Author: JWF

More Portland: Art & Food

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ART

In 25 years, we had never been to the Portland Museum of Art before this visit.  This time we rectified that with a pleasant walk along Congress Street to the museum.  It’s an impressive complex of several buildings and we wandered through the special exhibit featuring Georgia O’Keefe and three other women artists who all worked for a time in New York.  I also liked seeing furnishings and paintings from their permanent collection including several by Frederic Church and Childe Hassam and others.  And I explored the historic home, also part of the museum, with its intriguing patterned carpets and wallpapers which appealed to me.   2016-07-14 12.54.15 2016-07-14 13.13.29

EATING

Restaurants in Portland run the gamut from seafood places galore to a number of ethnic options as well as more usual Italian and French fare.  Here’s a sampling which represents where we dined last week.

Gilbert’s Chowder House

Reliable for chowder, of course, as well as lobster rolls and fried haddock along with the requisite French fries and cole slaw.  Good, but not exceptional.

Petite Jacqueline

A French bistro in a large, airy space with big windows.  We enjoyed the special of the day, chicken fricassee over rice, fish en papillotte in a butter caper sauce, salads (beet and green), and a lovely shared creme brulee to top it off.  Raspberry and chocolate colored bar stools add a punch of color.

Sisters Gourmet Deli

We had lunch at this inviting café on Congress Street. You order at the counter and they call you up when it’s ready.  Nice assortment of wraps, sandwiches and salads. Chicken salad with almonds and grapes on greens passed muster as did the Santa Fe chicken salad.  2016-07-14 11.46.35

Piccolo

This newish tiny Italian place on Middle Street was able to squeeze us in for a 5:30 dinner.  The chef and others are alums of Daniel Bould’s restaurants in New York and they deliver the goods!  We sampled mostly from the small plate sections of the menu and were delighted with our choices:  heirloom tomato salad with coins of delicate mozzarella; squash blossoms stuffed with salt cod (baccala) which were simply delectable; crisp baby octopus presented in a small skillet; chickpea fritters; stubby pasta with lamb ragu tinged with mint and orange, and a dessert of strawberries and micro basil on a sweet round of cake.

Fore Street

Highly touted and the place that initiated farm to table in Portland, Fore Street is at the edge of the Old Port.  It’s in an old warehouse with rustic beams and several wood-fired ovens. Tables are at a premium so reservations should be made in advance unless you want to join the 5:00 pm line-up and find out at 5:30 how long the wait will be. You can do your waiting at the bar then!  Fortunately, I had made a reservation several weeks ago, granted for an early 5:45 seating, but far preferable to waiting in line.

The menu is extensive with lots of beef and pork, but also fish and chicken. We began with a lovely Jet Star tomato tart for me (luscious, warm, almost poached tomato slices on a rich croissant-like pastry and topped with an herb-flecked egg of goat cheese) and the sweet corn and mushroom salad for the Chief Penguin. He then had the roasted foie gras with accoutrements and I the spit-roasted half chicken. No small chicken either so he got a third of my portion. The chicken was slightly smoky on the outside and very tasty, and the foie gras a hit—how not to savor this delicacy!  Service was brisk almost to the point of being hurried. I’m thinking they want to turn their tables as many times as possible each night!  Instead of dessert, we opted to take home a small box of their house-made chocolates.

Note:  All photos by JWFarrington (some rights reserved)

 

Out and About in Portland

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Portland on Casco Bay is small, as cities go, and you are always within the sound of seagull’s honk, even in the center of town.   Portland is also Maine’s largest city and one that has gotten a lot of attention in recent years for its food and restaurant scene.   In the Old Port and the Arts District in particular, restaurants of all cuisines are nestled midst smart and stylish little shops selling everything from summer fashions to Swiss watches, toys, Himalayan salt blocks, Stonewall Kitchen jams and spreads, as well as Maine-made pottery and ceramics. In addition to a plethora of seafood options, you can find Indian, Japanese,  French, Mexican and Italian food and more.

