O M G. I have to start with the number, because I still cannot wrap my head around it.

Seven restaurants. In five years.

I have been doing this for nearly 40 years, and when I sat down across from Deb McCluskey inside her little oyster bar in Kittery, my very first thought was -- honey, how are you still standing? I have four diners and there are days I run on fumes. Deb has seven concepts spread across two states, every single one of them open seven days a week, and she said it so casually I almost missed it.

Then about halfway through, she told me something that made me stop and just look at her. I will get to that.

"How lucky am I that I get to have 400 friends over for coffee every day?"

Deb did not come out of business school with a five-year plan. She came out of her grandmother's cafe.

She grew up helping fry the donuts, talking with the customers, and, as she put it, pretending she was making the coffee even though she probably really was not. Her first real job was washing dishes at Nickerson Tavern in Searsport, Maine, at fourteen years old. She spent the summer at her grandparents' house and loved every minute of it. They taught her how to make the appetizers.

"Once you're in the restaurant business, it just kind of, it's almost in your blood."

She is right about that. Ask anybody who has done this long enough.

After ten years home with her kids, Deb went back to work as a server at Robert's Maine Grill in Kittery, and stayed nine years, working her way up to bar manager. That is where she met Michael Landgarten, and that is where the whole thing really begins. She fell in love with how he ran a restaurant -- the food, the guests, the employees, the property, all of it cared for the same way. Front of house could walk into the back of house and say this is not right, and the back of house would fix it kindly and everybody moved on.

Then life got heavy and she stepped away for about six months. She regretted it almost immediately. She ran into Landgarten one day and he asked how the new job was going, and she admitted she had already left and had an interview that very afternoon. He said, well, we might have an opening at Lil's.

Six more years there, cafe manager to general manager. Fifteen years total working for the same man. And then, right as COVID hit, they started talking about her buying Lil's Cafe outright.

Lil's Cafe in Kittery, Maine came first, in 2021. If you have been, you know about the crullers. What I did not know is that the recipe came from the original head baker, who brought it up from New York and tweaked it slightly, and it has been the exact same recipe since day one. There is an artisan bread program, a coffee program that Deb has watched grow for eleven years, and a commissary kitchen downstairs pumping out pastries for the other cafes.

There is also a record store inside Lil's. In the old bank vault. The building used to be a bank, the vault door is still there, and a man named Mark who owns Gary's Guitars sells vinyl out of it and refreshes the racks every few weeks. Deb called it a cool little spin, and then we both realized what she had said.

And here is the part that got me -- at Lil's, you walk through the kitchen to get to the bathroom. That is exactly how my original Red Arrow in Manchester is, and people absolutely love it there too. Two totally different restaurants, two states apart, same funny little thing that turns a stop into a memory.

Then the Islander Cafe in New Castle, New Hampshire, in January 2023, bought from a hotel owner named Doug who told her flat out that he had no business owning a restaurant. It is tiny and charming and right on the water, and their Dutch baby and their all-day breakfast sandwich on a homemade biscuit or English muffin are what people drive out there for.

Stella's Cafe in Dover, New Hampshire, opened in June 2024. Michael found the listing. Lil's Cafe is named for Lilian Mangos, the beloved cashier from Bob's Clam Hut -- and Stella was Lilian's middle name. So the family carries her through two restaurants now. Deb was nervous that first sleepy summer. Two years later they have doubled the kitchen, added a walk-in, and the event space is booked almost every weekend.

June's Cafe in Newmarket, New Hampshire came next. They bought the 130-year-old building in November 2024 from a couple who were moving to Japan, renovated the apartment upstairs, rented it out, and opened the cafe in 2025. Deb said, and I quote, sorry everybody, but it is probably her favorite of all of them. The flank steak breakfast sandwich, the breakfast bowls with house-made hollandaise, a Dutch baby that changes monthly, a monthly melt, and bite-size crullers because the kitchen is too small for the full ones. They just launched a ticketed dinner series out there too.

Henry's Bagel and Deli opened in Kittery in July 2025, in the old Henry VIII's Carvery space that Deb had been eating at with her own kids for years. When the owners announced on Facebook they were closing, Deb and Michael went in for one last sandwich. A couple of days later Michael texted her that he had found the owner's email address. There is no espresso machine at Henry's -- on purpose, because Route 1 traffic wants fast -- so instead they built a whole cold brew program with house-made syrups, cold foam, and now smoothies and acai bowls.

Salty Spirits opened December 18, 2025, at 76 Wallingford Square, in what used to be a hair salon. Five hundred square feet, fourteen seats at the bar. This one was Michael's dream -- he shucked oysters at Robert's as a teenager and spent ten or twelve years wanting a hole-in-the-wall oyster bar, despite not eating a stitch of seafood himself. Deb saw the for lease sign at a stoplight, snapped a photo, and sent it to him as a joke. He was not joking back.

