Fifteen miles later driving from Portland to North Yarmouth, I arrived at the Purple House for my weekly stash of their wonderful Montreal style bagels.  Instead I found this note:

Note pinned to the door at the Purple House

I stood in the parking feeling rather foolish, best laid plans gone asunder to do early morning Sunday chores quick and easy.

To salvage this wasted trip and assuage my hunger, I went a quarter mile down the road to Stone’s Café.  When the Purple House opened the folks at Stone’s were not happy, thinking that they’d lose their breakfast and lunch business to the upscale bagel maker and chef.

Ridiculous. Talk about apples and oranges, Stones is to Purple House as instant mashed potatoes is to potato gnocchi.  The twain doesn’t compete.

Stones, 424 Walnut Hill Rd. (Route 115), North Yarmouth; 207-829-4000

I’m an old fan of Stone’s Café discovering it over 15 years ago when it was run by the same family (whose name escapes me) that kept that place humming for decades.  Here was home-cooking bar none, big bulging plates of old-fashioned country fare served with downright gusto to an adoring local patronage. The weekly Saturday night dinners were legendary as big platters of prime rib were wheeled around like prized oxen.

The new iteration, not so new anymore, carries on though not nearly as good as the original but worth a stop for one of the biggest breakfast or lunch plates in town.

Family friendly at Stones

I couldn’t resist.  Sausage gravy over biscuits served with eggs and home fries spoke to me like clabbered cream.  I rarely eat that stuff anymore but occasionally it’s hard to pass up.

The portion size was overwhelming: a plate of eggs over easy with home fries, the yolks–so large–looking like they were cracked open from a goose egg.  This was accompanied by the sausage gravy and biscuits, filling  a deep serving crock.  The gravy was thick with sausage meat and held together by a silky-smooth cream sauce with the underpinning of old-fashioned biscuits.  Even the coffee was good, though the requested glass of ice water tasted overly metallic.

Serious eats–sausage gravy over biscuits served with eggs and home fries

I went back to town without my weekly supply of bagels and summarily stopped into Rose Foods.

Thank you so much Andrew Knowlton for creating the mob scene that’s existed at Rose Foods ever since your hyperbolic article appeared in Bon Appetit giving Portland–and Rose Foods and others–its due as Food City of the Year. And then saying to us as a favor that we don’t know how good we have it here as if we were eating cow corn until you advised otherwise.

Hustle-bustle at Rose Foods

A line was virtually out the door, and we know how quickly bagel mavens make up their minds like windbags stuttering through their orders like dissertations on the pleasures of the perfect latte. Brain surgery is less vigorous.  I made the requisite face until another patron, standing by waiting for a table, told me that the line moves fast.  Sure, like crawlers on a fishing pole.

Yeah, so what.  It was long enough.  My quick Sunday morning trip to North Yarmouth turned out to be a 2-hour outing.

It’s time for Forage Market, the Lewiston Cafe,  to open.  Their bagels are world-famous, according to Saveur Magazine, and now Washington Avenue’s retail strip, where they will finally open sometime this summer, can join the burgeoning club of Maine’s most cosmic dining destination.