In our walk around after arriving, we did a lot of just wandering and I took the opportunity to capture some of the more intriguing shop signs and windows and other street art.

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Yesterday we did a power walk along Fore Street all the way up the hill to the Eastern Promenade, a beautiful green area at the end of the peninsula that is Portland. Stunning views of Casco Bay from Fort Allen Park and all along the promenade with a number of walking or biking trails for those who are serious.  IMG_9463

This is also the  location of Munjoy Hill, a now hip residential area.   After sitting on a bench (not this lovely porch, alas) and gazing at the bay, we walked to Congress Street and began our descent back toward downtown.

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Along the way, we stopped for cappuccinos and a shared ginger cookie at Hilltop Coffee, an inviting café  near Spoon where we enjoyed lunch last year.IMG_9478

Continuing on, we spied the Eastern Cemetery which had a sign offering a tour at 11:00 am. It being just about that time, we crossed the street and met the guide, part of an organization called Spirits Alive. This is Portland’s oldest cemetery and was in use for more than 200 years from the 1600’s until the 1880’s. More than 4,000 graves are here and the headstones tell a remarkable story of military heroes, veterans of wars up to and including the Civil War, and even a bank robber or two.

Our guide was knowledgeable and a strong advocate of Spirits Alive’s mission to research the gravestones and to preserve them in their original state as much as possible.  As you can see, it’s a lovely setting.  The red brick building was once a school and is now low income housing.  The monolith marks the Alden family plot and recognizes naval hero, James Alden, in particular.  The grave stones are mainly white marble, which doesn’t weather well over the long term, and slate which is gray and dark in color.

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After all that wandering about, we needed lunch.  What would a first full day in Maine be without a lobster roll?  Not good.  We returned to Gilbert’s, a very casual place on the waterfront, and home of a good roll.  Here’s my first one of the season!

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Tidy Tidbits: Mostly Books

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VIEWING

Dr. Thorne.  This adaptation of Trollope’s novel on Amazon Prime was written and produced by Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame.  It’s a short series, only 4 episodes, but each one is introduced and closed by Mr. Fellowes.  Formally dressed sitting in a chair in what appears to be a library, his remarks are engaging and informative and delivered with a twinkle.  Mr. Fellowes is a talented man, witness the wild success of Downton, and recently his latest novel, Belgravia, was issued in hardcover, but first  serialized a la Charles Dickens on a downloadable app.  Pushing the envelope, as they say.

I don’t think Dr. Thorne is great television, but it was diverting and fun to watch while being on the treadmill.

READING

The Rainbow Comes and Goes:  A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss by Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt.  I had eyed this book in the store and was pleased when my friend Sue sent it on for me to read.  Gloria Vanderbilt is a famous name, but I didn’t know much of anything about her life, particularly her early life.  In this book, the sharing of a year-long e-mail correspondence between her and her son, she unloads about her lovelorn and tumultuous childhood and her rootless adulthood before her successful marriage to Wyatt Cooper.  You learn much more about her than you do about him, although he shares his feelings about the premature deaths of his father and his brother and about his coming out as gay to his mother.  What is remarkable about this book is that mother (at 91) and son (48) were able to have this frank discussion and to make themselves vulnerable in this way.

LOADED UP

As I get ready to be in Maine, I’m pondering which paper books to take as well as loading up my Kindle.  I will have far more books at hand than I will ever get to, but I relish having choices and never want to be without enough reading material.  You’d think there weren’t any bookstores in Maine!  Actually, there are branches of Sherman’s, an independent regional store, in Portland, Boothbay Harbor, and Damariscotta.

Anyway, here are a few of the titles I have waiting on my Kindle, all novels plus two mysteries and none looking to be too heavy.  Perfect for summer!

Heat & Light by Jennifer Haigh.  A new novel about fracking by this talented author set in a small Pennsylvania town.  She also wrote Baker Towers and Mrs. Kimble, both excellent.

