One Fifty Ate, South Portland
A loose cooperative of chefs and bakers brings the funk to Spring Point.
pull up in front of One Fifty Ate in South Portland — what was once a boatbuilder's shed with, today, a working marina on one side and the neighborhood mechanic on the other — and your first impression might be that the owners have gone in for shabby chic in a big way. Adirondack chairs grace a narrow, creaky porch right off the sidewalk, the screen door sags, and the clapboards could stand a lick of paint, as my grandmother used to say. Happily, once inside and tucking into your first course, you'll discover there is nothing shabby or overly chic about the food.The café is owned and run by a loose cooperative of five chefs, bakers, and pastry artisans — Josh Potocki, Allison Reid, Sonny Swanberg, Bob Johnson, and Guy Hernandez, former restaurant comrades who migrated from North Carolina a few years ago. If they have one thing in common, it would appear to be the refreshing notion that simplicity is paramount, something reflected in everything from the décor to the china and most apparent in the unpretentious menu choices and their presentation.
The single, high-ceilinged room holds but twenty-five diners at tables whose tops are made of dull steel. Funky art interrupts bright walls of yellow and green, and, in the back corner, shelves hold colorfully packaged bulk restaurant supplies. The dinner menu is a long card the size of an envelope, three choices each of five courses, the descriptions of each dish somehow more intriguing for their brevity: "macaroni salad," "trout and fresh succotash," "down home tomato pie," and "long cooked chicken and rice," for instance. The wine list is equally succinct, never more than a dozen modest, fairly priced bottles, mostly whites and reds chosen to complement rather than overwhelm the food and as likely to come from Spain as Sonoma.
Although working kitchens open to the dining room are quite the rage in high-end restaurants these days, one gets the impression that here, where a half wall and a pass through allow diners to glimpse some of the action, necessity dictated the design. It is a small space, wildly active, and one from which spill all sorts of tantalizing smells and sounds, stimulating the appetite just as much as the plate of One Fifty Ate's own absolutely fresh, highly aromatic sourdough bread that arrives at the table shortly after you do.
Though they may subscribe to a "keep it simple" philosophy, this does not mean these chefs' dishes are overly plain or lacking in flavor. One starter, for example, arrives on a small oval plate, three slices of cold boiled potato, each with a dollop of warm crème fra?che, and then a half-teaspoon of intense, salty salmon caviar. Or that tomato pie, which has but five ingredients: a butter pastry crust, fresh tomatoes, homemade mayonnaise (yes, mayonnaise), a sprinkling of grated parmesan, and an afterthought of basil. The flake of the crust, the sweet bite of the tomato, the rich mayo, and the sharper flavors of the cheese and single herb all combine to show just how intense and satisfying simplicity can be.
One Fifty Ate began life as a bake house, taking over what had been an expensive Italian restaurant. (Today, the bakery lives on as the Neighborhood Bake House and Market at Willard Square, another of their cooperative ventures.) Potocki and Reid, the original partners, began two years ago baking bread, bagels, scones, and muffins, moved into serving lunch, then expanded into a dinner service, taking on the other partners in the process. "We've been working in restaurants most of our lives," Potocki says, reeling off their combined CVs, an impressive list of southern Maine's better venues, Fore Street and Street & Co. among them.
"We don't want to be that," he explains emphatically. "We're not trying to be that." The choice of what kind of food to cook was obvious to all of them from the start. "Allison and Sonny and I, all of us, we really loved our grandmothers' food. We all had incredible grandmothers and are passionate about keeping their food alive. They cooked so simply. I make a lot of my grandmother's recipes — pirogis, stuffed cabbage. That tomato pie is from Allison's family. The slow-cooked chicken and rice, that's a riff on one of Guy's dad's recipes."
A short menu offers them other benefits as well. They can take advantage of truly seasonal foods (grilled late-summer peaches and prosciutto, anyone?), and thus offer a wider variety of choices, particularly for those from the neighborhood who may stop in just for a few appetizers. "We started out changing the menu weekly," Potocki observes, "but a few dishes we've kept on so we can work on them. If you just have a dish on the menu for a weekend, you can't fine-tune it."
