The Blue Spoon (Portland, ME)

Located right at the intersection of Congress and Munjoy Sts. in the Munjoy Hill section of Portland, The Blue Spoon is a cute little restaurant that offers a Saturday (but not Sunday) brunch.  This is where we wanted to go the previous time I was in Maine, but it was so packed we ended up at East Ender.  With only about twenty to twenty five seats, it is easy for this place to fill up quickly, and though my meal had some disappointing aspects, I can see why The Blue Spoon is popular. 

My sister and I grabbed a late (around 1:00pm) brunch here after my old favorite, Bintliff's American Cafe, ended up being packed with a significant wait anticipated.  Neither of us wanted to deal with that, so we took a shot at The Blue Spoon again, which was basically empty this time when we arrived, though a few people shuffled in after us.

The coffee we were served was both quite good (not La Fiorentina level, but I would say it was equal to Amherst Coffee).  It was hot but not boiling, and replenished often; a good start for any restaurant serving breakfast or brunch.

I went with the restaurant's take on my personal favorite Eggs Benedict, which was completely not traditional but really interesting.  My sister had the classic two eggs, bacon, home fries and toast, which she was quite pleased with.  The "Benedict" consisted of a soft on the inside, crispy on the outside sweet potato pancake; not quite a latke, it was softer than that and was really more like mashed potatoes in pan seared patty form, though that was definitely not how it was constructed.  This was, without a doubt, the best part of the meal, as it was seasoned perfectly, had just the right balance of textures, and sopped up the yolk from the eggs.  On top of this were a couple thick slices of bacon, which somehow managed to be both crisp to the point of nearly crumbling and also chewy; I am not quite sure how this was achieved, but it was great.  The obligatory poached eggs perched atop the bacon, and were nicely cooked.

There ended the positives, however.  Sauce Hollandaise is a delicate, difficult to make (at least properly) item when you are in a restaurant, as you clearly cannot make it to order, and thus have to make sure it lasts properly.  That said, if your sauce breaks, do not serve it.  I would rather wait for you to make more and/or fix the sauce than get a runny, melted butter looking (and tasting) sauce that does not even resemble what it is intended to be.  The meal was good, but that was in spite of the Hollandaise, and quite frankly, I cannot believe that a restaurant of this quality would let something that clearly wrong go out to the table.  It cannot be that no one noticed; it was the first thing I saw when the plate was put down in front of me, and was completely obvious. 

Service was good; attentive but not annoying, and the waitress was there to refill our coffees and waters before either cup ever went dry.  I do not know if they could keep that up if the place was full, but considering how small it is, it would not surprise me.

So, all in all, how did I feel about this meal?  The best answer I can give is, I don't know.  I liked all but one element of the entire experience, but it was a key to the dish.  In fact, while Eggs Benedict is recreated with all sorts of strange ingredients, two things remain constant; the poached eggs and the Sauce Hollandaise.  Failing on one of those two items is difficult to look past, but the remainder of the meal was so good that I really want to.  I think I would have to try the place again, and probably the same dish again, to really form a solid opinion, but I could neither recommend nor discourage going to The Blue Spoon to anyone based off that meal.

******

Check us out on Facebook!

La Fiorentina (Northampton, MA)

I have discussed a few of the cafes in Northampton before, including recent posts on The Roost and The Foundry, but nothing comes close to the quality of La Fiorentina.  With three locations now (the others are in Springfield and the newly opened East Longmeadow shop), La Fiorentina presents perfect coffee, delicious pastries, ice cream and other sweets.  Most items are, of course, Italian, though they have other pastries, including my personal favorite croissant.  While I cannot speak to the authenticity of their coffees and sweets, having never been to Italy, I suspect that much of what they offer is true to its heritage, as they seem to have an attention to detail and quality that makes me think that anything less than doing things exactly right would not be acceptable.

