A Band of Whitties: Meet the Crew Who Revived a Beloved Maine Restaurant & Bar

Just three weeks after Apple Lieser ’23 graduated from Whitman College with a degree in Politics and Environmental Studies, she received an unexpected call. 

It was January 2024. Her hometown of Castine, Maine—a coastal village with fewer than 1,000 residents—had just been struck by two devastating winter floods.

Her aunt and uncle’s commercial building—home to Dennett’s at the Wharf, one of the only restaurants and bars in the community—was nearly unrecognizable.

“The water level was about seven feet above normal,” says Lieser. “There was three feet of water in the back of the building, and we lost all of our appliances.” 

Lieser’s uncle and aunt, Kip and Judy Oberting, had previously leased the property to a succession of restaurateurs. But after the storms—and the extensive reconstruction needed to make the space usable again—no entrepreneur was willing to take on the financial risk of reopening the seaside restaurant and bar.

“My uncle sent a text to our family … asking if any of the cousins had interest in running a restaurant that summer,” Lieser recalls. Her cousin, Miles Oberting, floated the idea of running the kitchen with a few of his friends. But none of them were old enough to legally serve alcohol—and a bar without someone behind it was hardly a bar at all. 

That’s where Apple Lieser came in.

“I thought about it for a couple of days,” she says. “Then I said yes—but only if I could convince my friend Meredith from Whitman to join me.”

For Lieser and her family, it became clear that Dennett’s was more than a restaurant—it was a town necessity. “I would have no interest in running a restaurant anywhere other than Castine,” Lieser says. “The purpose of this restaurant is really to provide a place for the community to come together.”

Thus began the first iteration of the new Dennett’s at the Wharf, not just a seasonal town restaurant and bar, but a vital third space for the community of Castine.

Rebuilding a Community Gathering Place

The term “third space,” coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his 1989 book “The Great Good Place,” refers to informal gathering spots—cafés, bars and similar spaces—where community is forged and conversation flows freely. Home is the first space; work the second. But when it comes to creating and sustaining community, the third space can be just as vital. Think of it as a modern “commons”—a place where strangers and friends gather and connect, forming relationships within their community. Third spaces help combat loneliness and foster local engagement by bringing together diverse perspectives in neutral settings.

With Apple Lieser as bar and front-of-house manager, and Meredith McBranch ’24 (a Psychology major from New Mexico) as a key front-of-house team member as well as marketing and events manager, Dennett’s at the Wharf reopened in the summer of 2024.

It was a success: Lieser’s two sisters, brother, mother, and an extended network of cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends ran the restaurant. But it quickly became clear that if Dennett’s were to stay open the following season, it would need a much larger staff.

Lieser knew just the people to make it happen. A flurry of phone calls, texts and careful coordination from McBranch and Lieser, paired with the allure of small-town life, drew a crew of Whitties to Castine for the summer of 2025.

“I think the reason it was important to me to have Whitman friends out here running Dennett’s is that, when you graduate college, you never know when you’ll see all these people again,” Lieser says. “My Whitman friends are some of the most special people in my life, and I wasn’t sure when I would be able to have all of them in the same room for more than a weekend.”

Over the course of the summer, in addition to Lieser and McBranch, Namy Barnett ’23 (a Geology major from Colorado), Anna Feldman ’23 (a Biology major from Washington), Maea Fleming ’28 (a Gender Studies and Indigeneity, Race, and Ethnicity major from Colorado), Neave Fleming ’23 (an Environmental Humanities major from Colorado), Katherine Harris ’24 (an English major from Washington), Kate Joss-Bradley ’22 (a Religion major from Oregon), Annie Means ’22 (an Environmental Humanities major from Washington), Kaia Rae-Schweig ’24 (from California), and Alli Shinn ’23 (a Geology-Environmental Studies major from Washington) all became part of the Dennett’s team, each contributing to the restaurant’s vibrant, Whitman-infused energy.

Reimagining What Dennett’s Could Do

Since its reopening, the restaurant has worked to establish itself as a central gathering place in town—and Lieser’s Whitman friends have brought innovative ideas to the cause. One, for instance, was the launch of a bakery under the direction of bakery manager and bartender Alli Shinn.

