Gather

Thoroughly unimpressed! With reservations for brunch our group of 5 still had to wait about 10 minutes to be seated. It took an hour to be served and each dish was only warm. No evidence of warming lamps in the open kitchen (apparently a good reason to charge more for the food). The waitress’s offer to warm the food would have meant a microwave, guaranteed to food to rubber. The music was alright but with nothing to absorb sound, conversation became impossible with people sitting across the table. Also it seems that the opening routine doesn’t include checking the level of soap in the bathroom because there was none in the women’s room and no one knew how to open the dispenser. The first 2 letters of the name should stand for «go away.»

I went to Gather with my mother-​in-​law on the recommendation of a colleague and we both came away thoroughly impressed.
The space and décor are beautiful, clearly a lot of thought has gone into the overall look and feel of this old masonic temple.
Our server Anika was delightful without being ‘too much’ like so many in the service industry.
We started off with house cocktails, one of which (my MIL’s) had kale in it… Personally i hate kale but this drink was delicious!
Our app’s arrived promptly and although not expecting much from chicken wings and fish cakes the seasoning and garnishes turned them into something quite special!
The main courses likewise continued to impress, my chorizo meatloaf with succotash and pickled asparagus was delicious, I only wish I had asked for a spoon so I could have slurped the last of the liquid from my bowl.
The flour less chocolate tart for we shared for dessert was a great way to end the meal, sweet and rich without being sickly.
I would definitely recommend this farm to table restaurant to anyone who enjoys good local food at a reasonable price.

We visited on a fairly slow Thursday evening.
The place itself is warm and inviting and the staff is pleasant and helpful. The menu seems a little brief and kind of pricey.
I ordered the burger and fries and they were good. My wife had the fish tacos and they looked a mess and fell apart.
We also ordered a supreme pizza that came to the table on the burnt side, so we returned it. Too bad. The pizza at the table next to us looked tasty!
The atmosphere has the potential to be good. The food selections and our actual orders were average to poor.

Awesome brunch! I had the special Eggs Benedict: maple bacon, chipotle hollandaise and smoked greens on a perfectly baked wedge of cornbread! Might have benefited from a little more salt but other than that, I am extremely satisfied!
The staff were all very friendly and helpful. Service was quick and the place was not that crowded at all at 11:30 on a Sunday brunch.
First brunch in Maine. So far soooo good.

Came with my cousins for hubbys birthday dinner. It was so good. I had fish tacos they were a bit spicy but ok. My cousin said her falafel was great hubby had a fantastic burger and my cousins hubby had the special fried chicken with greens and grits. We all laughed and drank and had dessert too. Cheesecake and flourless chocolate torte and crème brûlée. So delish! We lov Gather and we’re glad we could take my visiting cousins there!

This place looks really good on paper, the whole premise of it is great, but the only thing we enjoyed here-​was the soda, and the service. I really wanted it to be good… but it really, really was not…

Neat farm-​to-​table restaurant in Yarmouth! We went to Gather on a Wednesday night for their live music which is a lot of fun for both kids and adults. The restaurant is true to its name with a large communal table in the middle of the restaurant.
Our starters of Brussel sprouts, Sunchoke Tots, and Mussels were all big hits at the table. For my entrée, I got the Drop Fish Dumpling Bow (cod, shrimp, vegetable noodles, miso, and sambal chili paste) which was unique, delicious and has inspired me to make my own version at home. We didn’t get any of their wood-​fired pizzas but they looked mighty tasty.
Service was good and there are plenty of options for beer and wine. Overall, it was a nice first experience. I hope to return in the future and just might have to get one of their pizzas!

Soda try their sodas.
Their diverse selection of intense invigorating sodas are unbelievable.
The food is great too but the sodas and music were outstanding.
Communal tables maybe atmosphere so engaging we got to chat with everyone around us our kids got to play with everyone around us it was an absolute wonderful time.
Definitely the hidden gem of Yarmouth

The food here is quite good, with creative appetizers and entrees. There is always a pizza on the menu with ingredients you would not expect to be as delicious as they are. The service is very friendly. The selection of wines is good, and the selection of beers is even better. The only negative for me, since I like to plan my evenings, is that Gather does not take reservations. If we didn’t have such a good time here, the lack of reservations would have brought them to a three. Owners, I hope you reconsider that policy!

