Few surprises populate the Maine Restaurant Week list of participants in the Portland area.  Absent were members of the so-called hot list of new haunts such as Terlingua, Roustabout and Woodford Food and Beverage.   But do try the East Ender  for one of the best meals around from their $25 MRW prix fixe menu.  Or go to Tempo Dulu for its $45 prix fixe, a relative bargain for this divine restaurant.

These restaurant weeks—as most are  intended around the country in food-focused cities—are a way to invigorate the slower late winter-early spring months to draw diners in.  That means, if you cater to reverse logic, those perennially busy restaurants—not on the list–might be easier to get into without reservations since the bulk of local diners are flocking to MRW members.

On Thursday I went to  Caiola’s (not on the list) and had one of the most unusually delicious dinners there. A trio of preparations included their classic savory bread pudding with lobster, laced with a buttery, Sherry-tinged sauce that was rich and exquisitely smooth.  The main course was a new take on stuffed cabbage: bundles of cabbage were stuffed with black beans and set over a bracing version of beet borscht.  The combination had all the elements of culinary stylishness in a very good way.  For dessert it was hard to beat a vanilla cake with sarsaparilla-spiked ice cream.  Besides the wonderfully velvety texture of the ice cream, the flavored soda added a lot of buzz.

Caiola’s: savory lobster pudding;, cabbage rolls with borscht and vanilla cake with sarsaparilla ice cream

From a restaurant well on the MRW list, Five Fifty-Five offered a great prix fixe menu for $45.  I haven’t been there in ages, what with the allure of new restaurants taking center stage instead.  The food was as good as ever, coming from a new team in the kitchen.  A sunchoke soup was enriched with a Maine oyster and crispy kale.  The braised short ribs with cabbage was another brilliant dish.  Dessert, however,  was a bit disappointing: a dry, lightly rum- spiked Savarin that didn’t meet my sweet expectations. It needed more rum syrup to give it zip.

An unusual interpretation of the classic savarin

Of course all this might be upstaged by the opening of Scales Saturday night on Portland’s waterfront.  It finally flung its doors open and reports are flying around town with accolades so high it might be violating the city’s much-dwarfed height limit.  I’m going on Monday night and will report back.

Since I’m traveling for business on a regular basis to New York and Boston I’m immersing myself into the restaurant scenes of those two cities.  With an overnight in Boston I planned on going to Aquitaine, a fixture on the South End for several decades.  But it’s closed for renovations until May.  I settled for a late night burger at the Trophy Room, a handy little place in the South End to which locals of all stripes converge late into the night.

A classic burger at Boston’s Trophy Room

In New York, the picks are endless.  Interestingly the panache of farm-to-table dining is secondary to the Big Apple’s worldly guise.  But I found great pleasure in a Danny Meyer restaurant, Marta, in the fashionable NoMad neighborhood where Roman style pizzas are baked in wood-fired ovens to a crackling crisp finish. The pizze bianche  held potatoes, guanciale, black pepper, Pecorino and egg. A main course menu of simple delights featured such dishes as beer-brined chicken, pan roasted, and served with a cunning salad of greens, fennel and mint. I loved it for its simplicity and high flavors.

Clockwise Top Left: the double height dining hall at Marta; the Marta Negroni; patate carbornara; pizza stations and brined pan-roasted chicken with fennel and mint salad

From the very crafty cocktail menu I had the restaurant’s signature Negroni.  It’s served in its own bottle and is made with an aged whiskey instead of gin or vodka.  The subtle smokiness of the whiskey was different, though at $14 the choice of Cinzano as the red vermouth component was a bit cheesy.