January 2016

There are plenty of opportunities to enjoy good pizza in Portland. And the newest addition is Pizzaiolo, making New York style pizza with a Bronx accent.  Newly opened on Cumberland Avenue, next to a few dicey convenience stores—hardly of the carriage-trade ilk— it’s also across from the Preble Street Teen Center and the wonderful Schulte and Herr, Portland’s only German restaurant. Urban archeologists might term this as a neighborhood in transition.  I wouldn’t hold my breath. Still, I stopped in for a slice earlier in the week and ordered two pies from Pizzaiolo just last night.

Pizzaiolo on Cumberland Avenue

Pizzaiolo on Cumberland Avenue

Overall, Portland has a lot of pizza options for such a small city.  Bill’s Pizza on Commercial Street is probably the best example here of ersatz Italian-American pizza.  I haven’t been there in a few years (and its under new management since my last visit) but I remember it being eminently forgettable.

At the other end are the gourmet pizzas made by Portland’s reigning pizza purveyors and chefs. From Slab’s truly artisanal wedge-style pizza; the thin-crust slices from the ever-expanding Otto, virtually a mini-conglomerate of our local pie set; farm-to-table wood-oven baked Flatbread Company and to the carefully tended pies at Bonobo’s–these have been the premier spots to enjoy pizza with pizazz.  Portland’s restaurants shouldn’t be overlooked either.  Many are baked in wood ovens to emerge thin- crusted and crisp.  The Grill Room, for instance, has fancy-topped 9-inch pies baked in a wood oven.

A slice ($3.50) with sausage and pepperoni

A slice ($3.50), the Porko, with sausage, mozzarella, sausage, meatballs and tomato sauce at Pizzaiolo

For the casual slice on the go or on the rare occasion when I’ve ordered it for delivery, I think Leonardo’s on Forest Avenue is pretty good–classic Italian-American pizza that’s made with wholesome ingredients such as King Arthur Flour. It’s really a variation on New York style pizza, which is basically a thin-crust pie loaded with tomato sauce and cheese.

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Blondies are like the second sister to chocolate brownies but are in fact just as delicious and even easier to make.  It’s basically a bar-cookie version of chocolate chippers.  You don’t have to cream butter and sugar but merely mix brown sugar with melted butter, add flour, chocolate chips and nuts.  The version I make has a liquor component— a shot of bourbon or rum adds great flavor to these.

Lining the baking dish with parchment with ends overhanging, makes it easy to remove the blondies

Lining the baking dish with parchment with ends overhanging, makes it easy to remove the blondies

As a simply prepared dessert they’re great to pair with a scoop of butter pecan or vanilla ice cream or just grab a square to enjoy on the go.

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What prompted my Sunday morning excursion to the Market Basket in Biddeford was that all of Hannaford’s stores stopped carrying a product that I’ve purchased there for years.  I immediately researched all of the likely stores that could conceivably carry it.  No luck at Shaw’s, Walmart (even the supercenter), IGA Pond Cove Market in Cape Elizabeth and Smaha’s in South Portland.

Sunday morning at The Market Basket in Biddeford

Sunday morning at Market Basket in Biddeford

The Market Basket is the only store in Maine to carry the almighty, if not elusive, Benecol.   It’s in the dairy case next to the butter and butter substitutes like Earth Balance and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and other locums of limited appeal. When I would do Google searches to find the product all that would come up was Beneful, the dog food!

Two types of Benecol at Biddeford

Two types of Benecol at Biddeford Market Basket

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Portland is, after all, a very small city but one whose cause and effect stir the pot when anything new or different comes along.  Our dining scene is a prime example.  As soon as a new restaurant opens, the local pundits pounce hard and fast to get their words out there immediately, and diners follow suit to flood these new eateries enthusiastically.   I include myself in the crowd, though I hope what I have to report and posit are meaningful.  That said, the newly opened—and at this writing the restaurant is just days old—Woodford Food and Beveragehas made the obligatory splash.  (See my earlier Preview write up).

The WFB dining room bar on opening night; lower right, the corner banquette

The WFB dining room bar on opening night; lower right, the corner banquette

It’s the first new restaurant on the scene in 2016 but not far behind two other bright new stars, Terlingua and Roustabout.  The latter two have carved out a niche along Washington Avenue. And there’s more coming on the avenue, too, with Maine and Loire expanding its reach (Drifter’s Wife, a wine bar) and a café and chocolate bar, A Lively Palate.

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Several years ago when I set out to make the perfect red sauce—or Sunday gravy, which it’s often called—I knew exactly where to look.  That was to my good friend Steve Quattrucci.  His family has long held sway in Portland food circles amongst the Italian-American community.  Or as Quattrucci relates, “Memories from my childhood are filled with smells and scenes from busy kitchens and tables full of the most delicious food you can imagine.”

maries sunday gravy 2

In the late 1930s, for instance, his grandparents, Tessie (aka Nana Q) and Guy Quattrucci, operated the popular Balboa Café on India Street.  The block where the restaurant stood was torn down in the 1950s to make way for Jordan’s Meats—later razed for today’s Hampton Inn.