Came here on a Wednesday with a fairly large group of friends. I’m always a little bit leery of restaurants that use only a single-​word adverb or adjective as their name; it generally means the place is too expensive, trendy, and/​or pretentious for my ilk. I was happy to learn that Gather was not ²⁄₃ of this, as I found it to be very friendly and cozy. The menu is a bit on the pricey side, however many of the ingredients seem to be locally sourced. The restaurant is open concept and it feels like a Great Hall of olden days. The kitchen is unique, in that it seems to be up on a raised daïs in the back of the hall. There was a singer playing music (a bit loud?) almost the entire time we were there.
What I sampled:
Marinaded Olives: Good. But they’re olives, and olives are always awesome.
Lamb & Pork Meatballs: Probably my favorite appetizer. Super tasty.
Cheddar Fritters: Yes! Great, and it paired well with the onion jam.
Brussels Sprouts. Is it a Maine restaurant code to have sprouts on menu? It certainly seems like it, but you won’t find me complaining. This were on par.
Fish Taco: I was pleasantly surprised by how good this was — especially the tortilla.
What I ordered:
Manhattan ($ 9?): About right for the price. Decently made.
Lentil-​Goat Cheese Risotto with Beet and Pickled fennel ($ 19): Meh. I was actually really excited to order this, but it ended up being extremely bland. For the portion, this is more like a $ 11 or $ 12 dish. $ 19 is an incredible stretch.
Maple Crème Broulee ($Can’t recall): Fantastic. Great take on this dessert, and especially good washed down with coffee.
I kept going back and forth on whether to give 3 or 4 stars. I’m sticking with 4, even though I had to listen to the musician play ‘Take It Easy’ by the Eagles.

My first thought when I sat down at our table was «did they purposely make the chairs this uncomfortable so people would eat and leave faster? More table turnover=more money for the restaurant. The back of the chair is made of metal posts that curve inward and narrow right at your butt so its sticking into your back the entire time. I purposely had to sit at the edge of the seat and hover over the table. This place isn’t cheap they can afford more comfortable chairs.
My second thought was that I cannot hear the people sitting right next to me because of the guy singing and playing the guitar. It was so incredibly loud that our group couldn’t hear each other or hear the poor waiter who was trying to tell us about the specials. I know I’m not the only one who just smiled and nodded at him and pretended to hear what he was saying. This is supposed to be a finer dining restaurant– people want to be able to talk to their company. Not be forced to eat thinking to themselves or yell across the table the entire time. Everyone at my table (that I was able to hear) thought the same thing and found it quite annoying. However, the server was really nice and seemed to love being there. Kudos to him :)
I ordered the pumpkin ricotta pizza ($ 14). It was great, I would order it again. It was sweet and flavorful. As a table we shared some sun choke tots. They were okay but not memorable. Wouldn’t order again.
The honey margaritas ($ 9) are excellent. I ordered two of them. My friends down at the other end of the table caught me licking the rim clean and laughed. Would definitely order these again.
So all in all I’d really like to give the place 2.5 stars. Probably won’t come back. If I do, it’ll be with one other person so we can get a small table where we can hear each other, just in case its obnoxiously loud like this time was. Don’t come here if you’re looking for a quiet or intimate setting. Oh and I thought all the pitch forks that littered the walls as the décor was weird.

