In early June, Carol and I did a short vacation to Acadia National Park with our Fitpacking friends. People always ask me if we go to Acadia a lot since “we live so close”, but the realities of both Northern New England roads and the scale of Maine itself mean that the more interesting parts of the Maine Coast aren’t exactly next door: Acadia National Park is a full 5.5 hour drive from our house, which means we’re stopping someplace mid-drive for lunch. In this case, several recent trips to Maine showed me that Biddeford (one of North America’s oldest settlements, and a former lumber and textile powerhouse) was a good place to stop. In this case, for a trip to Sacred Profane Brewery and Tankpub.
Sacred Profane opened just a few years ago in 2022, by brewers Brienne Allan (formerly of Notch Brewing) and Michael Fava (formerly of Oxbow Brewing), with the goal of providing a tight focus on Czech-style beers. And by tight focus, this means they brew only two beers: a pale lager and a dark lager (although they blend and age both of them, so they’ll often have several more lagers lists on the tap list). The beers are brewed in the traditional Czech style and technique: open fermentation, horizontal lagering tanks, and serving directly from overhead copper serving tanks. If you were wondering about the meaning of the “tankpub” in the name: that’s because they serve their beers up this way: the main serving bar has overhead tanks, and the beer is served directly from these, with the careful ritual of filling the glass with just the right amount of foam.
Add in a well-rounded food menu of European-based food, and it’s a pretty good selection. For an added attraction, during the warmer months they’ve even got a nice beer garden outside for you to relax and enjoy your lager.
Starting off our meal was a pair of beers: My Smoked Amber (left) and Carol’s Smoked Dark (right). I really liked both beers. The Smoked Dark Lager had a nice, deep mahogany body, a thick, wet café-au-lait head, and a nice malty flavor with notes of rye bread, bread crust, and hazelnut. Smooth and enjoyable. My Smoked Amber was a slightly lighter and more refreshing variant of the same concept: a lighter brown with a nice wet cap of foam, and slightly crisper and hoppier notes than the Smoked Dark. Both really enjoyable beers, and worth going out of your way to get.
For the main course, Carol went with the mussels. These were served up in the classic European style like I’ve enjoyed in Belgium: served up with a white wine-garlic sauce, and with a big pile of frites on the side. Unfortunately, this was a bit of a hit and miss entree: The mussels were generally good, but the cleaning on them inconsistent, which really put a damper on them, and the white wine and garlic sauce, however, was a bit more briney than either Carol or I generally cared for. But certainly not bad, just not quite the level we were hoping for for a $28 entree. The fries and aioli were top notch, however: nice, crispy exterior, fluffy interior, and the aioli had just the right amount of garlic bite to be pleasant but not overwhelm the rest of the flavors.
Myself, I went for the chicken schnitzel sandwich. Okay, this one was alsohit and miss, but when it hit… wow.
Let’s start with the chicken schnitzel sandwich itself. This starts off with a nice chicken thigh that’s been pounded, buttermilk-and-pickle-juice marinated, and breaded. This made for an outstanding schnitzel, with the perfect combination of flavor, texture, and exterior crisping. Add in a great garlic aioli (same served with the fries), some good pickles, onions, and a well-toasted brioche bun, this was one of the best chicken sandwiches I’ve had in quite some time. Seriously, this is a top notch sandwich.
The potato salad (ordered as a sub for the fries it normally comes with) was top-notch as well. A good potato salad really needs to focus on, well, potatoes, and these were nicely cooked to the perfect texture, with a light vinegar flavor to the potato, the mayo and egg merely supplementing the potatoes instead of just burying them. A light dusting of dill completed the plate, and this was just about the perfect lunch…
Except when it came to the bill. The sandwich itself is normally charged as $21, served with fries (and the fries, that we got with the other dish were indeed quite good, and served with the good aioli). But since we already had some fries, I wanted to substitute the potato salad. Both the fries and the potato salad, if ordered as a la carte sides, are both charged at $8. Since these are nominally the same price as sides, I’d either expect a straight up swap, or at most a modest upcharge for a basic substitution of otherwise same-cost sides, but that’s not how Sacred Profane does it. They charged this as “no fries” (no change in cost, so I was charged the same $21 despite not getting the fries.), and then charged the potato salad as a “side to schnitzel” at the full $8 cost. That made this combo a $29 lunch, and I just don’t think the quality was there. And I confirmed the charge with the server who told me this was “policy”. Even if this is policy, it’s a terrible one, and one they should have pointed out at the time of the order.
So this was a great meal, but combined with the relatively pricey mussels, this made for a very expensive lunch, one that didn’t quite live up to the hype.
I’m not a Biddeford regular, but if I ever do end up returning to Sacred Profane, I’ll almost certainly be back, but I’ll definitely being a lot more careful about ordering.
