"Right until they closed the road, it was working."
Kirk Linder said that back in February, months before he and his husband and business partner, chef Charlie Zorich, quietly took Hey Sailor offline on Searsport's Main Street. He was describing what a two year Route 1 reconstruction had done to a bar that depended on people driving past at the right moment. On September 11, the Bangor Daily News confirmed what the silence on Hey Sailor's social pages had already suggested: the restaurant was closed for good.
It's the second closure in about a year from this same ownership group, and the first one happened four miles up the coast in Stockton Springs. The Hichborn, the destination restaurant Linder and Zorich opened in 2018 inside the historic Nathan G. Hichborn House on Church Street, closed in 2025. The Church Street property sold this past July for $695,000.
Two restaurants, two different neighborhoods, one ownership group, gone within a year of each other. What's left standing in Stockton Springs says a lot about how this town actually eats.
The Timeline
| Restaurant | Town | Status | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Hichborn | Stockton Springs | Closed, property sold | Closed 2025, sold July 2026 for $695,000 |
| Hey Sailor | Searsport | Closed | Confirmed September 11, 2026 |
| The Club Marina and Bar | Stockton Springs | Open | Seasonal weekend hours |
| Just Barb's | Stockton Springs | Open | Wednesday through Sunday |
Two Different Bets on the Same Stretch of Route 1
The Hichborn ran a 30 to 45 seat dining room on a prix fixe format, five to seven courses built around whatever local farms and fishers had that week, reservations that filled up in season. It drew the kind of writeup that calls a restaurant a destination. Guests planned an evening around it.
Hey Sailor was the more casual sibling in Searsport, built around tacos and a bar. It didn't ask anyone to plan a whole evening. It asked people to already be driving down Main Street and see an open door.
Both models needed something neither could generate on its own: uninterrupted traffic. The Hichborn needed people who'd already made a reservation and would still make the drive. Hey Sailor needed people who were already passing through. When the state spent 2023 and 2024 rebuilding Route 1 through Searsport, down to one lane northbound with a long detour for southbound drivers, it took away exactly the thing Hey Sailor's business depended on. Linder's building on Main Street has been listed for sale since last summer, with a $1.1 million asking price still active as of this month.
What's Still Setting Tables in Town
None of that touched the two places in Stockton Springs that were never built around a reservation book or drive-through traffic.
The Club Marina and Bar sits at 12 Cape Docks Road, inside what used to be the private Stockton Harbor Yacht Club before owner Jillian Liversidge and her husband Sandy bought the building. Liversidge grew up in Harpswell between her mother's restaurant kitchen and her father's lobster boat, and the menu still runs on that same short supply line. Lobster comes off Stockton Harbor boats. Produce comes from Jergenson Family Farm up the street. The restaurant keeps seasonal weekend hours on the water, no five course commitment required, just a stool at the bar or a table on the deck.
A few blocks over on West Main Street, Just Barb's has been serving fried clams and a Friday prime rib special long enough that regulars plan their week around it. It's a seafood shack, open Wednesday through Sunday, and it still ranks as Stockton Springs' most reviewed restaurant on the major review platforms. Neither the Club nor Just Barb's ever needed an out of town diner to plan around road construction or book a table months out. They needed a harbor, a farm up the street, and a weekend.
There's a newer entry too. Stewart's Blueberries, long known for its wild blueberry harvest, has added a dining side that's new enough to still be looking for its first customer reviews, a sign the town's food scene is adding on even in the same stretch of months that took the Hichborn and Hey Sailor down.
The Irony in the Hichborn's Own Pitch
Zorich once explained why he and Linder picked Stockton Springs for the Hichborn in the first place: nearly every ingredient on the menu could be sourced within a few miles, from oysters harvested at the harbor to ginger grown just up the road. That reasoning still holds today. It's just a different restaurant name on the door now, and a different kind of menu behind it. The ingredients never left town. What left was the format built around asking someone to drive in for them on a set night with a set price.
Why This Matters If You Live Here
None of this is really about a road project or a restaurant group's business decisions. It's about which kind of business this particular stretch of coast can actually carry. A dining room that depends on people deciding, weeks in advance, to make Stockton Springs their destination for the evening is competing with every other coastal town between Portland and Bar Harbor doing the same pitch. A dock bar that depends on the boats already tied up outside and the farm already up the road isn't competing with anywhere else. It's just open.
If you're heading out this month, Fort Point State Park's staffed season runs through October 15, which means there's still time to pair a dinner at the Club Marina and Bar with a walk out to the lighthouse before the gate goes back to unstaffed winter hours. The harbor that's been feeding this town's restaurants for two centuries isn't going anywhere.
Stockton Springs didn't lose its dining scene this year. The places built on the harbor and the farm up the street are still setting tables.
Know the town's rhythms and want to know what a place like this is actually worth, or what it takes to live here year round? Joseph Saltalamachia has spent years working Central Maine's coast and inland towns alike. Let's Connect.
