The clearest signal about where Cape Elizabeth is heading this summer is not a new build or a market report. It is a pizza menu.
The Good Table at 527 Ocean House Rd. reopened this July under Prentice Hospitality Group with housemade pizzas, baked goods from Not A Bakery, and beer and wine, in what the group hopes will be a casual, accessible setting. That is a full reversal from the version diners met a year earlier, and the reasoning behind it explains the shape of a Cape Elizabeth weekend in August better than any lifestyle roundup can.
The rebrand that says something about the town
When Prentice bought The Good Table in 2023, they leaned into the group's Portland pedigree. Prentice also owns Evo Kitchen + Bar, Douro, and Twelve, and Press Herald critic Andrew Ross reviewed the reopened bistro shortly after, noting roast chicken at $32 and steak at $39. The food was good. The math, for the family-style regulars who had eaten there since 1986, was not.
Many regulars took to social media saying they felt priced out of an establishment that felt more like an upscale Portland restaurant than the family-style haunt they remembered. The owners listened. They spoke with community members, many of whom said they wanted a pizza place of their own.
That is the tension worth watching. Cape Elizabeth sits ten minutes from a food city that keeps producing higher-tier concepts, and the town keeps quietly voting for the working-farm, seasonal-hours, reservation-only, family-style version of itself. If you live here, this is the summer where that vote is easiest to see.
The tables that book out by Wednesday
The dining scene right now runs on two speeds, and both reward planning.
At the reservation-only end sits The Well at Jordan's Farm, currently in its 16th season on Wells Road. The Well is not accepting walk-in dining guests, though drinks and light snacks at the fire pit are available, with dinner remaining reservations-only until further notice. The prix fixe covers salad and bread, seasonal vegetables, starches, fish, chicken, and a third protein option (usually pork), with dessert included. If you have not booked by mid-week, aim for the fire pit and plan dinner elsewhere.
Sea Glass at Inn by the Sea stays the reliable ocean-view option, and Tostones Cafe has quietly become the town's sleeper hit. Tostones offers a Latin American fusion menu and holds one of the rare near-perfect sets of reviews on Google in Cape Elizabeth. It is opening a second location on Cascade Road next to Landry's Shop N Save in Old Orchard Beach, which is a useful signal that the Ocean House Road original is not going anywhere.
Then there is the new Good Table, which is trying to be the third thing this town needs: a walk-in pizza night that costs less than a Portland sit-down.
"We have no problem admitting when we should reposition something to be more in line and in keeping with what people wanted," Prentice's Wolf told the Press Herald, describing feedback that people wanted something more democratic, accessible, and approachable.
The menu is deliberately short. Cheese, pepperoni, and mushroom pizzas; a pair of salads; and breadsticks make up the limited offering. Whether it holds through winter is the real test.
Where residents actually shop this week
Cape Elizabeth has something most Greater Portland suburbs cannot claim: close to 20 farms in town, growing a wide range of fruits and vegetables, with several also raising beef cows, turkeys, chickens, laying hens, and pigs. That density is why the farmstands, not the grocery aisle, are the real August calendar.
A few worth knowing right now:
- Jordan's Farm, 21 Wells Road. The working farm behind The Well, with a farmstand stocking produce and goods from local farms and makers.
- Alewive's Brook Farm. A multigenerational family farm in the heart of Cape Elizabeth, purchased in 1957 by Alvin Jordan and now run by his son Jodie Jordan with his wife Patricia and their four children, with a market stand offering fresh vegetables and live lobsters and clams seven days a week.
- William Jordan Farm, 21 Wells Rd (separate operation from Jordan's Farm despite the shared address block). Currently open Friday and Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
- Turkey Hill Farm, 120 Old Ocean House Road. Working farm, seed center, and CELT-protected land you can also walk.
Alewive's Brook is also the reason you can skip the seafood counter. The Jordans attend the Portland Farmers' Market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, the South Portland Farmers' Market on Sundays, and the Scarborough Farmers' Market on Sundays, so if you miss the Wells Road stand, you have four other regional catch points.
The trails that empty out after Labor Day
Fort Williams draws the crowds and always will. The rest of the town's trail network, though, is where residents get their August walk in without a parking scrum.
Turkey Hill Farm's trails are the underrated pick. The 25-acre property contains fields, forests, and woodland border, with a mix of hardwood and evergreen trees. The trailhead sits 0.3 miles east down Old Ocean House Road from ME-77, just before Trundy Road, with no parking lot on the property; cars park along the side of Old Ocean House Road. The lack of a lot is the point. It self-limits the crowd.
Robinson Woods Preserve is the longer option, and one of the reasons Cape Elizabeth Land Trust is such a fixture of local weekends. Since 1985, CELT has preserved 845 acres on 31 separate parcels representing the varied ecology of the seaside town, including mature forest, open fields, sandy beaches, marshlands, ponds and streams, and working farmland. If you have out-of-town guests and want the ocean without the Fort Williams parking lot, this is the walk.
For families or last-day-of-summer beach afternoons, Kettle Cove and Crescent Beach remain the pair to alternate between depending on tide.
What just wrapped, what is still on
August in Cape Elizabeth sits in the interesting gap between the town's marquee summer weekend and its shoulder-season quiet. Worth knowing what you missed and what is still coming:
CELT's Paint for Preservation wrapped July 17–19. 31 juried artists painted en plein air at designated public and private locations over the weekend, with the freshly painted artwork auctioned at a tented cocktail reception overlooking Higgins Beach on Sunday from 4:00 to 7:30 p.m. It is CELT's only fundraiser of the year. If you missed the auction, the artist roster is worth browsing on the CELT site, because those paintings become gallery inventory across Southern Maine over the fall.
Sounds by the Sea at Fort Williams Park continues through the summer as the town's free-and-easy Monday night. Recent lineups have included the Joan Kennedy Band at the Bandstand at Fort Williams Park and Curse of Kona at the Picnic Shelter, both in the 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. window. A picnic from Alewive's Brook plus one of these concerts is arguably the most Cape Elizabeth way to spend a Monday.
The Lobster Shack at Two Lights is on its usual clock. The Two Lights Road institution is open daily April 4 through October 25, 2026. There are roughly twelve weekends left before it closes for the season, which is the sort of number worth putting on the family calendar in ink.
The Cape Elizabeth Historical Preservation Society picks its calendar back up in the fall. A program on the History of Cape Rescue is scheduled for Tuesday, October 13, 2026, one of the small pleasures of a town where the historical society still runs a real speaker series.
What ties it together
If you live here, you already know the town's charm. The point of a late-summer weekend is not to rediscover it; it is to spend it with the intention that a resident earns.
Book The Well by Wednesday. Try the new Good Table on a night you would otherwise cook. Stop at Alewive's Brook for lobsters instead of the fish counter. Walk Turkey Hill before the Fort Williams lot fills. Circle October 25 for one last Lobster Shack lunch. The version of Cape Elizabeth that keeps voting for itself, again and again, is the one built out of these choices.
When you or a neighbor is ready to think about what a home here should feel like on a Tuesday in August rather than a Saturday in June, Mary Libby Living Real Estate is happy to talk. Schedule a free consultation and we will start from your version of a weekend, not a floor plan.
