White Barn Inn Hires Executive Chef Cornelia Sühr, Rebuilds $250 Tasting Menu

White Barn Inn, Auberge Collection in Kennebunk, Maine, has handed its kitchen to Executive Chef Cornelia Sühr, who takes over a $250-per-guest tasting menu this autumn, with an optional $125 wine pairing.

The German-born chef arrives with a fine-dining résumé built in company-operated kitchens on both sides of the Atlantic. She cooked at Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester and The Savoy in London, then at The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel in New York, where she became the hotel's first female Chef de Cuisine. She later led the kitchen at Jean-Georges Philadelphia at Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia and most recently cooked at The Surf Club Restaurant by Thomas Keller in Florida.

The property itself has a long operational arc. The building once housed livestock, horses and chickens, and later served as an ice creamery. It was restored in 1973 and converted into White Barn Inn Restaurant, anchoring more than five decades of destination dining in southern Maine.

What does the menu change actually look like?

Sühr is steering the signature Coast Line & Forest tasting menu around sourcing and seasonality rather than a fixed repertoire. The progression moves from the coastline toward land, smoke and fire, and she's applying fermentation, preservation, smoking and live-fire cooking to Maine's farms, waters and forests. Each harvest shapes the menu, so the offer shifts with availability rather than running as a static lineup.

Three current dishes show the mechanism:

• Halibut | Razor Clams | Potato | Dill — halibut and razor clams from Maine waters, with a sauce built on a moules marinières base of shellfish, white wine and aromatics.
• Stonington Lobster | Parisian Gnocchi | Sea Beans | Fennel — lobster sourced from Stonington, one of Maine's premier lobster fishing towns, paired with a Provençal-style bourride sauce.
• Jonah Crab | Celeriac | Green Apple | Chervil — a lower-cost crab treated with lobster-level attention, balanced against fall-harvest celeriac and green apple acidity.

The pricing is straightforward: $250 per guest for the tasting, plus $125 for the wine pairing. That positions the restaurant firmly in the luxury tier for coastal New England.

Sühr frames the approach as restraint rather than transformation. "My goal is not to disguise these ingredients, but to give them a stage," she said. "I want our guests to experience Maine through the menu while weaving in my own European background, techniques, and perspective. Ultimately, I want the food to have a distinct sense of place while remaining elegant, modern, and deeply personal."

Beyond the dining room, the property layers in ancillary revenue through experiences including The Art of the Petit Plateau, Shell & Shore Oyster Shucking and Tastings, The Macallan Whisky Tastings and Farm-to-Cocktail Classes. The town's annual HarvestFest adds a seasonal traffic draw for the inn and the wider Kennebunk market.

With a chef of Sühr's pedigree now setting the menu, expect White Barn Inn to keep leaning on Maine sourcing as its differentiator while the tasting format evolves with each harvest.