The restaurant,

a place of memories for many, will serve its last dessert at month’s end.
By Doug Fletcher
Staff Writer

LEWISTON – For Jeanne Robert, it was the place to celebrate a special occasion.

She and her husband Camile arrived in a chauffeured limousine. As they stepped through the door at 249 Lisbon St., she wore a red rose corsage, and he sported a boutonniere.

That was Aug. 2, 1997, the day they marked their golden wedding anniversary.

On Wednesday evening, she was taken aback to learn that Marois Restaurant would close at month’s end.

“We didn’t go there often,” she noted, largely because of trouble finding transportation, but, she added, “it always has been good.”

Marois was one of the few places nearby where candlelight dining was featured, and where mouthwatering desserts – cheesecakes, baklava, bourbon pecan pie and The Magnificent Seven, a chocolate lover’s dream – were regular fare.

It also was known for pleasing patrons in other ways.

There’s the time it stayed open late to cater to jazz singer Shirley Horn’s penchant for lobster. Or how it pleased guests by hosting le Cafe de Paris during a prelude to the Festival de Joie.

Fans of the restaurant, which features American and Greek cuisine, have until the end of May to tickle their taste buds, and make a new Marois memory.

Then, says Toni Orestis, she’ll snuff the candles. After 65 years of pleasing patrons, she says it’s time to try something new: Retirement.

“I’m 78 years old,” Orestis notes, “and I haven’t done anything else.”

She says she’s grown weary of 12- and 13-hour days, seven of them each week.

“I never had time for hobbies,” she said, “I never had time for things like golf.”

Not that she will now, either, at least not likely at her age, she notes.

She isn’t exactly sure just what she will do.

But she knows she’ll finally have time for one love: To play the piano. Orestis started playing piano three years ago, she said. It’s about the only outside interest she has, she added.

She started working at the family-owned restaurant when she was 13, she said. Catering to people’s appetites, serving them with a welcoming smile, is the only life she’s known.

“It saddens me,” she said of the coming closure, “but it’s time.”

Simply talking about it puts a lump in her throat, she said.

“I get all choked up.”

Her 18 employees are sad, too. “They feel bad,” said Orestis. “They say ‘now what will we do?'”

Orestis said she sold the building housing the restaurant three weeks ago to Norm Rousseau. A week later, she said, she decided to close the eatery.

She said she plans to go out in style, but isn’t sure just what she’ll do yet. Some way, she said, she wants to let her customers know how much she’s appreciated them over the years. Before May ends, she said, she’ll figure out just how to do that.

Then, politely, she says she has to go.

On Wednesday evening, she was hosting a private party. “They need me,” she said.

That’s typical of Toni Orestis, says Jim Wellehan, a regular Marois customer.

He says he’s going to miss “one of Maine’s greatest restaurants.”

And he heaped praise on Orestis, calling her a person “dedicated and committed to making family memories.”

“She was unyielding in her quest for quality,” Wellehan said.

He also praised Orestis for something else: She trained generations of young people “in the skills of customer service,” he said.

Whatever Orestis comes up with as a going away event, Jeanne Robert says she wants to be there. She wants to get back to visit Marois one final time before it closes, she said.

It’s a place of memories for her, too.

dfletcher@sunjournal.com

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