As I mentioned in my review of Kathmandu Spice, much of my early spring is spent volunteering at various FIRST Robotics competitions. In March, this led to my visiting the rare new-to-me New England city, Lewiston, Maine. Like a lot of smaller New England cities, it’s a former lumber and textile mill town, with the challenges that brings, but it has a lot of interesting food and drink options. It has a strong French-Canadian heritage (indeed, the event venue I was at was covered by Mailhot Sausage banners), and more recently, a surprisingly large Somali population, and the downtown has a decent collection of restaurants ranging from diners, to brewpubs, to Mediterranean, to even a few Somali restaurants. The first of these is what caught my eye on this visit, with my visiting The Pub at Baxter.
Baxter Brewing opened back in 2011, and it’s become a mainstay of the regional beer scene (which is an accomplishment, since there are several other excellent breweries nearby, especially around Portland), building a substantial brewery in the former Bates Mill complex. In 2018, they also opened The Pub at Baxter, a brewpub for showcasing their beer and food products. It’s a nice spot, they’ve done a nice renovation of the former textile mill space, keeping some nice wooden floors, and the occasional large piece of equipment (an old Chicago Pneumatic compressor sits right in their entrance). And, on a Friday night like my visit, the place was hopping with activity.
Grabbing a seat at the bar, I started enjoying one of Baxter’s flagship beers, Coastal Storm. It’s a double IPA with Cryo-Pop, Talus and Chinook Salvo hops that I’ve long enjoyed in the can, and it was even more enjoyable fresh from the brewery. And in the way that brew pubs tend to go, I ended up meeting a few interesting locals, spending a surprisingly long time talking with a local who worked in the printing industry, but had moved from California and had free-diving as a major hobby. Someplace I still have his “business” card.
For my meal, I was tempted by the smash burgers on the menu (for some reason, I’ve recently been craving mushroom Swiss burgers, and that’s one of Baxter’s standard burgers), but at the last second shifted to the chicken sandwich since it sounded good. Your basic buttermilk fried chicken with lettuce, pickles, and chipotle aioli on a brioche bun, served up with a small basket of fries. This was an above-average chicken sandwich: a nice, thick breast of un-processed breast meat, a decent buttermilk breading, and cooked properly. The chipotle aioli added a nice roasty pepper note without covering up the chicken, and the rest of the sandwich well-composed. Definitely a good menu choice.
Since I had a nice mile walk along the Androscoggin back to my hotel, I also got a dessert beer, going for their Old Dog, Same Tricks nitro stout. A decent, rich stout without being overly sweet, this was a nice way to finish out the meal.
Overall, I rather liked The Pub at Baxter. Good food, great beer, and a nicely renovated old mill. I’ll definitely come back, but I do also feel a need to check out a few of the other places in town. During my visit, most of the Middle Eastern and Somali places opened late due to Ramadan, and that wasn’t conducive to my schedule, but there looks to be a lot of good options in town.
