PROFILE – MAY 2008

By Joshua Bodwell

Photography Darren Setlow

An entrepreneur enraptured with design, dining, and community

Life thrives on a salt marsh. Sweeps of spartina grass draw in migrating snow geese. Deer and the occasional moose wander from the woods to graze. Along the edge of the tidal river, mussels and crabs hunker in the peaty soil. In winter, the salt water carries little rafts of ice toward the sea, and in the spring what was dull and brown becomes lush and green again. Like the daily ebb and flow of the tide, the marsh marks the passage of time.

Such is the scene outside the windows of Kennebunk’s On the Marsh restaurant.

When Denise Rubin first visited the property in 2000, she was already the co-owner of a successful interior-design firm in the Netherlands, splitting her time between Europe and a seaside home in York. She had also never run a restaurant before. But Rubin was so enraptured with the marsh that she put a deposit on the circa-1800 farmhouse-turned-restaurant that very day. “My father taught me that sometimes you have to be a risk-taker,” says the 67-year-old with a spark in her eye.

On the Marsh was an immediate success—the restaurant won Wine Spectator’s Award of Excellence its first year—but it has never rested on its laurels. Over the past eight years, the restaurant has not only undergone continual refinement, but it has grown to encompass Rubin’s many pursuits and interests. It provides a stage for her interior design, the opportunity to share her love of fine food and wines, and a way to reach out to the community. “This restaurant reflects my passion for life,” says Rubin succinctly.

The source of Rubin’s passion can be traced back to her Russian grandparents’ 300-acre farm in upstate New York, where she lived during the later days of World War II while her father was serving in Africa. “Even then, when I was quite young, the dinner table became a very important place to me,” Rubin remembers. After the war ended, Rubin’s father continued his military career and moved his family to Vienna in 1946. In the bombed-out and beleaguered city, Rubin saw the inhumanity of war first hand; she attended school in a former Gestapo building and watched her father, then a member of the Army Counter Intelligence Corps, sleep with a gun beneath his pillow. “It all left quite an impression,” she says today with a shiver. “But I watched my family during that time, and I learned a lot about being a giving person as I saw them help the people of Vienna rebuild after the war.”

After a European education, Rubin returned to the states and took work in New York City, where she met and married Dick Rubin. The couple eventually settled in Boston and raised three children. Rubin got her first taste of Maine when Dick, who had spent summers in the state as a boy, brought her to Perkins Cove in Ogunquit. By 1988, the couple had built a home in York and were planning to settle there full time. That same year, however, Dick’s business ventures took the Rubins to the Netherlands, and for the next three years the couple only spent summers in Maine.

Soon after her return to Europe, Rubin partnered with an English designer and established an interior-design firm in The Hague to work on embassies and high-end residencies. Ten years later, with the design firm running smoothly, Rubin leapt at the opportunity to become a restaurateur—the fulfillment of a dream that stretched back to her childhood. Rubin’s own aphorism for the eatery sums up her vision: “It is around the table that friends and family best understand the warmth of being together.” Following major renovations, On the Marsh opened in the spring of 2000. Rubin’s worldliness—she speaks five languages—is evident throughout, from the constantly evolving menu and coolly elegant ambience to the high-quality service and attention to detail.

Today, Rubin returns to Holland several times a year, but her generous community involvement in Maine remains a central passion. In addition to regular donations to food pantries in York County, Rubin chaired the Southern Maine chapter of the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign in 2006. The group elevated awareness about heart disease and stroke in women and raised $75,000 under Rubin’s leadership. “It has meant a lot to me,” she says, “to reach out to women who wouldn’t otherwise know where to go or who to talk to.” Last year, when Freedom Wheels—an organization that helps disabled people retain their independence through transportation options—was looking for a venue to host an appreciation dinner for its volunteers, Rubin offered On the Marsh under one condition: the entire meal would be her gift. “I’ve been very fortunate in my life,” she explains, “and feel strongly that we must reach out to people.”

These are but a few examples of how Rubin uses On the Marsh as an outlet for her giving nature. While she inherited these values from a family that showed generosity to one another and to the people of war-ravaged Europe, they are ideals that were reinforced by a crucial mentor in her life.

Before attending La Sorbonne in Paris, Rubin began her studies in European history at the University of Munich. It was there that one professor—a woman who had survived a Nazi concentration camp and taken part in the early days of Radio Free Europe—inspired Rubin to become a woman who made a difference.

“Madame DeMaitre made me understand that life will be full of challenges…but that you can never stop reaching out,” says Rubin. She looks across the sun-streaked marsh as she remembers her mentor, smiling, lost for a moment in the warmth of the lesson.