A newcomer might want to be warned about the Liars' Table, a long table angled down the dining room, aslant just like the claims made by its occupants, fishermen and locals who find anyone amusing, especially each other, and still would be likely to try to save their life in a crisis. Irritating men you wouldn't want to miss meeting, or live without.

When John Lapinski heard a description of this place and that table on NPR in 2002, he called up the restaurant and asked if it was for sale. In three weeks he bought it. He sold his insurance business in New Jersey, and then he moved to Jonesport with his wife, Linda, to join the Liars' Table, or at least listen to it.

Linda makes fabulous pies and tarts, like one we enjoyed made with blueberries from Sanford Kelly's fields overlooking the bay, and another, a tart with tender cake-like crust beneath the berries. Her lemon meringue ($3.25) features a high meringue and sweet lemon filling. You might also find blueberry pound cake or apple crisp on the dessert table.
But the owner doesn't fancy sweets. Lapinski said he came here to change his life and did. He lost 90 pounds and stopped needing medication for his type 2 diabetes. How? He became more active, he said, spending three days a week as a sternman on a lobster boat in the summer and fall. But mostly he slowed down when he ate.

"I don't sit down and wolf a meal any more," he said, "I sit down and enjoy it." That means he pushes a plate of food away when he's finished-he doesn't let it finish him.

He also managed to renovate the restaurant, installing a new kitchen and fixing up the dining room, while never closing for the first year and a half he owned it. In 2007 he plans to open a retail counter in the back dining room, for fresh fish and Linda's great baked stuff.

The standard Maine fare of chowders, fried seafood, and meat is what the menu is all about. Lapinski has hiked up the quality, getting scallops from a local boat when it's scallop season on the Maine coast. The clams are also local. Biscuits with sausage gravy are $4.29, a classic Downeast meal.

Crabcakes ($7.79) are big, thick and packed with crab meat; a lobster cake burger ($11.99) is made the same way, both held together with a little white sauce, which doesn't interfere with the flavor of the shellfish. You can also find grilled wild Sockeye salmon ($13.99) on the changing menu.

Sometimes Lapinski barbecues beef on a grill outside, cooking steaks and chops. His customers enjoy that, and so does he.