What began as just an idea quickly became a staple of the Dennett’s experience. Originally the bakery was meant to produce fresh bread for lunch and dinner service, but under the direction of Shinn, Dennett’s launched early morning “Baker’s Hours.”

Much of her role revolved around designing systems, anticipating challenges and finding creative solutions—skills she credits to her liberal arts education, which emphasized critical thinking, adaptability and the ability to connect ideas across disciplines.

“The bakery was one giant experiment,” Shinn recalls. “A lot of groundwork had to be laid to make things run efficiently.” Shinn didn’t just oversee operations; she baked, managed inventory, decided how much product to make, and developed new weekly pastries. She also trained three other bakers, expanding the team’s capacity.

The building, which had sat empty for nearly two years, now bustled at all hours, a transformation driven largely by Shinn’s determination to make the bakery indispensable to the town’s daily rhythms.

That can-do attitude soon extended to evening programming, a marked shift from the previous summer. In 2024, Dennett’s hosted just a single event. In summer 2025, gatherings took place nearly every week—sometimes more than once—including trivia nights, live music performances, wedding celebrations, and even a half-birthday party for everyone in town born on Feb. 18.

“I think it just goes to show how many different ways it serves the community,” McBranch says.

Without Dennett’s at the Wharf, few, if any, local spaces can regularly accommodate gatherings of this scale. The town has responded with gratitude: Patrons frequently comment on the convivial atmosphere created by the staff and the range of programming now on offer.

“I think that also speaks to Whitman,” McBranch adds. “They send people out into the world who are eager to do a job well, take pride in their work, and approach things with creativity and joy.

A Little Walla Walla in Coastal Maine

In the final two weeks before closing for the season, some patrons were so delighted with the restaurant that they brought the staff a homemade flan as a gesture of thanks. “That’s something people often comment on—it’s such a warm, welcoming place to walk into,” says Lieser with a smile. “And I’ll also say, this town has never seen so many cowboy boots in its life. We bring a little West Coast, a little Walla Walla, to coastal Maine.”

That includes the bar’s most popular cocktail, Mer’s Margarita. “Technically, it should be called Mer’s Dad’s Margarita.” McBranch says, but “it doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well.”

McBranch’s father, Duncan McBranch ’85 (a Math and Physics double major at Whitman), developed the recipe in college while on the Whitman ski team. He made it for his friends, and in particular, for Molly McBranch ’85 (an Anthropology and Sociology major). The two Whitties would later marry. When Lieser and McBranch were developing the cocktail menu last summer, they thought it fitting to include a nod to their college days. 

Beyond the western apparel, hand-selected cocktail menu and friendliness, other elements of the restaurant’s design—chosen by Lieser and her family—also contribute to the space’s strong sense of community.

“We had to envision how we wanted to run a restaurant, and we knew we weren’t really interested in the classic table-service model,” Lieser says.

What emerged was a space that encourages lingering and mingling—more reminiscent of a European mess hall than a typical American eatery. A centralized host stand and a self-seating system replace traditional table service, giving diners the freedom to move around, strike up conversations, or join friends at another table. “It almost creates a cocktail-party feel in the restaurant,” Lieser says.

Beyond simply serving the community of Castine, there are subtler rewards to running a restaurant with friends.

“In my own life, being able to step back into intentional community building here at Dennett’s felt like reclaiming some of the values I learned and grew to love at Whitman,” says Shinn. “To be in a town where everyone else is also choosing community is really cool.”

For Shinn, Lieser, McBranch and the other Whitman alums at Dennett’s, the restaurant has become more than a business—it is a conduit for the kind of intentional, connected life they once experienced on campus. 

“It feels really special to have that energy come back into my world in a centralized way,” McBranch reflects. “And then to also see it play out in the wider town. Loving, tight-knit communities exist all over—you just have to find them or form them and stick with them.”

Lieser’s youngest sister, Sadie, will have a chance to build her own Whitman community this fall when she arrives on campus with the Class of 2030. 

Drop on by! You can find the latest Dennett’s news on Instagram, Facebook or at dennettswharfcastine.com. Or visit in person this summer when the restaurant reopens for the 2026 season.