I’ve visited Gather on three occasions and each time, the quality of the food drops a half a star. It’m giving it four stars today, so it’s still pretty good.
2÷17÷16 I went with a group of 13, which is hard to manage, especially with 10 separate checks. Being a former server, I felt our server’s pain. He had a few hiccups when separating the checks, and the food didn’t come out all together (oops) but overall, bravo! We were a hard bunch to manage.
The Good: You know you are getting fresh local food when you eat here. The Bad: Some of the food was really mild or lacking flavor. The Ugly: The music was so loud you could not hear your table mates or the server. AND there is a HUGE table that runs almost the length of the dining room, it seats like 20 people +/​-​. I guess this is great when you don’t want to talk to your dinner companions, but when you want to chat, and not sit right next to big parties, it’s awkward and uncomfortable.
Let me explain the quality of food. I had the sunchokes (YUM!) and then the carrot, ginger soup (YUM!), then the Fusilli Col Boco for my main course. The pesto was very earthy without enough savory. It could have used more salt or maybe some more of the beet emulsion, which was the best part of the dish. Banana anglaise for dessert was very, very good.
The service and food quality is inconsistent here so I’m averaging my experiences here into 3 stars.

Eh. That’s about all I can say. I wanted it to be great, but it wasn’t and I left feeling underwhelmed by everything.
First off, the parking was not good. The parking was very narrow and even though the restaurant didn’t seem to be full, there was no spaces available. I ended up parking down the street and having to walk. Maybe it’s a shared lot with another business? I don’t know.
Our group sat at a long table in the middle of the room. The chairs were incredibly uncomfortable. Hard metal with no cushion and the way the back met the seat, I had metal bars pressing into my kidneys all night. Not particularly pleasant. The music drove me insane all evening. There was a guy playing a guitar and singing and it was way too loud. I couldn’t hear anyone sitting around me and it made conversation very difficult. The waiter was standing right behind me telling us about the specials and I could barely hear what he was saying. It made for a difficult dining experience because we were all basically yelling at each other to be heard.
The food wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible. I enjoyed the sun choke tots even though they were basically just smashed and fried. The taste was good but doesn’t pair well with the truffle ketchup, that pairing gave it a weird after taste that I wasn’t a fan of. I was trying to stay budget conscious so I ordered a burger from the menu. I asked for well done but it was still pink in the middle. I’m not sure the waiter even heard me correctly because of the music, so I just ate it anyway. It was a middle of the road burger, nothing special to write home about. I got fries with it and they were pretty good, if it a bit overcooked. It was sad when I got to the bottom of the fry pile and it was all just little fry bits that weren’t edible. The only highlight to my meal was the dessert. I got a Meyer lemon napoleon that came with blood orange slices and a blood orange sauce. The sauce had a bit of a bite to it which balanced the sweetness of the lemon cream nicely.
Overall, there are better restaurants with better atmosphere and cheaper prices closer to home for me. I probably won’t be back here after this experience.

This is one of those classic examples where I’m torn between a 3 and a 4 — so, let’s call this a 3.5? Here’s why the wiffle-​waffle between the two ratings:
****4 Star: The Service, Atmosphere, Food
+ Service:
We had one young server for our very large party. And he mostly did a fantastic job — he was patient, he was accommodating, he was knowledgeable about the menu and ingredients, and he had a smile on his face the whole darn time.
+ Atmosphere:
I agree with what other reviewers said… this feels like a really charming, upscale Elks Lodge. Or like a tavern you might enter in an RPG set in a fictional medievalesque time. Also, the «stage» where the chefs are is kind of cool (and doesn’t come off pretentious at all which it could when you’re spotlight yourself like that).
+ Food:
. Sunchoke Tots with Truffle Ketchup ($ 8): These instantly have become one of my favorite foods. Sunchokes, for those of you not in the know, are also known as Jerusalem Artichokes. They’re a fibrous tuber that are sort of like a cross between a potato and an artichoke in both texture and flavor. Anyway, Gather serves them up slightly smashed, slightly fried and alongside some truffle ketchup. And I ate just about all of them from the four orders on our table. Are you gonna eat that? No. THEN IT’S MINE. Nom nom nom… (side note: it’s seriously too bad these are seasonal, but it’s seriously awesome Gather is so conscious about serving things that are).
***3 Star: Also the Service, Atmosphere, Food
— Service:
While the young server did a great job, he had a difficult time figuring out who ordered what when it came time to split the bill despite us telling him ahead of time who ordered what. Also (I know we were a large party and this is probably why, but…) our food came out very sporadically. Nobody at the table could figure out who was going to get what next (some folks were already finishing their desserts while other folks were just receiving their dinner). It was terribly inconsistent.
— Atmosphere:
Because there was an acoustic guitarist when we came, my large party — who was sat nearly in front of the musician — could barely hear each other.
— Food:
. Deviled Eggs with Saffron & Paprika ($ 5): All I could taste was paprika. A mouthful of creamy texture from the yolk, and tons of paprika.
. Apple & Cheddar Fritters with Onion Jam ($ 6): Was disappointed with these, too, as I didn’t really feel like they tasted very apple or cheddar-​y. They mostly tasted like fried balls of greasy dough. Although, the onion jam was really, very tasty (I could imagine topping brie with it and enjoying with a rosemary cracker)!
. Lentil-​Goat Cheese Risotto with Beet and Pickled fennel ($ 19): I wanted to love this. But it missed the mark in my opinion for a couple reasons. Because the lentils, risotto, and beets had such a strong earthy flavor, the dish needed a bit more goat cheese for a pop of tang. Also this was highly under-​seasoned. We ended up getting marinated olives at the last minute, and I’m glad we did because the salt from them really helped bring out the flavors in this meal.
Anyway, I definitely think this is one of those places where you need to just go and have your own experience. Because there is a lot of good happening here. I still plan on coming back to try the brunch at some point!