Then there is my favorite fact of the entire episode: there is no hood system at Salty Spirits. So the bagel chips, the biscuits for the lobster sliders, the roasted nuts, the desserts -- all of it comes out of one small toaster oven behind the bar. I could not believe it.

Deb's New Year's resolution for 2026 was no new businesses. She had opened three in the last six months of 2025. She told me she was tapped out mentally, financially, and that she had tapped out her team physically.

Then a man named Jim bought the building across from Lil's and called her in January. She told him no. He asked if they could just chat. She went. Her wheels started spinning. She made a list of everything she would need from him, convinced he would never agree to it.

He agreed to all of it. And then he told her he had watched her from the time she bought Lil's, and that he wanted somebody like her in that space so he would not be renting it out again in a year.

Michael was against it. Flat out. So Deb signed the lease anyway.

"I signed the lease. I didn't even tell Michael I signed the lease. Until I showed him the keys."

Dudley Street Pizza opened in June 2026. Cup and char pepperoni, and a sandwich called a panuozzo that I had never heard of in my life -- pizza dough folded and baked until it puffs, pulled open, built into a sandwich, and put back in the oven. Their chef out at June's talked them into it because nobody else around here is making them.

What she said next reframed the whole thing for me, though. In September of 2025, right in the middle of all of it, Michael got very sick. June's had opened in May, Henry's in July, and Salty Spirits was mid-build. From September to December, Deb carried every bit of it alone while helping her son through his health. She mentioned it almost in passing. That is who she is.

Here is where Deb and I really found each other.

She told me about a shipyard guy who came into Lil's once or twice a day, and she always knew his order but could never remember his name. One day he came in three times, and when she asked his name again he told her it was Aaron -- and that this was his third coffee that day. So she said, okay Aaron, nice to meet you, do you know MY name? He did not. They both laughed. He ended up doing photography work for her, and they became friends.

She also said something that I have felt for four decades and have never heard anybody put quite that way. When a regular passes away, sometimes you do not remember their name. You remember what they ate. The breakfast sandwich with the broken egg. The blueberry muffin, grilled, butter on the side. Burnt toast.

I have watched regulars walk in single, get engaged in my dining room, get married, bring in their kids, and now their kids' kids are coming in. Forty years of that. Deb has already seen the twins from her Robert's days head off to their senior year of college. It goes fast.

The story she closed on is the one I keep thinking about. Back at Robert's there was a regular who came in every single day and always asked for triple vegetables, and it was never enough. He made servers cry. Deb decided she was going to wait on him herself. She learned his whole order, his wife's name, all of it -- and then brought his plate out with almost nothing on it. He got upset. And then somebody stepped out from behind her with the vegetables.

He would not let anybody else serve him after that. He wanted to know her schedule, whether she was on the bar or on the floor. He became everybody's favorite customer -- because one person finally figured out he was not being difficult, he just wanted somebody to match him.

That is hospitality. That is the entire job, right there.

If you are anywhere near the Seacoast, you have got seven reasons to get in the car. Lil's Cafe, Henry's Bagel and Deli, Salty Spirits, and Dudley Street Pizza are all in Kittery, Maine -- three of them within a short walk of each other in Wallingford Square. The Islander Cafe is in New Castle, New Hampshire, Stella's Cafe is in Dover, and June's Cafe is at 171 Main Street in Newmarket.

Get a cruller. Get the Dutch baby. Sit at that fourteen-seat bar at Salty Spirits and order the lobster tacos. And go say hello to Deb, because she is probably standing behind one of those counters right now.

Watch the full episode, and tell me in the comments which of the seven you are hitting first. I have got a list going myself.

lilscafe.com | henrysbagel.com | saltyspiritskittery.com | dudleystreetpizza.com | theislandercafe.com | stellasdover.com | junescafenh.com

Find Beyond the Plate everywhere: linktr.ee/BeyondtheplateNH

This episode is sponsored by Belmont Hall & Restaurant in Manchester, NH -- family-owned for over 90 years. belmonthall.net

LISTEN + FOLLOW

New episodes every Tuesday -- Beyond the Plate with Carol

YouTube: youtube.com/@beyondtheplatewithcarol

Instagram: @beyondtheplatenh

TikTok: @nhbeyondtheplate

Facebook: Beyond the Plate with Carol

All links: linktr.ee/BeyondtheplateNH

ABOUT CAROL ERICKSON

Carol Erickson has owned Red Arrow Diner since 1987 -- four locations across New Hampshire, open 24/7. She started Beyond the Plate to tell the real stories behind the people who make New England's food and hospitality scene what it is. Not just what's on the menu. What's behind it.

Red Arrow Diner: redarrowdiner.com  |  @redarrow24diner