My recent travels to Portland, Maine, during one of the less-popular times of the reason (New England’s “Mud Season” between Winter and Spring), turned out to be rather fortuitous in that, despite my visit falling during Maine Restaurant Week, many of the places that are usually teeming with both locals and tourists were actually relatively calm, which gave me a good opportunity to visit one of my favorite spots that’s usually got a waiting list: Eventide Oyster Co.
Eventide’s Portland location (their original, they’ve now got a second location in Portland) sits on Middle Street just east of Downtown, next to their sister restaurant The Honey Paw (which is another of my Portland-area favorites). It’s a cozy location, with most of the main storefront occupied by a large raw bar featuring the daily-changing oyster selection, and a small dining room next door. And Eventide almost always has a high demand; while they offer reservations, most of their seating is reserved for walk-ins, so it’s pretty common that you’ll have to get on a waiting list (indeed, the long waiting list is how I originally discovered The Honey Paw next door, which had half the wait that particular evening). It actually works out, however, since they’ve usually got one person doing the to-order shucking, and the rest of the operation is scaled accordingly. For my visit in early March? Despite it being Friday, I managed to walk right in and sit at the bar, watching oysters getting shucked.
The entire reason one rally comes to Eventide is the oysters, and that’s how I started out. On any given visit to Eventide, they’ve got fresh-caught oysters from a variety of ports, ranging from Massachusetts all they way up the coast of Maine, and the servers can give you recommendations, they aren’t just serving oysters, but curating them. In my case, I ended up with a half dozen oysters, three from Mere Point (Brunswick, from a cultured oyster farm) and three Wolfe Neck (another aquaculture farm in Yarmouth). Both were enjoyable, the Mere Point a bit more concentrated in flavor, and the Mere Point a bit larger. Both really hit all the notes I look for in good cold-water oysters: extra briney, a bit of sweetess, a strong mineral note, and a creamy texture. And one of the star attractions aside from the oysters was the high-quality accompaniments: this was a really top-notch, tangy, and horseradish-forward cocktail sauce, and the mingonette was nice and shalloty, one of the best I’ve had. Long and short, it’s really difficult to find better curated, prepared, and presented oysters than Eventide.
In addition to having a great oyster bar, Eventide has a good cocktail program going on, with a well-crafted collection of house cocktail recipes, including a good selection of tropical drinks. While I considered my additional courses, I enjoyed their Mai Tai, which was classically mixed from multiple rums, lime, and orgeat, with some bitters added. Refreshing, and well-above-average.
My second course was the tuna tartare. Often “tuna tartare” is used to cover all sorts of raw-tuna presentations, but at Eventide the tuna tartare is actually a proper tartare like you’d have with beef, with minced shallots, capers, and a light hint of both mustard and hot pepper, making for a well-balance dish that really highlighted the tuna flavor. On this visit, the tartare was served up with “Fresno chips”, very light and airy dark russet potato chips that add a nice crispy texture and some earthy notes, rounding out the dish. This was every bit as good as the oysters.
Aside from the oysters, one of the other things that Eventide is known for is their lobster rolls. The version at Eventide is a brown-butter based version, with steamed and chopped fresh-cooked lobster mixed with brown butter and served on a little steamed bun with chive. As far as the lobster itself goes, this is a a near-perfect butter-style lobster roll: the lobster has the perfect flavor and texture, and been mixed with just enough butter and salt to give it a bit of a savory note. The bun is good, and house-made, and it works reasonably well, but I’ll be honest here, I think part of the delight of a good lobster roll is a properly toasted, crispy, and heavily-buttered bun, and while this steamed bun is good, I think a more traditional grilled bun would take this to a higher level.
Finally, I actually ordered dessert as well. One of the more interesting strong recommendations I got for Eventide was to make sure I got an ice cream sandwich. I did, and I can see why it was recommended: this was a basic vanilla ice cream on chocolate chip cookie, but the execution was flawless: good, perfectly round and crispy cookies, around a house-made core of quite flavorful vanilla ice cream, this was about as perfect an ice cream sandwich as you can get.
Overall, I loved my visit to Eventide. As always, the oysters were top-notch, well-selected, and perfectly prepared. The other seafood dishes were well-conceived and executed, and the recommended ice cream sandwich definitely a great way to close out the meal. I can see why this place usually has a healthy wait for a seat.
