The Rusticator Restaurant in Brooksville, part of the Oakland House Seaside Resort, starts its summer season on Saturday with a new chef. Rich Hanson, owner and executive chef of Cleonice Mediterranean Bistro in Ellsworth, will take the reins.—PHOTO COURTESY OF THE OAKLAND HOUSE SEASIDE RESORT

BROOKSVILLE — A new chef is reinventing old cuisine at the Oakland House Seaside Resort.

Rich Hanson (left), the new executive chef at the Rusticator Restaurant, poses with nephew and chef de cuisine, Jeremy Hanson, in the newly renovated kitchen.—STAFF PHOTO BY CYNDI WOOD

The restaurant will open this Saturday (June 21).

“My role is to kind of reimagine the cuisine here and train the staff,” Hanson said last week.

The changes at the restaurant are the result of a partnership between two couples: innkeepers Jim and Sally Littlefield and Rich and Cary Hanson.

It was the Littlefields who asked Rich to join the restaurant early this spring. After accepting the offer, Rich was faced with the demanding prospect of running two restaurants 25 miles apart. His wife, Cary, helps ease the burden by managing Cleonice and Artisana, the couple’s Bucksport farm.

Hanson will bring his cooking experience and passion for locally produced ingredients to the Rusticator, but not Cleonice’s signature Mediterranean flavors.

Instead, the menu will focus on dishes that might have been served when the restaurant first opened at the height of the Gilded Age.

“Food from the place and of the time, since 1889,” is the Rusticator’s motto.

Don’t be surprised if some Asian influences or a side of buffalo also end up on the menu.

Hanson said he plans to incorporate the area clipper ship tradition into his food. The trade ships once brought Chinese and Indian flavors to coastal Maine.

Buffalo will be served in honor of a herd that once roamed nearby Long Island. The island’s former owners imported the animals.

“They’re gone, they had to go somewhere,” Hanson said.

Dishes will take advantage of local produce, seafood and cottage industry products like cheese.

A sample menu includes Maine free range chicken fricassee with buttermilk biscuits, grilled Maine grass-fed ribeye with a wild mushroom jus and roasted hook and line caught halibut filet with Castine Clipper Ship chutney served with Maine shrimp kedgeree.

Hanson will draw inspiration for items like lobster thermodore from an original menu from Delmonico’s Steak House in New York. Delmonico’s, which opened in 1837, is known as one of America’s first fine dining restaurants.

Produce from the Hansons’ farm and other local growers will be key.

Hanson said he thought it was “ridiculous” to use garlic from China or peaches from Argentina.

“We have plenty of delicious food here,” he said. “We can eat in the season.”

Chefs only have to step out the restaurant’s back door to pluck fresh herbs from the kitchen garden. The small plot also provides flowers for the dining room tables.

Hanson’s cooking is well known locally. He cooked for seven years at Jonathan’s Restaurant in Blue Hill before opening Cleonice in 2002.

The James Beard Society recently nominated him for the prestigious New England Regional Chef of the Year award.

Hanson has brought on his nephew, Jeremy Hanson, to serve as chef de cuisine at the Rusticator.

This is the first time the pair has worked together.

“That’s really animating the whole process,” Hanson said. “He’ll be putting my imagination into action in the kitchen.”

Jeremy Hanson left a job as a chef in Charlotte, N.C., to work with his uncle. He has also cooked in Boston and at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

Jeff Kelly, the chef de cuisine at Cleonice, will help run that kitchen as Rich divides his time between the two restaurants.

Operating two kitchens is no easy task.

“Right now I’m trying to work 36 hours a day,” Hanson said. “Maybe after we’re started I’ll be able to bring it down to 24.”

Jim and Sally Littlefield say they are thrilled to have Hanson on board.

Jim’s family has owned the seaside property for eight generations. His great-great-great-great-great grandparents settled there when the area was still owned by the French.

The original homestead was later transformed into a resort, which now has 15 cottages and a 10-room inn.

“We’ve always been thought of as a place to go for special occasions,” Jim said of the recent changes at the restaurant. “We’re creating an environment that’s more accessible.”

The Rusticator will serve dinner nightly except for Thursday. The first seating will be at 5:15 p.m. The second seating, at 7:30 p.m., will include complimentary hors d’ouevres on the porch. Entrees start at $19 and appetizers will start at $5. On Thursdays, instead of traditional dinner service, there will be a lobster picnic by the shore at 6 p.m.

Breakfast will be served buffet style on the restaurant patio from 8 to 9:30 a.m. Sunday brunch is served from 9 to 11 a.m.

The Oakland House Seaside Resort is located at 435 Herrick Road in Brooksville. Reservations are encouraged. For more information, call (800) 359-RELAX.