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Update your address book and enter Woodford Food and Beverage.  It’s the first new restaurant of the year.  The official opening date is Wednesday, January 20, at 660 Forest Ave. at Woodford’s Corner. But the restaurant has been holding friends and family nights all weekend long, and I was fortunate to have attended one of the dinners.

The sleek dining room is both family friendly and date night chic

The sleek dining room is both family friendly and date night chic

Essentially it’s an American bistro serving stylish fare prepared by Chef Courtney Loreg whose resume includes a four year stint at Fore Street, 2 years at the former Bresca and several years at Wente Vineyards in California, before moving back to Maine.

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Of all the new restaurant openings of 2015 few have achieved such solid footing as Terlingua. And they’ve achieved this even without adding the millennial menu essential, quinoa in all its guises.  Rather it’s essentially a barbecue joint. But that doesn’t begin to tell what it does so well beyond lunch and dinner (see past reviews).  Stage left enter their Sunday brunch. I had it for the first time this weekend and enjoyed one of the best examples of the otherwise ubiquitous eggs Benedict.

At Terlingua both the bar and dining area are busy at brunch

At Terlingua both the bar and dining area are busy at brunch

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Regular posts on food and dining will resume next week, but I nonetheless enjoyed a busy, satisfying week of food and drink traveling from New York, Boston and last stop, Portland.

But is the dining establishment having a few hiccups in this part of the world or is our food nation as glorious as ever? Perhaps there’s no appeal or reverence for haughty antics of some chefs and restaurateurs.  In particular I refer to a pivotal review in the New York Times (see review ) that didn’t give high marks to one of the great restaurants in the country, New York’s Per Se, where dinner for two can summarily cost $1,000.

New York's fabled dining rooms: clockwise: 11 Madison Park; Le Cirque; 21 Club and La Grenouille

New York’s fabled dining rooms: clockwise: 11 Madison Park; Le Cirque; 21 Club and La Grenouille

And in a recent Boston Globe article, however, on the region’s explosive dining scene, the writer worried about Metropolitan Boston’s ability to absorb the glut of restaurants that cater to a dining patronage in the millions.  Well, where does that put Portland, a tenth of the size of Boston, with the flush of its dining- out frenzy?

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The Sunday dinner menu at Bao Bao was not, as I thought, a more varied affair with bigger multi-course offerings going beyond the restaurant’s signature dumplings.  I was, I admit, wrong to assume otherwise since nowhere on its website did it give that impression. Yet differentiating it from its regular menu as “Sunday dinner” implied a broader range of dishes.

It didn’t.  And our table of four, however, was hardly disappointed with what we ate, though we all expected it to be, well, fuller.

The dining room and bar at Bao Bao

The dining room and bar at Bao Bao

Chef Cara Stadler’s Bao Bao is a dumpling house in the strictest sense. (Interestingly the kitchen does not prepare—as the restaurant’s name suggests—the typical Chinese buns known as cha sui bao or pork buns; yet “bao” literally means wrapped treasure and not necessarily referring to buns.)

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On a recent visit to the Brunswick Winter Market at Ft. Andross I stopped at the Hootenanny table where Damariscotta baker Derek DeGeer sells his artisanal breads. Most are made from local grains, and I’ve tried his rustic multi-grain and sour dough breads, which are very good: wonderfully rich with wholesome goodness.  His bagels are another standout.

Hootenanny's bagels; brownies in the background

Hootenanny’s bagels; brownies in the background

He also usually has a tray of brownies displayed on the table.  They’re show-stopper brownies—very dark and look as though they’re incredibly rich and fudgy.  I could no longer resist and I finally bought one on my last visit to save for later.  I put it in my bag and continued shopping at the market.  But that brownie was calling me and couldn’t help pinching off a small piece to taste.

And OMG what an experience.  It was the best brownie I’ve had in years.  It was intensely rich, earthy, fudgy and extremely chocolaty.  I kept nibbling away as I shopped, and each bite was a true revelation of flavor.

I stopped by Balfour Farm’s table and relayed to Heather Donahue, the owner of Balfour with her husband Doug that she had to go try Hootenanny’s brownies.  I’ve known Heather for years and thought she’d appreciate these morsels because she’s such an avid baker herself.

She, too, bought one to save for later but ultimately couldn’t resist trying it then and there.  Her reaction was just like mine.

What’s distinctive about these brownies is that they’re made with buckwheat flour.    Buckwheat is not a wheat made from grass—and thus is actually gluten free.  Rather it derives from plants like sorrel and rhubarb.

My batch of Hootenanny's buckwheat-walnut brownies

My batch of Hootenanny’s buckwheat-walnut brownies

The batter itself is fairly standard mixed with a half-pound of butter, unsweetened and semi-sweet chocolates and a touch of instant espresso powder. Since there’s only one-half cup of flour in the batter it’s an extremely moist and fudgy brownie.

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