The Pepper Club

The August adventure for our humble supper club was The Pepper Club. I had been there a few times before, once on a date about five years ago, another time with a previous supper club to which I had belonged. And a few times for apps and drinks. Good times, all.

So again this month we travel to the easterly end of Middle Street. This time, however, the street is once again a street instead of a hole. Hooray!

In honor of their anniversary, The Pepper club was having a special - four courses for $21, with a selection of wines that have proceeds going to help earthquake-ravaged Haiti. Well alright, that sounds pretty good. There were four of us as this outing, and we all chose this special.

I started with a glass of Tempranillo, and things seemed to be going pretty well. Our hipster waitress was patient with us, giving us adequate time to make our choices, though did not explain well enough that we did not necessarily need to make all of our course choices before the meal. That' alright. We all laughed a little and settled to conversation and really delicious slices of molasses oatmeal bread while we waited for our appetizers to arrive.

When I think of baked brie, I think of delicious warm, creamy French cheese pouring gently from its rind, a smattering of almond slivers and apricot conserve about, with some wafery crackers for transport.

This is what I got instead:

Molten melted mess. With foam.

So that was a bummer. I think this was about the time that hipster waitress noticed me writing stuff down, and was a little weird about it. However, this is also about the time that she stopped noticing that my wine glass was empty.

About 50 minutes after being seated, our salad course arrived. My salad was mesclun greens with Pepperclub vinaigrette. They were a little skimpy on the dressing unfortunately, but it was very good.

My dinner entree was Wolfe Neck Farm Beef Meatloaf with Mashed Potatoes & Mushroom Gravy. I was pretty excited about it. Meatloaf can so often be pushed aside as leftovers fodder or old lady food. However, it can also be a thing of great artistry and delight. The secret blend of meat, vegetables and spices can be delicious and interesting as well as comforting. This is what I was hoping for.

This is what I got instead:



You can't really tell from this photo, so let me explain the flavors to you. First off, the color in the photo above is correct - the mashed "potatoes" are the same color as the orange slice garnish. I am not really sure what they were. A little parsnippy? I am not sure. The flavor was very hard to place, but that place was not Potatoville. The gravy was very sweet, and reminded me of homemade ketchup-based barbecue sauce. The meatloaf itself was very oniony and ... leftover fodder. Fortunately with this course I did get another glass of wine. Finally.

The last course was dessert. I had Maine blueberry cheesecake. It was really good. The crust was crunchy and a little salty, which was a nice contrast to the sweetness of the cheesecake.

Overall as a group we were not wholly impressed. Yes, we had only paid $21 each, but by the time we had finished our meals, we had been at the restaurant for over two hours. It then took forever for the hipster waitress, Sarah, to bring our check. We figured out our portions, put our credit cards in an obvious place with the check and waited. For fifteen minutes. She had walked by our table at least a couple of times. So, I figured I must need to go up to the register. I took the money and went up. A very friendly fellow was helping me out and the hipster waitress came over and demanded to know what was going on. I politely explained that we had waited a long time for her to come back, and so I thought this would help. She said, "It didn't look like you were ready." I guess frustrated and bored does not look "ready." She then decided to write up our slips all individually. I am not sure why.

We left there two and a half hours after we had arrived, grumpy, disappointed, and needing alcohol.

That night, a man broke into The Pepper Club and stole our $21 each.

Open Farm Day - An Epicurean Elite Field Trip

I often forget Maine is home to hundreds of farms, actively producing a wealth of locally-grown products, whether they are creamy cheeses, stoneground mustards, ripe zucchinis, or soft angora yarn. I tend to think of “farmer” as being the trade of people in Aroostook county, that faraway place where potatoes are grown, or Washington county, where my family and I would pass by alternating blueberry fields and cranberry bogs on our way to my grandparents’ house. Today’s Open Farm Day, sponsored by the Maine Department of Agriculture, afforded me a chance to visit some farms that are more close to home, learn about how they’re run, and sample some tasty treats. Elise had created a bountiful itinerary which maximized our farminess, giving us “four hours, five farms, and nine kinds of awesome.”

Our first stop was Sweetser’s Apple Barrel and Orchards, run by Connie and Dick Sweetser, and their son Greg. The farmhouse will be celebrating its 200^th birthday in 2012, and has housed six generations of the Sweetser family. Connie was our lovely tour guide.