"Banana" Marzipan; the cell phone camera does not do the beauty of it justice

I have been going to La Fiorentina since I was a little kid, getting hot chocolate, made with real steamed milk, which is really just so much better than the stuff you get elsewhere, and of course, the greatest treat of all, real marzipan.  Made with almond paste and a lot of sugar, it is slightly sticky, very sweet, and just all in all delicious; as a kid it was my favorite, and today it is a treat that I cannot resist every time I find myself on Armory St.  The marzipan is hand painted and absolutely beautiful, with bright, vibrant colors, shaped and colored to resemble various fruits and objects.  I got a couple of the "banana" treats today, which were so perfectly painted that they looked just like miniature versions of the real thing.  I am sorry to say that my new phone's camera, while pretty good, did not properly capture the colors, because these little treats really are a work of art.  If you have never had marzipan and live or work in the Northampton area, you really need to stop in and try some; if you have tried it and like it, La Fiorentina's will take that to another level.

Beyond the marzipan, they have great fruit tarts, croissant, cheesecake that is to die for, and a lot of really good Italian desserts, including the classic cannoli.  All of their cakes that I have tried are tremendous, and I look forward to trying more, despite my general aversion to very sweet desserts, because they just do such an incredibly good job with all of their food.

The coffee is, as I said, spectacular; it being a rather warm day today (47 degrees is warm in December), I went for an iced latte, and as I took my first long sip of it, all I could think was "if everyone tried this, no one would drink flavored coffee."  The espresso is amazing, rich and flavorful, perfectly roasted, and the milk mixes perfectly with just the right ratio to the coffee.  Their regular coffee is great as well; when I had a few trainings last year in Northampton, their hot coffee was the perfect thing to warm me, and as I struggled to stay awake through 24 hours of boring-ness over three days it kept me awake.  After drinking La Fiorentina coffee I cannot drink Dunkin Donuts' swill for at least a week.

All in all,  I cannot recommend La Fiorentina highly enough, and they are truly my favorite cafe in not just Northampton, but anywhere.  If anyone has a place they think could challenge it, please let me know, but it is a long shot that I will find somewhere that I love more.  FYI, though, their hours suck, not opening until 9am Sunday through Friday, and 8am on Saturday.  I want coffee at 6am, dammit!

******

Check us out on Facebook!

Boston Trip #3 (Cambridge, MA)

So I have been to Crema Cafe a couple times before, and wrote briefly about it back in March, but after going again at the end of September, I decided to add a quick post about my last trip there.  I was meeting a couple old friends in Boston, and had some time to kill so I figured a stop in Cambridge at my favorite little cafe was a good idea.  One cold brewed iced coffee and an English muffin with jam later, and I was happy as a pig in...well, you know.  The iced coffee was spectacular, even better than their regular iced coffee which is already better than most, and the English muffin was to die for.  I know what you're thinking, how good can an English muffin really be?  When made at Crema Cafe, pretty damn good.  Homemade, a little sweeter than a traditional (aka Thomas') variety, it was served warm with butter and raspberry jam that was delicious; I strongly considered ordering another, but decided that it would ruin my appetite.  It was a poor decision.

A quick walk to Charlie's Kitchen followed, where I had a couple beers and some appetizers, and introduced a friend to the glory that are their burgers.  Nothing crazy to report, just another plug for a great little bar.

******************

Singha

Dinner at Chilli Duck Thai followed a few hours later, after wandering around the area of the Park Plaza hotel netted no positive results and Yelp suggested it and my friend wanted to have Thai, Viet, or some other eastern Asian food.  I had the Panang Curry with chicken, and my friend had the Tom Yum Noodle Soup.  Mine was very tasty, subtly flavorful and just a little bit spicy.  The soup was apparently good as well, with just the right amount of spice.  I introduced my friend to Singha, which is one of my guilty pleasure beers; sort of like a Thai PBR, it has a little too much sweetness and not enough real beer flavor, but for some reason I just love drinking it nonetheless.  Sadly, I do not really remember much more about the meal, but it was quite tasty and not unreasonably priced.

