The Bacon Tree is best known for its breakfast menu, which has featured bacon-wrapped asparagus eggs Benedict.
Owners Leslie Wilson, who serves as head chef, and husband David Wilson, who bakes everything from the breads to biscuits and scones, didn’t attend culinary school. Instead, they learned by cooking for family members and working in the foodservice industry.
The restaurant developed a cult following for reservation-only Friday night dinners, which feature a different menu every week. But The Bacon Tree is best known for breakfast which includes plenty of bacon. But that’s as far as the Wilson’s bacon inspiration goes.
The Bacon Tree restaurant was named after an incident in Winterport’s history. According to the city’s website, “The Bacon Tree” got its name when a man with a lot of bacon carried it to a thick Norway pine and hung the pieces in the branches to conceal them from the invading British.
“The measure was successful,” the story on the website states. “The British passed along the road a short distance from the tree without observing its savory fruit, and the man saved his bacon.”