This Week in the Mercury
Friday, December 12, 2008
Food How to Start a Cross Country Food Fight
Posted by Patrick Alan Coleman on Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 1:36 PM
I'm not finished with Portland, Maine. Yes, I know it's not their fault that Epicurious.com called them "the new Portland, Oregon." for 2009:
Abundance of great chefs, restaurants, and local foodies? Check, check, and check. Want examples? Visit Five Fifty-Five, Hugo's, and Fore Street to start.
Never-the-less, I quite like the idea of a cross-country Portland food rivalry, so I shall continue to bait them.
A couple of "original" Portlanders—yeah, they call Portland, Maine, the "original" Portland, which sounds a bit defensive to me—posted comments, on my first blog post, in defense of the Epicurious rating:
Here's another thing that make the real Portland better: ingredients. We have lobsters under $5/lb., Winter Point and Glidden Point oysters, Matsutake mushrooms (within twenty miles of town), glass eels (normally ~$400 pound in San Sebastien), sea urchin, and salt grass grazed lamb, among other things. We've the oldest organic grower association MOFGA, in the country, and the oldest, continuously running farmers market in America.
-rabelais
Rabelais is one of the reasons. Saveur named it one of the best cookbook stores in the country. Bartenders like Joe Ricci and John Meyers. The Death Match Kids.. The plethora of cheese makers—whatcha got aside from Rogue River? And it's now Maine Shrimp Season. Good god.
But, the writer would know all of this if he's ever visited.
-Uki Mochi
Alright then. Let's go point by point, shall we?
Ingredients. Are you fucking kidding me? How long is Portland, Maine's growing season? 120 to 180 days (at most) according to the national gardeners association. While we here in Portland, Oregon, can grow for over 200 days of the year. And yeah, you might have the oldest blah, blah, farmers market, blah, blah... But is it open through most of December? We've got produce in the Park Blocks until December 20th this year when the market shuts down for a scant three months. That's 9 months of amazing outdoor markets.
Mushrooms? We've got chantrelles, matsutakes and morels less than 20 miles away from town. Good meat? The Willamette Valley provides a shit-ton of farmland for pasture raised livestock. Cheese makers? Ever heard of Tillamook? Yeah, they're only celebrating their 100th anniversary, and they're the big guys. We've got too many small producers around here to name, but you can get a list at the Portland Farmer's Market vendor map.
Bartenders. Pshaw. We've got Lance Mayhew and Daniel Shoemaker. How many times have your bartenders been mentioned in the New York Times? And while we're talking booze: we've got a thriving micro distillery community and more micro breweries than you can shake a stick at. Ohhh yeah... We've got you beat on the booze.
I'm tempted to give you the seafood. You are after-all a port city. But... NAW! We've got salmon, baby!
I'll let the whole restaurant thing slide. After all, I haven't been to Portland, Maine. However, I am trying to arrange a little food writer exchange program. Just putting it out there... If you are a food writer from Portland, Maine, I will happily arrange for you to be hosted at some of the city's best restaurants, if you can arrange the air fare and promise to write a column about your experience for the Mercury. In turn you will do the same for me and I'll write a column in your publication. That way, the restaurant debate can be much more informed.
So, consider the gauntlet thrown, Portland, Maine. I hereby open the comments section for the throw-down. C'mon Portlander's, show your love. And please, remember this is all in good fun!
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Tillamook cheese? Be serious now.
Seafood? Please. Oh, we got salmon. And that's about it. Overrated and expensive for anything good.
Somehow, I don't think real Portlanders (Maine, that is) give a fuck about what goes on here--thankfully, they've yet to be overrun with people from around the country who seem to feel the need for validation for their lifestyle choices. Nor should they. Just as the average person here could care less about Portland, ME.
And I'd still love to see the girl in the previous post kicking your ass.
I'd say sushi too. We're closer to Asia.
But I fear they'd kill us on the East Coast staples, pizza, dogs, bagels.
PDX has nada in that department.
Jake,
I really should've made kicking my ass a Mercury auction item. I'm sure there'd be plenty of people who'd like to see that. Oh well, there's always next year!
hugs/kisses
Patrick
http://thephoenix.com/Portland/
It's the Right Coast Portland's weekly.
Too bad Tillamook destroyed Bandon's cheese factory. :(
But who needs fancy foods with all that delicious booze? (That new, potent, Octane stuff out of Cottage Grove ain't too shabby, either.)
"Epicurious.com called them "the new Portland, Oregon." for 2009" Yeah. And York is the new New York, New York!
Patrick,
I have no interest myself in causing you any harm!
That girl just looks pretty tough--I will be looking forward to that item next year. Thanks!
"That's 9 months of amazing outdoor markets."
Twelve, if you skip over to the Hillsdale Farmers' Market. It's open year round!