******************

Warsteiner

The night concluded at Penguin Pizza in Brigham Circle, and while I cannot speak to the pizza (which looked pretty good), their beer list is insanely good.  Hundreds of beers, many of which I had never heard of, including a lot of foreign options, made decision making very difficult.  I ended up with a Warsteiner, which was a light Westphalian beer, similar to a Czech lager but with a little bit more body.  I had ordered something else, but they were out, so I told the waiter, a friendly Irishman with a thick brogue, to pick me something light and refreshing, and he brought this and something else that I do not recall.  I am glad that I went with this, and I really want to go back to this place to try their pizza and start making my way through their beer list.

******

Check us out on Facebook!

The Brass Buckle Cafe (Greenfield, MA)

Located at the corner of Main and Chapman Sts. in Greenfield, The Brass Buckle Cafe is just one of many small cafes or coffee shops that have existed in this location over the last fifteen years; some have been good, some bad, but none has managed to last more than a few years.  The Brass Buckle hopefully will not break that trend.

In the interest of full disclosure, apparently my step-dad and the owner of the cafe have a bit of a feud going on after an extremely negative post on Yelp or one of those sites, which the owner saw and ended up confronting my step-dad and screaming profanity at him, and then banished him from the cafe.  I figured I should give it a shot however, and I was really hoping that my step-dad simply had a bad experience, and while mine was not nearly so negative as his, I was really not pleased.

To start, you walk in and the place is actually nicely set up, very clean looking and with enough room everywhere.  It has a pretty standard cafe set up at the counter, with some cookies and other pastry types behind glass next to where you order, and a couple of giant blackboards behind the counter list what your options for drinks and food are.  The "kitchen" is open and you can watch your food be made if you are so inclined.  The prices are very reasonable, and their coffee menu is pretty good, including a few things that I do not often see, such as Vietnamese Iced Coffee.  So far, so good.

Chilaquiles and an iced coffee

From there things went down hill.  I waited several minutes to order despite having just one person ahead of me in line, and while the young man who took my order was perfectly friendly (which goes a long way with me), I hope for his sake he is new because his lack of familiarity with the cafe's offerings was a serious problem.  I ordered the chilaquiles, a classic Mexican breakfast dish which typically uses leftover corn tortillas which are fried in quarters and then baked with a sauce and topped with crema or queso fresco, and of course served with the requisite refried beans.  This iteration of the dish lacked the beans, had some crema (they say queso blanco on their website, but I am really doubtful about that) drizzled on the top of a giant pile of fried tortilla.  The red and green salsas they used were fine, nicely spicy, but nothing special.  Adding radish, which may have been pickled, was a nice touch, but none of the other vegetables were particularly good, and the tortillas were inconsistent as far as texture, which had some appeal to me in that I like contrast of textures, but it was too inconsistent, with some pieces completely soggy and others completely brittle.  The crema, or whatever it was, was actually the best part, but there wasn't enough to get on every bite, and while drowning the dish in it would not have been good either as far as presentation or to eat, adding a bit more would be a good idea.

Coffee being a big part of any cafe, and it being morning when I went, I had myself an iced coffee, served black, and it was...okay.  I drank the whole thing, and it was fine, but it was not great, certainly not up to the level of Greenfield Coffee, much less Cambridge's Crema Cafe or Northampton's La Fiorentina or Haymarket Cafe.  If the food was better, the coffee would be more than good enough, and if the coffee was better I could probably deal with the food that was not up to my standards.  The service is an issue, but again, if it were not one of multiple problems I could get over it and return.  Sadly, I do not believe that I will return.

******

Check us out on Facebook!

Boston Trip (Boston and Cambridge, MA)

Regina Pizzeria is, by all accounts, a Boston landmark, a restaurant famous enough to have its own page on Wikipedia, and a real icon in the predominately Italian North End neighborhood.  With 21 locations ranging throughout greater Boston, this is a still-growing business serving the same great pizza they have since 1926.

