The news shook the dining and travel worlds. Just months after winning our American Express Best Chef: Northeast award, and days after announcing that she was going to leave the Old Chatham Sheep Herding Company Inn to open her own restaurant in Maine, the Inn's owners decided to lock the doors for good. The implication was that Kelly, and her pastry chef and fiancé Price Kushner, who left to join her in Maine, were such important draws for the Relais & Châteaux property in upstate New York that it couldn't go on without them. Of course Kelly denied that she, or any chef, for that matter, was irreplaceable. But the flattering supposition made headlines around the country.

All of this is to say that the dining public takes Kelly and her Italian-influenced, American country cooking very seriously. She and Kushner are set to open Primo this spring in Rockland, Maine, about two hours up the coast from Portland. Named for her grandfather, whose wife, Kelly's grandmother, gave Kelly her earliest lessons in the kitchen, Primo will have vegetable and herb gardens, as well as a wood-burning brick oven. These culinary luxuries that most chefs only dream of influenced the freshness and flavor of her food at Old Chatham and are sure to play a large part on the menu at Primo.

A graduate of the CIA, Kelly finished her education in a number of top restaurants, including Larry Forgione's An American Place in New York City, and Alice Water's Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. For two years she was the chef of Forgione's Beekman Arms in Rhinebeck, New York. John Mariani, who named the restaurant to Esquire's new restaurant list in 1996, called his meal at the Inn the best within 300 miles and one of the best he ever had. André Soltner, who ran the stoves at Lutèce for more than 30 years, concurred. (Kelly considers his compliment one of the most flattering among the thousands she's received.) No doubt the plaudits will follow to Maine.

That Kelly could get people to drive 31/2 hours to eat at Old Chatham Sheep Herding Company is testament itself to the appeal of her cooking. Will New Yorkers be willing to drive seven hours to the coast of Maine? For this night only, you won't have to.