6/28/15, “Icons”
New York, New York
I suppose that I need to go to Katz’s Deli for either lunch or dinner tomorrow. When I decided to take this trip to Maine,
which would mark the third year in a row that I have gone to Maine for the
first weekend of the summer. I see no
reason why this will not be an ongoing annual tradition. When I began to plan the trip, I literally
had no idea what I wanted to see. I just
knew I wanted to be in Maine this weekend.
Probably at the top of my list was visiting my old friend. I wound up planning the trip around visiting
him. Then I remembered that checklist I
was trying to complete of the most iconic restaurant in each state. Well, I knew that I could easily check off
New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts on this trip. That became the focus of my trip.
One thing led to another and I put everything
together Thursday night after I got back from the movies. In other words, from the time I planned the
trip to the time I left, I did nothing but sleep and work (and eat). I did not chart out any itineraries or print
any directions or anything. I just found
the three restaurants and came up with the order in which I needed to do
everything, no schedule. This is in
complete contrast to the way I usually travel.
The restaurant in New Hampshire was part of an inn, the oldest inn in
New Hampshire. The restaurant in Maine
was a lobster shack near Portland. The
restaurant in Massachusetts, the oldest restaurant in America, was in
Boston. Hmm, how did I put that all
together?
I believe my reader has
already witnessed most of the voyage, but I will recap. I drove up to Augusta after work on Friday,
saw the State House in the morning, met my friend in the afternoon, and went to
the hotel in New Hampshire for dinner, and that was where I spent the
night. Today, I would jet back across,
having lunch at the Lobster Shack, get my brochure in Saugus, visit my Aunt,
have dinner at the Oyster House in Boston, drive back to New York, stop at
Sleepy Hollow, drop my travelling companion off at a subway station in the
Bronx, drop off the car at the rental station, and be back at my apartment by
midnight, if all went well. Of course, all
did not get well, and I suppose some details are in order.
The thing about this list of “most iconic”
restaurants is that it’s not the list of the restaurant that serves the best
food. It’s something more. I knew going on, the goal wasn’t to find the
best lobster in Maine, the best oysters in Massachusetts or the best steak in
New Hampshire. No, it had more to do
with the atmosphere and the history.
Each restaurant succeeded there, more than making up for what they may
have lacked in food quality, not that that the food was bad. Last night’s dinner was delicious portions of
meat, and the breakfast was even better.
High quality breakfast meats and eggs, including sausage that tasted
better than any breakfast sausage I’d ever had, complimented a perfect
blueberry pancake. It was everything
that breakfast should have been, and doubt it had changed in the past 200+
years. Why bother changing it? Bacon and eggs are the perfect breakfast
foods. Why mess with it?
We hit the road, heading straight across to
Portland, where I would be getting lunch at the Lobster Shack on Cape
Elizabeth. It was touted as Maine’s best
lobster roll. Reader, if you have ever
been to Maine, you should know that any place that claims or is claimed to have
the state’s best lobster does not. You
know where you get the best lobster roll in the state? The little roadside shack with no more than
two people in front of you in line, where there are picnic tables out front and
garbage tables in the back. They serve
the best ice cream in the state, too.
They don’t brag about having the best lobster rolls or the best ice
cream in Maine. Why not? Because the shack 30 miles down the road also
has the best lobster rolls in the state, and the shack 50 miles down the road
also has the best ice cream in the state.
Why don’t they say they have the best?
Because the locals know where to find these shacks without checking a
list put out by an internet magazine.
They just drive until they get hungry and stop at the next one, and it
is always amazing. That’s the way life
should be. An overcrowded and overpriced
touristy spot does not have the best anything.
It is, however, the most iconic.
It had been raining all morning, and I knew it was the kind of rain that
doesn’t stop anytime soon. I smoked
another Las Calaveras as we drove, listening to the soundtrack albums from
Tangled, Hercules, and Mulan, and I was starving by the time we arrived. Of course it was still raining, which meant
that sitting outside was not advisable, and the inside was extremely
crowded. As soon as I set foot outside
of the car, I could smell the ocean. I
ordered far more food than was necessary, but it was all delicious, and the
interior seating area certainly lead to the iconic description. I got a lobster roll, of course, along with
fries, a clam cake, a Diet Coke, and a blueberry pie. Maine at its most iconic. It was good, but something called the best
lobster roll in Maine should not just be good.
It should be great. It was not
great. Breakfast was great. The lobster rolls and ice cream I’ve had at
roadside shacks were great. This was
just good.
After lunch, I lit up a VSG and
got back on the road. I had told my aunt
I would be there at 4 PM. We had gotten
a late start, and my GPS was now showing an arrival time at Saugus Iron Works
at 4 PM, which meant that I would not get to her place until close to 5
PM. We hit traffic, and it was 4:30 PM
by the time we arrived at Saugus. Saugus
Iron Works NHS has been my white whale, the last NPS in New England that I
needed to hit. It is only open during the
summer season, as I learned the first time we (my parents and I) attempted to
visit it. My mother and I returned last
summer, but they didn’t have any brochures.