I met an old college friend at the restaurant for dinner a little after 8:00pm on Wednesday, having just started to recover my appetite from my trip to Tacos Lupita, and having done a fair bit of walking already that day (from Allston to Cambridge, then from Quincy Market, where I had a couple beers with another friend, to the North End), I was ready for some pizza.  My friend had a coupon for a couple different pizzas, which is good, because the place is not cheap; their "gourmet" pizzas, as they refer to them, are around $20 for a large.  We ended up going with the Classico, which consists of tomato sauce, pepperoni, artichoke hearts, fresh mushrooms, mozzarella and parmesan.  It was really good, with a crispy exterior and a thin crust in the middle, which could not hold the weight of the toppings.  The sauce was nothing particularly special, though it had a nice sweetness to it.  The pepperoni was mild, with almost no spice to it, but I wasn't expecting it to be the star; that honor fell to the artichoke hearts, which were delicious, but not quite what I expected.  When I think of being served artichoke hearts, I think of just the heart itself, that meaty, delicious chunk of buttery flesh in the center of all those leaves, but in this case, they left some of the more tender inner leaves attached.  This wasn't exactly a problem, but it wasn't what I expected, and it's certainly not how I would have gone about making it; then again, they're the ones who have been open for almost 90 years, so who am I to talk? 

Overall, the food was solid, though not as amazing as I expected, and it was a fun place to grab some pizza.  We had a few slices left over that my friend took home, and they were huge slices.  I would say it's a good place to go, but also that there are better options in the North End.

******************

Mr. Bartley's Gourmet Burgers identifies itself as being a Boston landmark as well, but that is just a flat out lie; after all, they're not even in Boston!  Located in the Harvard Square section of Cambridge, this is a really good place to get a burger, offering thirty cleverly named burgers, mostly political or sports related, that range from "The (Sexy) Rexy Ryan," a chicken burger with blue cheese, hot sauce and french fries, to "The Chara," listed as "'wicked good' w/ bbq sauce, bacon, jalapeno pineapple relish and grilled onions w/ baked beans."  I met another old friend from college there on Thursday for lunch, and it was pretty well packed still at almost 1:30pm, but we got squeezed in immediately.  The atmosphere is fun, with the waitresses screaming the orders to the cooks and a lively crowd of mostly college aged people eating there, though by no means was the crowd limited to twenty-somethings.

I went with "The Mark Zuckerberg," described as "(Richest geek in America) with boursin cheese, bacon, and sweet potato fries."  It was delicious.  Cooked perfectly rare (so hard to get people to do that these days!), it was a hefty patty, seemingly larger than the 7oz the website claims, on a delicious sesame bun with a mound of delicious, creamy boursin and a pile of super crispy bacon on top.  The fries were actually reasonably crispy (awesome!) and had that strong, sweet flavor indicative of fresh sweet potato, and they provided so many that even as hungry as I was, I ended up giving my friend the last two because I was unable to stuff them into my already overfilled gut.

Since I walked about 12 miles in two days, I felt it was completely acceptable for me to also get a root beer float, and I felt completely vindicated when it arrived; it was absolutely delicious, with good root beer and delicious vanilla ice cream.  This is just one of many specialty drinks, including lime rickeys, egg creams, and a number of frappes.   My friend went with "The Michelle Obama" burger, "(she's hot & spicy) blue cheese burger with cajun seasoning and french fries," and she swapped out the fries for sweet potato fries of her own.  She enjoyed it, and also her raspberry lime rickey.

I would definitely recommend this; the burgers are better than the nearby Charlie's Kitchen, with more variety and options.  Unless you are going for the booze, I would definitely say Mr. Bartley's is the better choice if you don't mind spending a few dollars more.  After tip, we were in the $40 range between the burgers and drinks, so it isn't cheap, but I really enjoyed it.