Sorry, Nick, but the Phoenix isn't "the Right Coast Portland's weekly." It's Boston's weekly (and they stole it from Cambridge). You guys are a branch location. I was under the impression that you had your own alt paper, the Casco Bay something or other, but I must've been mistaken. We've got two, though. Perhaps we could lend you the Willy Week for a while...
Oh, and I'd put Chrissie and Koorosh Zaerpoor up against Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch any time, any place!
Re:
The swarm of those seeking validation for their lifestyle choices.
An astute observation, Jake (no snark intended). That makes two in a week, ma'am or sir. Please continue...
First - how great can a place be for food without a thriving wine industry?!
Second - if you really get right down to it the seafood on the coast is awesome;
* Netarts Bay oysters (which are great in their own right but are also the seed stock for almost EVERY major oyster farm in the WORLD!)
* Clams and Mussels of many kinds that draw people from as far as Japan
* Rockfish of many kinds
* Bayshrimp in such abundance that you can catch them with an open hand
* Tigerspot prawns, elusive and transitory, but tastier than any shrimp anywhere hands down
* Cabazon
* Albacore
* Sturgeon
* Lamprey
* Dungeness crab
* Halibut
* Snapper of many kinds
* Ling cod
And what is great is that we haven't over-fished our shores to death (yet) so unlike the east coast we still have a BOOMING fishing industry. If anyone actually has the figures it would be interesting to compare the fishing industry revenue of the east coast and west coast.
Fourth - Mushrooms are abundant including all those previously mentioned but here is the clincher, Oregon is the only place outside of France, Italy, and Japan* where truffles grow wild. *Different species in Japan.
Fifth - although this isn't exactly an argument for food in Portland per-se, it speaks to the point previously posted about pizza, bagels, etc. The proximity to California allows us the luxury of the freshest California winter produce such as Oranges, Pink Lemons, Zephyr Limes, Passion Fruit, Mangos, I could go on and on. I would take fresh California produce any day over a greasy pizza from New York (unless of course you are talking about escape from New York pizza.)
Sixth - how many restaurants are actually in portland maine, and how many of those are truly great?
Seventh - do you have wheat farms stretching as far as the eye can see?
Eighth - skiing and snowboarding suck on the east coast (totally unfood related but still true).
Finally, Portland boasts the highest number of strip clubs per capita, which is really to say that we have more naked hotties wandering around eating our food (can you imagine nymphs in Loth Lorien? We don't have to because that is Portland).
Oops, did I forget that we are so awesome that we don't have to count ? :)
"Sorry, Nick, but the Phoenix isn't "the Right Coast Portland's weekly." It's Boston's weekly (and they stole it from Cambridge). You guys are a branch location."
Too fucking funny, considering the board you're posting on.
I see your challenge, and raise you one Portland Phoenix blog post.
http://thephoenix.com/BLOGS/abouttown/arch…
-Jeff Inglis, managing editor, Portland Phoenix
I tried to get riled up for this, but East Coast envy is just a really tired topic, you know?
I mean seriously, when was the last time you ever saw someone write about something from the East write a whining diatribe about "being as good as" something on the West Coast (I actually laughed out loud at the thought of someone here doing that. It’s that funny).
We here on the East Coast have just had to accept that the West (i.e. irrelevant) Coast will always need to cling to the nebulous fantasy of not being inferior to the East Coast.
At gets pretty sad at times, like in this case where a city of over 500,000 on the West Coast desperately (and resoundingly unsuccessfully) seeks validation by being “better” than a city of 50,000 on the East Coast.
(historical note: In a delightful coincidence, this example beautifully illustrates the sage wisdom of native Portlander Umfold “Stink-pockets” Johnson, who was fond of saying “It takes ten times as many West Coast people to do something as well as it’s done on the East Coast” Umfold was also fond of storing samples of his wife’s stools in his pockets – hence his nickname. I know many of you on the West Coast are not familiar with Umfold’s teachings, since he lived in (the Real) Portland in the 1790’s, about 60 years before your (Fake) Portland was invented.)
As with any of these grasping attempts at relevancy by the West, our role here is to nod & smile patronizingly. A virtual pat on the head.
PS - The Portland Phoenix is most certainly NOT a "branch" of the Boston Phoenix, having served as (The real) Portland's Arts & Entertainment Authority since 1999 and being named the New England Press Association's "Newspaper of the Year" in 2006.
There WERE 2 Alt-weeklies here for a while, but The Casco Bay Weekly closed in 2002. If done well, I guess there’s no need for 2…….
Marc Shepard
Associate Publisher
Portland Phoenix
Glad to see this is all in good fun. ;) Would be sad to fight just because Portland, OR and Portland, ME share the same name.
Leslie and The Badgers
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