While they may be cooking their grandmothers' creations, that fine-tuning is also in abundant evidence. Take that old standard, macaroni salad, here a separate course. It is served in a modest white cereal bowl, it is made with little pasta elbows and bits of pickle, celery, and onion, but at that point all resemblance to a picnic standby ends. The pasta is cool, the sautéed lump Peeky Toe crab meat on top warm from the pan, the whole sauced with a delicate vinaigrette laced with tarragon, chives, and peppery buds of fresh thyme.
Simplicity is, of course, a double-edged sword. French cooks say, "Sauce hides a thousand sins." Here there is no sauce, and each dish must therefore rise or fall on the merits of its few ingredients and how they come together. Consider that succotash under the herb-crusted trout filet. In many restaurants, it would be a mushy filler while here it is summer on a plate: crisp green and wax beans, melting butter beans, sweet corn, a bit of tomato and all of these fresh, bright flavors knit together with scraps of salty bacon.
The desserts, too, will take you back to another era. At the end of summer, chocolate bread pudding, peach dumplings, and blueberry sour cream pie were on offer, and they certainly brought me back to my grandmother's kitchen. The dumplings are simple balls of biscuit dough, almost steamed in the peach juice, and the dish, like the bread pudding, which tasted more of rich cocoa than chocolate sauce, is not overly sweet, a pleasant change. At the bottom of the menu, too, they like to throw in the occasional surprise. "If you like those kinds of desserts, savory and sweet together, well, Allison makes an incredible olive oil cake drizzled in basil syrup," Potocki says.
One thing noticeable right from the moment you walk in, and one of the best signs you're in for a good meal, is that the staff seems to be having as good a time as the diners. After opening the wine at the table, the cheerful waitress, Elizabeth, began pouring the glasses right off. Catching a perhaps puzzled look at the absence of the cork-sniffing, first sip of approval ritual, she smiled and shrugged. "We're not that kind of a place; we just pour it. We'll take it back if you don't like it, don't worry!"
Needless to say, the wine was fine, as was the whole experience of eating there, a neighborhood joint with no pretensions and modest in all respects except for the caliber of the food on the plate.
One Fifty Ate is located at 158 Benjamin W. Pickett Street in South Portland. It is open year round, serving breakfast and lunch Tuesday through Saturday 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Sunday from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., and dinner Thursday through Saturday 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Prices: hors d'oeuvres $3, first courses and salads $6-$9, entrées $10-$15, desserts $5. Reservations suggested. 207-799-8998.
The single, high-ceilinged room holds but twenty-five diners at tables whose tops are made of dull steel. Funky art interrupts bright walls of yellow and green, and, in the back corner, shelves hold colorfully packaged bulk restaurant supplies. The dinner menu is a long card the size of an envelope, three choices each of five courses, the descriptions of each dish somehow more intriguing for their brevity: "macaroni salad," "trout and fresh succotash," "down home tomato pie," and "long cooked chicken and rice," for instance. The wine list is equally succinct, never more than a dozen modest, fairly priced bottles, mostly whites and reds chosen to complement rather than overwhelm the food and as likely to come from Spain as Sonoma.
Although working kitchens open to the dining room are quite the rage in high-end restaurants these days, one gets the impression that here, where a half wall and a pass through allow diners to glimpse some of the action, necessity dictated the design. It is a small space, wildly active, and one from which spill all sorts of tantalizing smells and sounds, stimulating the appetite just as much as the plate of One Fifty Ate's own absolutely fresh, highly aromatic sourdough bread that arrives at the table shortly after you do.
Though they may subscribe to a "keep it simple" philosophy, this does not mean these chefs' dishes are overly plain or lacking in flavor. One starter, for example, arrives on a small oval plate, three slices of cold boiled potato, each with a dollop of warm crème fra?che, and then a half-teaspoon of intense, salty salmon caviar. Or that tomato pie, which has but five ingredients: a butter pastry crust, fresh tomatoes, homemade mayonnaise (yes, mayonnaise), a sprinkling of grated parmesan, and an afterthought of basil. The flake of the crust, the sweet bite of the tomato, the rich mayo, and the sharper flavors of the cheese and single herb all combine to show just how intense and satisfying simplicity can be.
