Tag: Portland

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

JWF 5 Comments

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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Maine Musings: Restaurants & Reading

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LAZY DAYS

Being in Maine promotes being lazy—watching the lobster boats circling to check their traps, observing the patterns of sun and shadow on the garden lilies, letting the hours slink by without any pressure. It’s also getting together with friends, shopping at the weekly farmers’ market, and exploring new venues.

This week we returned to Portland for lunch at the Blue Spoon with new Florida friends. The café is small and serves good food that is more interesting than the usual sandwiches and burgers. It’s located on Munjoy Hill in a section of the city we hadn’t previously discovered. After lunch we walked down the hill to the waterfront and strolled along the Eastern Promenade. Stately old frame houses with widows’ walks and porches line the opposite side of the promenade, several with condo for sale signs. A tempting prospect.

We also had dinner at the Newagen Inn, the place we came to stay twenty-five years ago for the first of our annual visits. The inn has changed over the years and become more elegant—the latest addition an impressive portico and re-worked entrance drive. What hasn’t changed, however, is its lovely location on the point of land known as Cape Newagen. The casual restaurant has a cozy bar area and a porch-like section with big windows perfect for admiring the view to the sea. You can also sit outdoors on a wrap around porch with umbrella tables. We all enjoyed the excellent halibut on a bed of risotto studded with sundried tomatoes and greens. The chef, a tall young woman in a ball cap, came out to chat and enthusiastically shared her plans for future menus.

BEACH READS

With the relaxed pace of these weeks comes the desire to indulge in good stories, novels that are absorbing with convincing characters and a strong narrative arc. Here are two I read this week, one definitely better than the other.

Haven Lake by Holly Robinson. This novelist is also a ghost writer and she was new to me. Set in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, this is a novel of complicated family dynamics—an estranged mother and daughter (both adults and the mother a sheep farmer), an unhappy teenager, and a surgeon fiancé who seems obsessed with his work. Add to this a mystery about two deaths that occurred twenty years ago and you have an intriguing slew of emotions. I thought the portrait of 15 year old Dylan was especially well drawn.

Silver Bay by Jojo Moyes. I like Moyes’ work and thought Me Before You was an exceptional novel due to its subject matter. I also enjoyed The Last Letter from Your Lover. This novel is one of her earliest and it shows. It isn’t as tightly constructed and, to my lights, could have used more focus and more editing. That said, it’s set in Australia at a hotel that attracts tourists who come to see the whales and the dolphins on Silver Bay. When a developer has plans to build a new hotel and retail complex, there is immediate conflict between the outside firm and the local whalesavers and environmentalists.

Maine Musings: Food, Film & Finch

JWF 1 Comment

After the intensely bright hot Florida sun, mid-coast Maine’s gray skies, cool temperatures, and spotty rain showers yesterday were a relief. Portland on Friday before the cloud cover was weakly warm with enough sun to say summertime. Thanks to my cousins, we visited the iconic Portland Head Light for the first time after lunching at the Good Table in Cape Elizabeth.

Later we meandered the cobblestone streets of Portland’s Old Port browsing in familiar and new shops from the Paper Patch to Abacus to Sherman’s Books, all the while hearing in the background the screechy honk of the ever present seagulls.  I know there are seagulls on other shores, but they always seem particularly present here.

PORTLAND DINING

Dining in Portland was also a taste treat! The restaurant scene has expanded, and the city has been featured in every food magazine I know. We enjoyed dinner and the ambience at Vignola one night and had a superb meal the next in the back room known as David’s Opus Ten.  Plain David’s, the front of house, was crowded and noisy so we were glad we had opted for the small back space with its short menu of small plates. Especially noteworthy were the butter poached lobster on a crispy risotto cake, the tuna tartare, and the Serrano ham and manchego cheese plate with mellow warm black olives.

AT THE MOVIES

Earlier in the week, we went to see “Testament of Youth.” This new film, based on Vera Brittain’s 1933 memoir of the same name, is a grim and unvarnished depiction of the horrors of war, in this case WWI.  Some of you may recall that Masterpiece Theater did an adaptation of this work some years ago.

The film draws a stark contrast between the exuberance of youth and young love in the green English countryside and at university before the war, followed by the dirty gray and brown of death and destruction on the battlefield in France. Brittain left university to sign on as a volunteer nurse. This was a romantic, idealistic time and I don’t believe as many youths today see war as quite the adventure these men did.

WHAT I’M READING

Of course, I had to read Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman. I read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school (haven’t re-read it, I regret to report) and saw the film so for me Gregory Peck will forever be Atticus Finch. That said, Watchman is a worthwhile read. The writing is enjoyable, there are some touches of humor,and one gets a different picture of Maycomb, Alabama.  I found it to be a coming of age story for Jean Louise (aka Scout). At 26, one might say she is a bit old, after having lived in New York for seven years, to become disillusioned with her father, but so be it.  Other than that, she is quite believable and carries the book. Henry, her putative fiancé, is a bit flat.  Calpurnia, their servant, is a warm and sympathetic character while her uncle Jack, an eccentric doctor, provides counterpoint to her father. Atticus is here, but is no longer the perfect man and perhaps as a segregationist more realistic for the times.

Note that there are no photos this time due to a less reliable Wifi signal which I hope gets better!