Came here with a large group tonight. We sat at a long table that was directly connected to another long table in the middle. I ended up sitting in the middle of my group and another group. Wasn’t ideal for hearing the whole table and the sad acoustic live music did not do anything to bring up the mood of this large room.
We started with the tots, when they brought them to the table it was not what i expected. It wasn’t really a tot more of a squished potato fried. We also had the fries which were a little over cooked but still pretty good.
For dinner I had an app the sausage and beans. Which was amazing. I could have eaten about two more servings of this. The flavors were perfect.
I ended the night with the maple cream brûlée which was delicious and a perfect ending to the night.
After eating the live music finally ended and I was finally able to hear the group.

I came here for dinner as part of a group. The setup was an open concept with large kitchen in the back. We were seated at a long table but shoulder to shoulder with another group. It was a bit strange. There was a musician playing guitar and singing. He used a microphone and the sound overtook the room. I couldn’t hear the person right next me. The chairs were strangely uncomfortable. The décor was old lanterns and garden equipment.
The waiter seemed very excited about everything on the menu but a little disorganized. He was very friendly and polite. The meals came out a bit staggered. Everything was served on wooden cutting boards. We ordered a few apps to share. The brat n beans were wonderful with house made beans that were flavorful and soft. The Rosemary fries were over cooked. The deviled eggs had unique flavor of saffron and topped with diced onions. The inside was a nice creamy texture.
The desserts were excellent. The Meyer lemon Neapolitan dessert was wonderful. It had perfect citrus flavors with lemon and blood orange. I would have loved to try them all.

Oh no… so much potential.
The four of us came here in for brunch today (Sunday)…and we were primed to love it.
The Good:
— Awesome setting. I love the layout and feel of the open community center (Masonic meeting room?)
— Bluegrass band during brunch?! Yes, please!
— French toast, burger and sausage were all delicious
The Bad:
— The squash in my daughter’s omelette was not cooked. Like, not even close. Crunchy.
— The corned beef in my (special) benedict was too chewy to actually eat. I can’t remember the last time I had to take something out of my mouth in a restaurant… but it happened today.
— I’ve never seen a waitress bring out all the dishes but one. but it happened here. «The french toast is going to be a few more minutes.» So the rest of us ate while my ten year old looked at us.
The Okay:
— Service was pleasant, but a tad slow.
— The stuff that wasn’t bad, was pretty good.
Not going back for brunch. Maybe we’ll give it another go for dinner? The setting is so awesome that it makes the gamble worth it…