One Fifty Ate began life as a bake house, taking over what had been an expensive Italian restaurant. (Today, the bakery lives on as the Neighborhood Bake House and Market at Willard Square, another of their cooperative ventures.) Potocki and Reid, the original partners, began two years ago baking bread, bagels, scones, and muffins, moved into serving lunch, then expanded into a dinner service, taking on the other partners in the process. "We've been working in restaurants most of our lives," Potocki says, reeling off their combined CVs, an impressive list of southern Maine's better venues, Fore Street and Street & Co. among them.
"We don't want to be that," he explains emphatically. "We're not trying to be that." The choice of what kind of food to cook was obvious to all of them from the start. "Allison and Sonny and I, all of us, we really loved our grandmothers' food. We all had incredible grandmothers and are passionate about keeping their food alive. They cooked so simply. I make a lot of my grandmother's recipes — pirogis, stuffed cabbage. That tomato pie is from Allison's family. The slow-cooked chicken and rice, that's a riff on one of Guy's dad's recipes."
A short menu offers them other benefits as well. They can take advantage of truly seasonal foods (grilled late-summer peaches and prosciutto, anyone?), and thus offer a wider variety of choices, particularly for those from the neighborhood who may stop in just for a few appetizers. "We started out changing the menu weekly," Potocki observes, "but a few dishes we've kept on so we can work on them. If you just have a dish on the menu for a weekend, you can't fine-tune it."
While they may be cooking their grandmothers' creations, that fine-tuning is also in abundant evidence. Take that old standard, macaroni salad, here a separate course. It is served in a modest white cereal bowl, it is made with little pasta elbows and bits of pickle, celery, and onion, but at that point all resemblance to a picnic standby ends. The pasta is cool, the sautéed lump Peeky Toe crab meat on top warm from the pan, the whole sauced with a delicate vinaigrette laced with tarragon, chives, and peppery buds of fresh thyme.
Simplicity is, of course, a double-edged sword. French cooks say, "Sauce hides a thousand sins." Here there is no sauce, and each dish must therefore rise or fall on the merits of its few ingredients and how they come together. Consider that succotash under the herb-crusted trout filet. In many restaurants, it would be a mushy filler while here it is summer on a plate: crisp green and wax beans, melting butter beans, sweet corn, a bit of tomato and all of these fresh, bright flavors knit together with scraps of salty bacon.
The desserts, too, will take you back to another era. At the end of summer, chocolate bread pudding, peach dumplings, and blueberry sour cream pie were on offer, and they certainly brought me back to my grandmother's kitchen. The dumplings are simple balls of biscuit dough, almost steamed in the peach juice, and the dish, like the bread pudding, which tasted more of rich cocoa than chocolate sauce, is not overly sweet, a pleasant change. At the bottom of the menu, too, they like to throw in the occasional surprise. "If you like those kinds of desserts, savory and sweet together, well, Allison makes an incredible olive oil cake drizzled in basil syrup," Potocki says.
One thing noticeable right from the moment you walk in, and one of the best signs you're in for a good meal, is that the staff seems to be having as good a time as the diners. After opening the wine at the table, the cheerful waitress, Elizabeth, began pouring the glasses right off. Catching a perhaps puzzled look at the absence of the cork-sniffing, first sip of approval ritual, she smiled and shrugged. "We're not that kind of a place; we just pour it. We'll take it back if you don't like it, don't worry!"
Needless to say, the wine was fine, as was the whole experience of eating there, a neighborhood joint with no pretensions and modest in all respects except for the caliber of the food on the plate.
One Fifty Ate is located at 158 Benjamin W. Pickett Street in South Portland. It is open year round, serving breakfast and lunch Tuesday through Saturday 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Sunday from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., and dinner Thursday through Saturday 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Prices: hors d'oeuvres $3, first courses and salads $6-$9, entrées $10-$15, desserts $5. Reservations suggested. 207-799-8998.
- By: michael sanders