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith.  A 17th century Dutch painting is the focus of this novel spanning several decades by native Australian Smith, who now lives in Texas.

Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave.  He’s the author of one of my all-time favorite best books, Little Bee.  This is his new novel set during WWII.

The Summer before the War by Helen Simonson.  She wrote the very popular novel, Mr. Pettigrew’s Last Stand, about intercultural relationships.  This one is set in 1914.

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny.  An early Inspector Gamache mystery, as always set in Three Pines, Quebec.

A Pattern of Lies by Charles Todd.  This is the 7th in the Bess Crawford mystery series written by a mother-son team.

Tidy Tidbits: Of Books and Burgers

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SUMMER READING

I generally ignore the Parade magazine that comes with our local Sunday paper.  Last week, though, the “Summer Reading Issue” note in the top corner piqued my curiosity.  Parade asked Ann Patchett to come up with a list of the 75 best books of the past 75 years in celebration of the magazine’s anniversary.  Patchett is an author I respect and whose novels I’ve enjoyed.   I admire her for being the force behind the launch of an independent bookstore in Nashville.  She and her staff devised the list and the titles are arranged by decade from the 1940’s to the present.  Liking lists, I went through it and discovered that I’ve only read about a third of them.  Here’s a link to the list and her rationale for several of the choices.

WHAT I’M READING

Their Promised Land:  My Grandparents in Love and War by Ian Buruma.

As you know, I’m a fan of memoirs.  This one was given to me by my friend Patricia.  I had set it aside for a bit and finally decided I need to give it a go.  It’s a charming and complex love story and a peek into personal and societal emotions and actions during the two world wars.  Buruma’s grandparents, Bernard and Win Schlesinger, were very English, yet the generation before them, his great grandparents were German Jews who immigrated to Britain.  Win and Bernard were not actively practicing Jews, yet he faced discrimination when he sought positions as a doctor at various London hospitals (“the old 45,” the family called such prejudice).

During a very long engagement and while separated during the wars, they wrote numerous letters to each other.  Their correspondence is a starting point for Buruma’s personal reflections and his affectionate, yet candid, interpretation of their lives.  My own paternal grandparents, although living quite a different life in Ann Arbor, Michigan, were roughly the same age as his and this added to my interest in the Schlesingers’ story.

GRILLING

This is the 4th of July weekend.  I hope you are celebrating somewhere with hamburgers or hot dogs and perhaps a parade.  Throughout my growing up, my folks belonged to the local yacht club—some members had sailboats (not yachts), but for us, it was really just a swim club.  Almost every warm summer evening, we’d pack up the picnic basket and head to the lake for a swim and then meat (often hamburgers) done on the grill.  Upstate NY has a limited supply of perfect days so you have to take advantage of them.  Watching the sun set over the lake was also required and lovely, provided you remembered your sweater.  It took me a long time to break that habit when I moved to warmer, humid Philadelphia.  I had to re-learn it—never leave home without a jacket—when I lived in cool, foggy San Francisco.  GCF grill

Over the years, the Chief Penguin and I have had a sporadic relationship with grilling.  Very early on, we owned one of those small hibachi grills which fit on our apartment balcony.  Later we graduated to a Weber grill with a cover and then in San Francisco we indulged in a modest gas grill.  That gas grill got very little use, I confess, as the C.P. said it produced a wimpy amount of heat.

Now, after a year of long discussion with our grilling neighbor and a lot of dithering around, we’re the proud owners of a charcoal kettle grill—not the fancy, very expensive green egg, but a black one that, nonetheless, will reach temperatures up to 600 degrees.  My master griller (and this is definitely a masculine role) is enthusiastic about this new project and has acquired the essential equipment (gloves, racks and trays, and best of all, a wireless thermometer) as well as several new cookbooks.  He is now checking off his list of “must-trys.”  Everything from pizza to lamb chops to shrimp to steak and a whole roast chicken.  And, of course, hamburgers!

Header photo:  reallytimes.com