The trees had bunches of green apples here and there on them, but in sparse amounts. The crop has been hit hard this year by the early spring thaw and mid-May frost. Statewide, 50-60% of the apple crop is down, and the Sweetser farm is showing even deeper losses. Nevertheless, the Vista Bellas, a summer variety I’d never heard of before, were just starting to come out, along with some ripening Gravensteins. We strolled past neatly trimmed rows of McIntosh, Cortland, Red Delicious, and Golden Delicious apples. Their brochure has an impressive list of 39 different apples they grow, and their availability between July and November.

As we walked beside Connie’s rumbling John Deere, we learned about the 100-year-old trees on their property, the former slaughterhouse down the road that had “the best sausage,” and the man who’d stopped by their farm earlier in the year to put a whiskey bottle or two around some apples. One had shriveled up in its liquor bath, in faint reminiscence of B-horror film props of jarred placentas, but the other was flourishing in the trigonal glass bottle.

Our next stop was Pineland Farms. We drove past a portion of their lush, 5,000-acre fields with various barnyard animals frisking about and visited their market. There was a stunning array of fresh vegetables, cheeses, mustards, pickled things, breads, pies, and anything else a farm could produce. They had an abundance of cheeses (made on-site) for sampling. Unfortunately, their onion-garlic jack had no more samples left, but I was able to get my toothpick in some cubes of smoked jack, swiss, and salsa jack.

Then we drove a short ways down the road to an incredible alpaca farm, Queen’s Land Farm Alpacas. We were greeted by a young farmhand-in-training named Lindsay*, who told us all about the alpacas on her family’s farm. They were much smaller than I’d anticipated, and completely adorable, with names like UpperCut and Chief. There was a pregnant alpaca who was due any day, though it was hard to imagine an alpaca inside her svelte belly.

These were also the first barnyard animals, with the exception of cats, who seemed to really have a handle on their toilet training—they kept it to one confined area, leaving the rest of their pen relatively doody-free.

There was an incredibly sweet alpaca named T.C. (Tonka's Crown) who had a bit of a Parkinsonian handicap. The owners, Matt and Kate Tufts, weren’t sure if his head tremor was a hereditary defect or if it was the result of contracting a meningeal worm. They had him gelded just to be safe, which led to an interesting conversation with Lindsay:

Lindsay: “It’s not really like spaying. They make it so they can’t have babies anymore.”

Elise: “Like what they do with sheep?”

Lindsay: “I don’t know, but they cut it off.”

Elise: “I see.”

Lindsay: “And put it in a bucket of water.”

We couldn’t figure out what the bucket of water had to do with anything, but T.C. didn’t seem any worse for the wear. He sniffed us and gave little kisses whenever we put our faces up to the fence.

Lindsay gave us a little tour of their chicken house and found a hen named Rainbow to pick up and let us pet. (There was another named Sparkles, which lead to a sneaking suspicion Lindsay might’ve had a hand in the naming of these birds.)

She explained that a neighboring farm had had its chicken flock reduced from 200 to 100 because of a fox, and that the same fate had met the one rooster the Tufts had had on their farm. Now one of the hens has grown a comb and basically become something of a hermaphrodite.

Next, we went to Cashmere Cabin at Elmledge Farm, which had cashmere goats, angora rabbits, and some beautiful horses. A woman sat spinning cashmere into yarn on the front lawn as she chatted away with friends. Elise and I were shown around by a member of the Richards family, and were greeted by two massive horses in the barn. We got to pet Jim, the even-tempered sweetheart in the middle stall, while Pete gazed casually into the distance.

Behind the barn was a fenced-in area where the goats scampered about wherever they pleased, taking the time to laze about in a bathtub or two. They were extremely friendly and especially interested in nibbling any bit of skirt, jean, or purse they could sink their teeth into.

The family had four rabbits in their backyard hutch, two white ones and two grayish-black ones. The owner explained that, in the summer, their fur needs to be pulled out every week or so in order to avoid matting. I was surprised to learn they don’t shave them, they simply pull the fur out and use it for spinning. Elise was brave and petted a bunny of her own accord!

Our final visit was to Windy Hill Farm in Windham. We arrived a bit too late to see the miniature donkey and the pygmy goats, but still left with some excellent wares: honey (with a honeycomb!), beet greens, and a porterhouse steak for Elise, and some sweet potato butter for me. (I still can’t think about the words “sweet potato” without remembering that horrible Oprah moment.) We shared a tasty Needham in the car and headed back into Portland, just as some stray raindrops began falling.

*Lindsey, Lynsey, Lynzey, Lyndzay, Lyndsey, Lyndsay?