About the Roost Cafe and Bistro
In a warm and cozy, welcoming atmosphere, Roost Café and Bistro brings an eclectic flair to regional cuisine using local products as much as possible. Our philosophy is hand-crafted entrees and appetizers that are exquisite, yet affordable. We pride ourselves on classical cooking techniques with contemporary flavors and creations that are perfect for a bistro.
Our affordable menus give our guests the option of selecting just an entrée or sampling multiple items. In the Spring, Summer and early Fall, our patio is also the right choice for alfresco dining for breakfast, lunch and dinners. We call it our Seacoast’s, little European “Biergarten”, flanked by overflowing window boxes, flowering vines growing on small fences and heavy French court-yard gates.
We are minutes north of York and minutes south of Ogunquit.
About the staff
Proprietors – Aldo Vallecillo and Rob Pinkham
Chefs Extraordinaire – Michael Spain and Gretchen Shortway
About Aldo and Rob
Aldo and Rob have been working in the food industry since 1992, but have always had an interest in food and cooking since their youth. Their long tenure of 14 years owning and managing a restaurant has taught them many things about self-employment, employees, customer service and the need for always re-creating for the customer, a value-added experience.
A great part of their success is the balance of skills and strengths in the relationship with his partner, Aldo. Aldo is the partner who has the artistic talent; his vision of colors, sounds, trends and peoples’ ooohs and aaaaahs lays the huge visual foundation and overall ambiance of the work, home, restaurant and rental environments he has created. Aldo’s implementation of ideas and creativity not only includes the interior décor and ambiance, but also spreads outside to the garden and oasis atmosphere of landscape and landscape design. To appreciate Roost’s oasis on Route 1, one must come and enjoy our Alfresco European Style Biergarten.
During these years in Boston, they renovated 2 houses. One house was an 18 room 1872 Victorian and the other was an 1842 Greek Revival. The Victorian house and its’ garden were on many home tours including a sub-tour of the famed Beacon Hill House and Garden Tours. They have also renovated a house in Kennebunk, Maine and another in Ogunquit, Maine, where they now reside.
It then became time for Rob and Aldo to combine their talents and develop a new venture based on each of their interests, experience, talents and passions. This is where Cliff Lodge Restaurant was developed and implemented in 1992 after finding a 100 year old lake house renovating it and converting it into a food establishment with 60 interior seats and 100 exterior deck seats. Their first Chef was with them for 6 years and their Lead Waitperson, Heidi was with them for 13 years. Another wait staff person, Norma, was with them 11 years. Many of the seasonal wait and kitchen staff returned summer after summer to earn money for college. Rob managed the kitchen and front of the house and Aldo took care of all the maintenance, gardens and bartending 7 nights a week, keeping the Cheers style bar animated. All of the combined efforts garnered them, among others, 2 respectable travel recommendations. One was from Travelocity.com and the other was from Yankee Magazine. None of the awards nor travel book entries was solicited. Each was earned by customer satisfaction, referrals and their comments.
After 14 successfull years, Aldo and Rob decided to close the restaurant and move the the Maine Seacoast where they had been vacationing for over 20 years and where they owned a summer home.
About Mike Spain
Mike is an incredibly talented Chef. Upon meeting him, you will see a quiet, calm and almost bashful person. However, passion for food and creative ways to prepare it are all fired up inside of him. Get him behind the line and voila – the ideas break free yet keeping an even paced, even tempered and methodical presence.
During High School, Mike actually worked for Aldo and Rob for three years in their restaurant on Newfound Lake, NH. He then went on to college and was studying Criminal Justice and was also working full time in a very busy, fine dining restaurant. In his third year of Criminal Justice, he came to the conclusion that Cooking was his passion, not law. So, he enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY and completed his AOS degree and finished on the Dean’s list, the top of his class. Mike’s experience has been working at Disney where they produced over 1400 meals a day to the honored offer of working under a James Beard Award winning Chef in a fine dining venue.
Besides Bistro food and cooking, Mike loves to smoke meats and fishes and also makes his own sausages which are incorporated in our menus.
About Gretchen Shortway
We are thrilled and honored to have Gretchen also working with us again. She is also an extremely talented Chef and those talents developed in many, many forms, all of which, to enormous acclaim and accolade, culminated in her owning her own restaurant on the waterfront of Lake Winnipesaukee, NH. She has catered events for over 20 years from small intimate parties to grand scale social events.
Much of her education and training came from her studies in Paris, Italy and NYC, but prior to that, was primarily educated in the business by her father. He was a Chef and owner of a few restaurants on the seacoast of NH. Since her childhood, Gretchen, down to the core, has restaurant in her bones. It is so much so, that her son, too, is an award-winning Chef in New York. Gretchen’s passion for food and for hospitality and the customer service is only surpassed by her knowledge of food and cooking. One can ask her anything about styles of food and or techniques and she can nail it 99.9 percent of the time. Her love of the customer is clear and makes everyone who enters our doors feel comfortable and welcomed. You will see her running to greet a customer and then 30 seconds later on the line cooking or thrusting her arms deep into the soapy water to get the dirty dishes done.