Offbeat Eats

My visit to Lewiston reminded me not only that Maine is a pretty large state, but that the highway infrastructure is all coastal in nature. Lewiston is a little over 100 miles as the crow flies from my place, but the options for getting there are basically (a) 3 hours and 180 miles via divided highway (with tolls), or (b) 3 hours and 20 minutes and 140 miles via various NH and ME back roads. Of course, I took the latter, and had a reasonably nice drive and saved a bit of gas, but it’s also what led to a drive down Route 202 just north of Gray, ME in the small town of New Gloucester. There, I encountered a fairly new output of the regional brewpub chain Brickyard Hollow (the original is in Yarmouth, ME’s “Brick Hollow” neighborhood, hence the name). While not needing lunch at that point, I made it a point to return via the same route a few days later and try them out.

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.

If there’s one New England tradition I rather like, it’s that of the Lobster Roll. Our local contribution to seaside fast food, it involves taking a hot dog bun (top-split being the best), and loading it up with lobster meat (preferably, with a few big chunks of claw meat), lightly dressed with lemon, celery, salt, pepper, and, sometimes, mayo, it’s a great way to enjoy fresh lobster, and at times it seems just about every restaurant in New England gets in on the action. You can read about one of my other favorite lobster rolls in my review of Latitudes down the shore in New Castle, NH, but even Panera and McDonalds get in on the action (and actually, for the price, the short-seasonal special McLobster usually is pretty good.) So one idea we had for our second car-shopping trip to Portland was to duck in and get a lobster roll on our way home at one of the better-recommended places in the Portland area: Bite into Maine. There was just one little problem with that plan…. Bite into Maine, primarily being a food truck, with locations at Allagash Brewing and Fort Williams Park (and the occasional special event) is a seasonal production, and during our late April visit, their food trucks weren’t out for the season. But the great folks at Bite into Maine happen to have a solution for this: they maintain a commissary for their trucks off Route 1 in Scarborough, and the commissary now has a small dining area, so you can have your favorite Lobster Rolls any time, including the off-season!

Despite Maine being only one state away, it’s just far enough of a drive that we don’t often seem to get over that way to explore. However, recent efforts in our household at car shopping had us doing several visits to dealerships in Portland, and after some test driving and a visit to nearby Mast Landing Brewery in Westbrook, we had some time to go find a light dinner in Portland before heading back to NH. We originally set out to visit Eventide Oyster Company, but upon finding the waiting list to be rather long (they were estimating an hour), we instead inquired next door at the sister restaurant, The Honey Paw, and found a much shorter wait of 20 minutes. Settling in across the street at Tomaso’s Canteen (who deserves a writeup of their own at some point), for a beer while we waited. A mere 10 minutes later, we got a page that our table was ready.

I rather like a good trip to Portland, Maine, especially since Portland has managed to cultivate quite a beer and food scene, with everything from a good Belgian beer bar, to a good regional pizza chain, to potato donuts, to even Asian fare like dumplings. So when we were looking for a nice variation on our usual joints, we decided to try Mi Sen Noodle Bar, a relative newcomer on the Portland scene (opened in 2013).

One of the simpler foods that I really enjoy is a good ramen noodle shop (indeed, I’ve reviewed rather a lot of them). It’s been one of the upcoming trendy foods, with ramen shops opening up all over the place, some more Japanese-inspired, some more Korean-inspired. But they are almost always tasty. But it’s also one of those trends that hasn’t really made inroads into New Hampshire yet. But it’s almost here, indeed, a recent trip to Portsmouth had us crossing over to Kittery in search of dinner, and we ended up finding Anju Noodle Bar just over the river from Portsmouth, in scenic downtown Kittery (right across from one of the entrances to the shipyard).

Donuts are still one of the food items that’s have been on the rise. When just a few years ago the local donut shop was starting to disappear from a lot of areas, there’s been a distinct turnaround, and a lot of areas are opening local donuts stores featuring good quality donuts (you can see a list of other places I’ve reviewed here), and the gamut runs everywhere from, well, plain everyday donuts, to elaborate confections like the bacon donut from Dynamo Donuts. Indeed, on a recent trip to Portland, Maine, we discovered a Portland favorite: The Holy Donut.