You’ve got to be a brave chef to put tongue on the menu. And it is offered here in flying colors. Flood’s chef/owner Greg Mitchell has proven his mettle in many ways, especially at the Palace Diner where he and co-owner and chef Chad Conley (of Rose Foods bagel-Jewish deli fame) have made tuna melts and flapjacks an art of the meal.
But at Flood’s, recently opened in the Francis Hotel as an independent restaurant (it has its own entrance apart from the hotel but no relationship to the functionality of the building as a 15-room inn), the tongue in question stands brazenly apart among less rarefied entrees. Unless you consider chicken schnitzel rarefied. That too is on the menu and is as large as the breast from a condor, covering a platter- size plate with no space to spare.
The main dining room with banquettes and booths and the ante room with several tables
More to the point, the menu is an odd compilation offering a list of dishes under the heading of Dinner such as cheese toast, salad, clam and mussel toast among the four lone entrée-style dishes –seared beef tongue, homemade pork sausage, whole roasted mackerel and chicken schnitzel. These are served unadorned. If you want a side, they’re separately listed: grilled summer squash, charred broccoli, marinated beans and fries.
Yet, almost all the dishes the four of us at table tried were respectably good. But it’s the arrangement and scope of the menu and virtual mood of the restaurant and space itself that left me scratching. Is this a bar that serves food or as was earlier described in a Boston.com article where Mitchell explained what he was trying to achieve such as a “Sunday roast that… will remind people of eating at their grandma’s house at 3 or 4 in the afternoon.”
My paternal grandmother, who was a terrific cook, served the Sunday meal at noon.”
There was no Sunday roast on the menu on the recent Sunday evening we were there.
One of my table mates uttered this bon mot, “It’s not a go-out-to dinner restaurant. It’s a meet friends and nosh restaurant.” That leaves granny fare in the dust.
Caesar salad
Among our foursome everyone, except me, ordered the Caesar salad to start. The fluff of grated Parmesan was a gauzy scrim of cheese covering the mildly flavorful layers of lettuce underneath. I opted for the roasted oysters to start. These were three of the tiniest oysters I’ve seen and were sauced in a sort of herbaceous sauce or maybe it was spinach. I couldn’t tell. No mention of their provenance either. Don’t’ all restaurants in Maine give foods like oysters their birthplace? In fact, “local” doesn’t seem to be a focus here. Admittedly I like my oysters unadorned, raw, slurped out of the shell with gusto.
The “celebrated burger”
One member at our table ordered the burger, which is proclaimed on the menu as “the Celebrated Cheeseburger” and fries. Celebrated because it’s universally loved? Or germane to this restaurant because it’s so highly regarded? Quite frankly I’m impatient with these monumental burgers plated with enough jujubes of toppings to fill a kitchen sink. Give me a good old plain burger made without the culinary tomfoolery: All I want of my burger is excellent beef, salt and pepper and the usual condiments covering a well-charred chunk of beef. That’s a burger to lust after.
Top, the bar when we arrived at 6:30 and by 8:45 full. Are those stools comfy?
My ideal burger was at a restaurant in the Hamptons called The Laundry in the days before hairy handed hedge-funders arrived to build their castellated shingled horrors. The Laundry in its last days was a respite among the growing hype of dining out in the Hamptons. It was frequented by long-standing summer residents with the usual smattering of celebrities like Craig Claiborne and Lauren Bacall (sorry millenials if you don’t know who they are) who went to the laundry for their incredible burger. Other items were on the menu (like roast chicken) were very good, but the burger was sublime: perfectly charred. I don’t know whether it was cooked on a flat top or grill. Oh, I’d give anything to have one now. The simplest pure form of a burger in Portland is found at Ruski’s, the dive bar that survives in the gentrified avenues of the West End.
Extra crispy calamari
Back to the tongue at Flood’s and my point of reference, I grew up eating tongue, a firm family favorite that my mother hoisted on us about once a month for Saturday night dinner. My mother was a very uninspired cook, but she liked to experiment sometimes without boundaries. She learned to cook from her mother, who was a dour individual without humor and a heavy hand at the stove; tongue was apparently a cheap meat to buy—and I think it still is. The tongue was boiled and very chewy (no pun intended). No haute barnyard improvisation; it didn’t have a raisin sauce or anything like that. We took out a jar of Gulden’s mustard to make it palatable.
Tongue with frizzled shallots
But Flood’s tongue prepared by Mitchell was stunning. It was braised and seared, served under a luscious scrim of frizzled shallots with a touch of mustard. We took the leftovers home, and it was a delicious sandwich for lunch, gobbled up joyously (no pun intended).
For a brief period you’d sometimes find tongue at farmers’ markets. It could beef or lamb tongue. I haven’t seen it in a long time; I suspect it wasn’t a big seller. Perhaps it will made a comeback from Mitchell’s audacious use of it.
The schnitzel was like old Vienna. Perhaps it was meant to be the Sunday roast. Besides it being ridiculously large it was fantastic tasting, the crisp coating fried to perfection, very buttery and tender, not a dry ounce on its surface.
The biggest schnitzel in Maine is offered at Flood’s
As I said, it filled the plate, without room for anything else. The cutlet needed a sauce of some sort, though. I would have been satisfied with a lemon-butter sauce on the side or as a pool under the cutlet. I prepare chicken cutlets at home with a lemon butter sauce. It’s delicious with a few green beans and boiled new potatoes. That’s a great little meal.
When asked about a sauce, the waitress said you’re meant to moisten it with the hot sauce on the table. Mistake. No thank you. My mouth was scorched.
We also had a plate of calamari for the table. They were good, very crisp with a nondescript dipping sauce.
The sparse dessert menu offered two measly selections: chocolate pudding and rhubarb sorbet. The restaurant needs a pastry chef, maybe someone who could do old-fashioned American desserts like classic cakes and pies.
Here’s the gist on Flood’s. What is it? Is it a bar serving food? A neighborhood hangout? That night, a Sunday, the small room was populated by a disparate assemblage of pudgy millenials. With the racket of scorching percussion rock blaring over the sound system, it made conversation impossible without yelling at each other.
Dedicated entrance to Flood’s apart from the hotel
As the former home to Bolster and Snow, a randomly appointed dining room at best, Flood’s redo is even more circumspect. It’s a clubby room with banquettes that are a bit too low to sit at table comfortably and wood-paneled booths and enclosures around the plain wooden tables. There are some prints on the wall and no table flowers or centerpiece anywhere. You walk into a small anteroom and immediately into the dining room. The bar is where the kitchen used to be. There’s also another room with two tables seating four each, as plain as specks. There’s a third dining room, which is not in use yet.
By the time we left at about 8:30, the place was packed, incredibly noisy as it was earlier. And if you’re wondering where its unusual name derives it’s from an author named Joseph Mitchell who wrote about fisherman, fishmongers and butchers and the Old Mr. Flood.
Flood’s, 747 Congress St., Portland, ME 207-613-9031
Rating: mixed: food is well prepared (nearly 4 stars) from a misguided menu
Ambiance: Vaguely clubby, but incredibly noisy with heavy rock music blaring without letup; the restaurant manager used to be at Drifters Wife, where scorching loud music was the norm
Tables: Banquettes (too low), 4 tops and bar seating for 6 to 8
Parking: On the street
$$$: Moderately expensive
