New Swanville restaurant offers seasonal farm-to-table cuisine

The owners of a new farm-to-table restaurant in Swanville gave their establishment an appropriate title — it’s called Circumstance.

Just as circumstances are changing all the time, the new eatery will not have a set menu throughout the year. Instead of following a specific cuisine or genre, the menus will change every week or two, updated on Mondays, with serving options dependent on the season and what nature yields.

“We never flip the menu entirely; right now we’re working with a lot of flowers, we work with a lot of foraged ingredients,” said owner and chef Khris Hogg.

He gave the example of roses, which appear in some menu items such as ice cream: “Roses are blooming right now. Roses won’t be blooming in a couple weeks, so there probably won’t be as much on the menu; it’s that kind of thing… It’s more of ingredients coming and going.”

Hogg is originally from Pennsylvania, but he has led something of a nomadic lifestyle that ultimately brought him and his family to Maine. This isn’t his first rodeo in the food business, either; he previously started and ran a cider bar and restaurant in Belfast called Perennial.

“That was great,” Hogg said of Perennial. “But once we started having a family, it’s kind of hard to keep doing the nights and weekends, six days a week, but still felt like I had a lot more to offer, particularly in terms of the food.”

Now, he has started the 24-seat restaurant Circumstance in a former barn on his homestead in Swanville. But while Perennial was open six days a week, his new venture will only be open for dinner on Fridays and Saturdays, and for brunch on Sundays.

He says that pace is more suited to his lifestyle as a parent to young children with his wife, Lizzie. On his days off, he will be keeping up and continuing with his cider-making ventures, some of which will be offered as pairings with menu options.

Three-course meals will generally consist of soup, a salad or vegetable dish, and whatever meat or fish is the main course, said Hogg. There are also six-course offerings that will include some additional dishes and desserts.

To kick off the summer season and the soft opening of the restaurant, the three-course menu now includes fermented knotweed with pickled chive blossom and birch syrup, baked radishes with sunflower pistou and cured egg yolk, and coppa with milk and honey brine, locust and chamomile broth, and spring carrots.

The six-course also offers spring turnip soup made with oyster cream and served with scallop chips, marinated mussels on roasted garlic scape toast, and rose ice cream with strawberry compote and elderflower shortbread.

The current brunch board includes charred scallion sausage, kimchi, Finocchiona salami, marinated mussels, roasted scape puree, cheeses, soft-boiled eggs, and sourdough.

According to Hogg, ingredients will be organically grown, locally sourced, and — when required — foraged by him. Hogg is also raising some herbs and supplemental ingredients of his own, including eggs. Area farms and food producers will provide the other ingredients, such as vegetables and pork.

Working out of what had once been an unfinished barn in his side yard, Hogg has — over the course of a year — added electricity, plumbing, windows, an entryway and a back wall, transforming it into the intimate dining space that now greets guests.

Hogg says his interest in continuing to work in the culinary field has driven him to go through all that effort to renovate the barn.

“It had been that way for probably 20 years,” said Hogg. “We had lived here for eight years. There was always the question, ‘What’s the highest and best use of that going to be?’ So hopefully, this is it.”

Reservations are required to dine at Circumstance — not for an air of exclusivity, said Hogg, but because of the limited parking and seating options.

Reservations for dinner on Friday and Saturday and brunch on Sunday can be made by emailing info@circumstancemaine.com .