might be Bar Harbor’s newest favorite restaurant hasn’t even opened yet. But the Bockmans have recruited island chef Aaron Horvath, who last led the kitchen at the Claremont Hotel’s Little Fern.
“He’s one of the best chefs on the island,” Daniel said. “And, he’s a really nice guy.”
Horvath has also been involved in the creation of the restaurant and the menu.
Everything will be made there from scratch, Daniel insisted. “That’s important to us.”
“Everything from scratch” includes syrups, shrubs, bitters. It’s all pretty elevated and curated.
“We’re going to put an equal amount of effort into the bar as we do the kitchen,” Daniel said. They want to give people a full rounded experience. Even the ice will be made in house.
It sounds like a lot of work, a lot of planning, a lot of designing, but the couple thrives on it.
“We’ve spent hours and hours—it’s horrible—” Daniel joked, “pairing all these chocolates and wine.”
Elements of the tasting bar will be almost like a sushi bar. People can check a box for a merlot or a whiskey, for example, pick the pairings, and the chocolates and tastings will come with it. Those who can’t get enough of Angelica’s hand-crafted chocolates can also buy them at the room.
They won’t be able to buy bottles of the wine, though. House Wine is just a couple of buildings down and the Bockmans don’t want to compete with a neighbor. That’s the opposite of what they’re about. They’re about community.
“We want to extend hands to the community,” Angelica said.
Community is a big reason why the couple jumped at the chance to leave Nashville where they’d started multiple businesses and their family.
“It’s coming home. We’re raising our children here,” Angelica said.
“We like simple lives,” Daniel said. “We just want to be a part of the community. We love it. That’s why we came here. If somebody needs something, ask.”
Angelica agreed. “You’ve got to give to get. What fills my cup is to give.”
Still, it’s been a bit of a happy whirlwind for the couple who are leasing the building from Jeff and Jena Young, owners of Side Street Cafe and other businesses. Angelica had worked next to the Youngs’ operations manager and Bar Harbor Chamber Board President Bo Jennings on Broadway in Nashville. Jennings thought they’d be a perfect fit for the space and connected them with the Youngs.
Demo work, putting in floors, gutting bathrooms, fixing the kitchen. They’ve already made friends with other parents whose kids attend Kids Corner and with the owners of Salsa Verde, who have just moved next door into the old Jalepenos’ spot.
“They are great, great people. Have you met them?” Angelica asked. She says the same thing about the owners of the Ivy Manor, the workers there, other people. It’s a litany of appreciation.
The Bockmans also had high praise for Nathan Grant, who is from Blue Hill. Grant is helping with the more technical parts of the renovations.
“I like this part,” Dan said of the creation of the space, the ideas bouncing around, the joy of building something together, the tearing down and building back up again. “I’m incredibly excited.”
“We’re bringing the outside in,” Angelica said of the patio, the ambiance, the paint colors. “People come here—to the park—to Bar Harbor—to be outside.”
Brunch will be more of a traditional brunch with an urban flair: maybe chicken and waffles, maybe shrimp and grits, it will be simultaneously breakfast and lunch offers.
The couple is going to have a daughter in two or so weeks, Maddy. She’ll join Liam to make a family of four and the Bockmans have a mid-May target date for opening, but with a baby on the way and the constantly fluctuating state of renovations and the wildness of starting a restaurant, they haven’t made a firm, public date quite yet.
But it’s soon. And that couldn’t be more welcome for the Bockmans.
“When I think of my most favorite memories—you’ve just got those memories—what sparked the best ideas,” Angelica said.
Those memories, for her, often involve sitting with a best friend or Daniel. They are of sharing ideas, thoughts, jokes, epiphanies over a glass of wine or whiskey, mellow, happy, in the moment. That’s what they want to give their customers, too.
“Nothing bad has ever come from whiskey, wine, and chocolate,” she said, laughing. “Nothing.”
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Table Salt’s Facebook page
Bar Harbor Fine Chocolates soon-to-be-begun Instagram
Correction: For some reason, we wrote (and didn’t catch) Bar Harbor Wine for House Wine. We are very sorry!
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Terrific capture of new community members. Very well written 👍
I'm glad people are moving here and starting businesses or whatever, but I don't really feel that Bar Harbor needs to be further gentrified. Maybe I'm just bitter because I miss China Joy, but nothing strikes dread in my heart like "tasting rooms" and "elevated" menus. Sorry folks. I hope you find your niche I guess.