******************

I went to Crema Cafe twice in my two days in the Boston area, once on Wednesday to waste a little time before meeting for drinks at Quincy Market, and again on Thursday to waste some time after lunch.  Located just off Harvard Square, this is a moderately sized cafe, offering seating on the main level and also in a small loft section.  Offering gourmet coffee and a variety of food, this is a great, albeit expensive place to hang out and read a book, or just grab a coffee on the way to work.  I had iced coffee on Wednesday since it was beautiful out, though they were out of their cold brewed coffee unfortunately, and it was good, much better than some crappy Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks (both of which are in the area) coffee.  Thursday was a bit chilly, so I ended up with a hot coffee, which was one of the best I'd ever had; it was strong, but not bitter, and after 16oz of it I didn't feel like I'd been bowled over with caffeine, nor did I feel like I needed more; rather, it was just right.  I also grabbed a couple macaroons with my hot coffee, and they were ridiculously good.  Light, moist, slightly but not too sweet, with a crisp exterior, they were as good as I've ever had, and I had to struggle to convince myself that I didn't need more than the original two.

Sandwiches, soups, salads and sundry other foods are also offered, so this is a really good option if you are looking to just hang out and grab lunch, and while I cannot speak to the quality of that food, if it is anything like what I had you will not be remotely disappointed.  My friend Joe goes there when he is not at the library at the Kennedy School, and he spoke highly of it as well.  This is definitely a highly recommended spot.

******

Check us out on Facebook!

Amherst Coffee (Amherst/Greenfield/Northampton, MA)

Amherst Coffee, also known as Greenfield Coffee and Northampton Coffee, is one of a couple great options for a good, strong brew in Amherst or Northampton, and really the only good option in Greenfield.  I haven't been to the Northampton branch yet, but I have been to both Amherst and Greenfield several times, and as a person who likes both good, strong coffee and loose leaf tea, I'm a huge fan.

Amherst Coffee, which is the original location, is actually called a coffee and whisk(e)y bar, offering their standard options of fresh coffees from the Barrington Coffee Roasting Company, a Boston based company that supplies all their beans.  In a world occupied primarily by people who think that Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts have "good" coffee, a place that doesn't over-roast their coffee or make it as watery as possible is a blessing.  They have great lattes and cappuccino as well, for those who prefer a little fancier option than simple coffee.

However, as good as the coffee is (and it's damn good), the tea is really what makes Amherst Coffee stand out; their menu includes several black and green teas, as well as an oolong or two.  All are loose leaf, adding a level of "freshness" to the tea that you won't see in bagged teas purchased at the store.  They serve the tea by giving you a small pot of water with the tea suspended in it via a small basket, which you can remove when the tea has steeped to your preferred level, giving you what I'm going to guess is in the 16oz range of tea; the cups they use are large, heavy glass, which appear to be a little larger than most home mugs.

The requisite pastries that they offer are only okay; I had a croissant with my iced tea, and while it was flaky, I'm about 99.9% sure that it was not made with the proper amount of butter (if any at all), so it lacked the exceptionally rich flavor I associate with a really good croissant.  I've had cookies there before as well, and again, they were nothing special, though at least everything tastes as if it really was made that day as they claim on their website.

Amherst is the only location that serves alcohol, and it's unfortunate, because they offer a truly amazing selection of spirits, including a few I'd never even heard of, like Anchor Distilling's Old Potrero 18th Century Single Malt Rye.  Among their more impressive offerings are a wide selection of A.H. Hirsch bourbons, including a 16 year aged option that was distilled in 1974, and 22 and 25 year aged varieties as well.  They have a fantastic selection of Scotch, including Lagavulin Distiller's Edition, which I'm dying to try once I find it in my heart to spend $18 on a glass of whisky.  They also have Glenrothes 32 year old and Laphroiag 30 year old, two of the older Scotches you'll find outside of a specialty bar in a large city (or, you know, Scotland).  If this sounds intimidating, don't worry; there are some more moderately priced options as well, such as Aberlour's 12 and 16 year varieties, Laphroiag Cask Strength 10 year old, and Ledaig 10 year old.

Also, while I've never had it, they have Suntory Yamazaki whisky, from Japan's first and oldest whisky distillery.

If you're not into drinking whisk(e)y straight, the bar offers numerous cocktails, as well as a few beers, and a pretty interesting looking wine selection.  They also list a few snack options, such as olives, almonds, and boquerones (anchovies); at some point I'll try them, as boquerones are among my favorite things.




******

Check us out on Facebook!