I hate giving less than five stars, those three stars just haunt me, tease me, tear me up inside. I don’t do this for giggles, so I have a real valid issue when I give a three.
So the parking was ok, the entrance and dining area was very cool. Loved how the cooks were on stage. We chose to eat outside since it was nice out and the inside seemed a bit dark (could have been my eyes hadn’t yet adjusted). Outside the seating overlooked the parking lot and the town’s overpass. So nothing very scenic but it was nice whether to savor.
Our food came out promptly and our house sodas were amazing. I highly recommend the mint lime soda, Yum!
The food itself was lack luster. We split the corn fritters which could have been a bit more crunchy, but maybe that’s just me. I had the salmon and though it was well cooked it didn’t seem to grab me. It was also the special she had listed and even though I should have asked they should list all the main items that will be on my plate. For example: I hate olives. The orzo pasta had olives… lots of them. Sigh. Maybe she said a fancy word for this be olivey! I’m slow on those fancy smancy food words, so maybe it was me.
My husband got the veggie burger and gave me a shrug when I asked how it was, «it’s good». He loved the fries though.
The price for the farm fresh was what I expected but for how it tasted, I would say it was kind of steep.
The waitress was kind and charming. She was also very apologetic when she realized she forgot my husband’s refill and took his other drink off the tab as an olive branch.

Went to Gathers for the first time today, love sitting outside for brunch. The service was not at all impressive and seemed less interested in the customers.
Our server didn’t advise us of the daily specials yet one table that server did tell them. The food came finally which we both agreed was very dilicous and prepared with style and fanaize.
We will diffinietly go again perhaps next Sunday and bring a couple of friends, maybe the service will be better and just had a bad day.
We rate the following:
Bloody Marys which we give a perfect 10
Maine burger and homefries — 8
Heavos Ranchos — 8
French toast w/​fresh berries — 8
Service — 4
Price — 7
Atmosphere — 9

Yarmouth? Who goes to to Yarmouth? Sara N. and friends, that’s who.
After browsing through the internet, we stumbled upon this hidden gem in Yarmouth called Gather. But we debated… would it be worth the 15 minute drive from Portland? Why go here when Portland has tons of great restaurants of its own?
Well we went. From Portland to Yarmouth! I typed in the address into my phone, and 15 – 20 minutes later, Google Maps brought me to someone’s house, or so I thought. This operation actually, indeed, takes place in a fancy home. I was pleased to see that there was not a large crowd, and compared to downtown Portland, parking was a breeze.
I was greeted by a courteous staff who, as many people in my large group pointed out, were extremely knowledgeable about the daily specials and all items on the menu. We were also brought fancy water and free bread. The bread was thick, hearty, and tasty. The olive oil on the side was a nice touch as well.
«Slow and steady wins the race» should be the theme of this restaurant. Speed was not a strong-​suit of my visit. Service took awhile — for drinks, food, and the bill -, but it was always worth it (except for the bill).
Legendary Canadian Seb1 and I both had a veggie burger with goat cheese ($ 14). It was phenomenal to say the least. Even as a meat-​lover, I could dig this burger. But surprisingly, the pickle was a game changer. It was so unique, and it cannot be described in words. Seb1 & the gang agreed.
I was also fortunate to try M. Asta’s Tuna Tar Tar pizza. It tasted fancy. If the Queen of England could order a pizza, I assume it would be this. It was $ 17 and a daily special. Most of their pizzas are within the $ 9-​$ 14 range.
But then came the reason this place isn’t getting 5 stars besides the speed: the bill. This place is great — fine hospitality, fine atmosphere, and finer food — but you’ll pay for it. To give you an idea: soup is $ 7, most beers are $ 6-​$ 10, and most entrees are $ 19-​$ 26 (pizza and burgers are a little cheaper though). But staff was accommodating and able to spit our bill, even though it’s not something they normally do for large groups.
Although this place wasn’t cheap nor fast, the food and service were top-​notch. If you have the money, this is an ideal place for a date or family meal. Plus, you don’t have to worry about Portland’s horrendous parking and overcrowding of restaurants. I would definitely come back here.