A Solution for Fibby

Here in little ole Maine, I still go to Dunkin' Donuts all the time. Sure, we have Starbucks here, but they don't have drive-thrus. I have a three-year-old who can climb in and out of his own car seat, but buckling him and unbuckling is a pain in the neck, so we drive right on through. The beauty of driving through at Dunkin' Donuts is that they never even ask you your name, thus avoiding all of Fibby's (and MOMP's) trials and tribulations. Nonetheless, when I ran across this article in the blogosphere, I just had to post it. Your Starbucks name is a chance to adopt a new identity any day of the week... how very post-modern of us!

Great Service, Great Food, Great Friends

I am not particularly fanatical about food. I am surrounded by culinary whizzes of all sorts, but generally I eat for purely utilitarian reasons. I am, on the other hand, fanatical about good restaurant service and atmosphere. And if those are your criteria for a good meal, it doesn't get any better than Five Fifty-Five.

Actually, no matter what your criteria for a good meal, Five Fifty-Five is the best Portland has to offer. Most of Portland's high-end restaurants are loud and bistro-like, with tables too close together for the servers to do their jobs.

If you're going to drop more than $100 per each on dinner, the servers should not be tripping over themselves, the person at the next table (who is inevitably either your boss or someone from high school you would rather forget) should not be close enough to touch, and you should be able to hear the words coming out of your dinner companions' mouths, rather than just refining your lip reading skills. None of these problems befall diners at Five Fifty-Five.

For an added bonus, Five Fifty-Five's servers are also well-educated about wine and make helpful suggestions about food selections. They use several servers and come to your table with all the plates at once and place them down at the correct person's spot, rather than auctioning off your meal. Heck, they even have a crumb scraper between courses. Now those of you who have lived in big cities recently may not find any of this remarkable. But in Portland, Maine, it's worth saying that you don't get service like this every day.

And then there's the food. It's enough to make even a gustatory grouch like me admit that there are some things that are simply delightful to eat. The mussels at Five Fifty-Five fit in this category. They are done in a creamy, buttery sauce with pickled cherry peppers for a tiny bit of pop. The sauce left in the pan is so good, you have to ask for more bread to mop it all up (or, if you're like my dinner companions, you just reach for your spoon). I had a salad of amazingly fresh greens with just the right light touch of salt, pepper, and oil to let the taste of the greens come through. And then there were the scallops. Pepper-encrusted with a vanilla butter sauce and fennel whipped potatoes. Oh, my. Maybe I do like food after all. Our server's recommendation of the "creamsicle" (orange panna cotta and meringue) over the much-to-rich-for-the-end-of-such-a-good-meal chocolate profiteroles was brilliant. The wine was excellent, though the lady's portrait on the label was remarkably ugly. You don't get good food like this every day either, folks (even when you live as charmed a culinary existence as I do).

The great friends, on the other hand, I am blessed to have every day. Thanks for dinner, Sweenfords!