They still didn’t have the brochures when I went to Maine last
October. I was half expecting them to
still not have them. They had them, and
I went to stamp my brochure. The stamp
did not come out right. Well,
fortunately, they had plenty of brochures.
I got another one and stamped it right this time. I took a few pictures and lit up a Cohiba before
returning to the parking lot, announcing, “New England Complete, for real this
time.”
It was close to 5 PM, and my aunt
would only be able to host us until 6 PM.
I made a wrong turn, and it was 5:30 PM by the time I got to my aunt’s
place. My cousin, my favorite cousin, a
girl I’ve loved for practically as long as I’ve known her, was not there, and I
was quite disappointed, as I had not seen her since a year ago, during my last
June Maine trip. Fortunately, I’d be
seeing her and most of the extended family at my brother’s wedding in five
weeks. With not much time to spare, my
aunt and I got down to business, discussing the recent family feud. I will not air my family’s dirty laundry in
public, but, as always, she provided good insight. I did not agree with the advice she was
offering, but it was good insight. She
spoke in code at times to avoid keying in my travelling partner to the details,
not that I minded if he knew, but my aunt and I are both smart enough that we
had no trouble instantly catching each other’s hidden meanings and the concrete
facts behind her abstractions.
During a
recent trip, I wrote about how I consider myself a servant of truth, so it
should be clear how much I hate being lied to.
It should be even clearer that, at the top of the list of lies I hate
the most are lies that people tell me to spare my feelings. I can handle the truth. Don’t lie to me because you don’t want to
hurt my feelings. She instead tried to
get me to see the nobility in someone lying to spare your feelings. Bullshit.
Truth comes first. My feelings
are secondary to that. I understand that
not everyone feels that way.
We said our
goodbyes, and then I went to McDonald’s, where my travelling companion got his
dinner. I had realized that my original
plan for the return journey simply would not work, so I decided instead that we
would go straight from Boston to the car rental place in North White Plains and
take the train home directly from there.
I drove into Boston, again making a wrong turn, the GPS, as always,
being so unclear in Boston. I was
starving when I got there, but I saw a familiar plaque.
Wait, this was a National Historic
Landmark? Just a year ago, my mother and
I went on a quest to visit a large quantity of NHLs in Boston in one day. We did it by neighborhood, and this was in
one of the neighborhoods we hit, just a couple of blocks away from other NHLs
we hit. How did we not include
this? No matter, it was better this way,
since now I could eat here, though we could have had lunch there during our
quest last year. This place, the Union
Oyster House, touted itself as the oldest restaurant in America. It did not advertise, “The best oysters in
Boston,” though Daniel Webster used to eat massive quantities of oysters
here. I went inside and asked for a
table. I was told that the wait for a
table was over an hour. Seriously? I started to walk out. She said that if I wanted lighter fare I
could eat downstairs.
Well, wasn’t the
downstairs the more iconic part? It
was. I looked at the menu. All the most iconic foods were on that
menu. Perfect. I saw down at a table and looked at the
menu. I ordered a clam chowder, grilled
oysters, and clams casino. Again, it was
good, not great. However, it was about
the atmosphere, and I was not disappointed.
After my meal, I hit up the gift shop.
I bought two beer glasses (one for myself, one for my friend, the only
friend I regularly buy travel gifts for anymore, the friend I love the most), a
keychain, and a replica of the restaurant.
Yes, they had a little ceramic model of the building. Well, it’s an NHL, and a replica of an NHL is
an automatic buy for me.
I then went
outside, to take my pictures. However,
my phone was at 5%, and it needs to be at 6% to take a picture. Charging it back up was a process. Also, since this was an NHL, it means that it
needs a cigar for an Official picture. I
wanted to just smoke one cigar for the whole drive, so I lit up my biggest
cigar, a Canones, which I knew would last two hours or more. I took my pictures, and we hit the road. I was dead tired with about an hour left to
the destination, and Sleepy Hollow no longer became advisable. Again, no music. It got to the point where I lost confidence
in my driving abilities, that’s how I tired I was, so we stopped at the next
rest station, even though we were only 45 minutes from our destination. I got some coffee and a donut, and I rested
my eyes before I gassed up and cleaned the car.
I didn’t light up another cigar, opting instead to air out the car for
the last segment of the drive.
The train
was at 11:59 PM, and we got there with more than half an hour to spare. The train was late, but an express train came
around 12:05 AM, getting us to Grand Central around 12:45 AM. I was at my apartment before 1 AM, where I
cracked open one of the blueberry beers I had bought in Maine, which is quite
an interesting beer, lit up my Sunday Dunhill Nightcap, and proceeded to write
this entry, which I will now close along with closing this trip. It was a good trip, and it is one I am eager
to repeat, though perhaps with a different travelling companion. Next stop: Salt Lake City whence my mother
and I will embark on our big summer trip to Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and
Glacier National Parks before I explore the Canadian Prairie.
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