Burning Tree Restaurant - Otter Creek Maine

Located just outside Bar Harbor, the Burning Tree restaurant was located in what used to be a residential house and was surrounded by greenhouses and raised flower beds...a promise of locally grown produce to appear on the menu.



The friends we were visiting suggested we get two orders of these seafood fritters - golf-ball sized deep crispy fried nuggets of a scallop mousse studded with shrimp



The Kale & Clams starter suggested the natural surrounding of the seafloor that these clams could be found in - the kale was oven-crisped and resting above a shallow broth of clam liquor, pine nuts and goat cheese.

Elizabeth's Avocado & Lobster Stack (camera setting blurred this accidentally) was resting on a rice-paper crisp , deep fried puffed spring roll wrappers, and lightly dressed with a Marie Rose-style sauce.

The Bouillabaisse was a saffron-infused mix of shellfish & chunks of monkfish.

The Burning Tree building was surrounded by raised flower beds overflowing with late summer blooms. Several of the edible blooms appeared on our dining plates - orange nasturtium & cumin carrots were the side dish that evening.

Goat Cheese at Seal Cove Farm

We took a little mini-trip to Maine and stayed with friends just outside Bar Harbor. Down the road from the house was the Seal Cove Farm, located on a road called Milky Way.

The farm has a small shop where you can drop in and sample from several of their fresh chevre and aged cheeses. The chevre is prepared both naked or herb encrusted - the dill being one of my favorites. They also sell ash-covered goat cheese pyramids, as well as two different varieties of blended milk cheeses.

Although Elizabeth was eyeing the colossal ash-coated pyramids, we ended up taking home two of the more unusual varieties. Pearl was a goat-cow blend that resembled brie or Bucheron, a rinded cheese with a creamy center. One of the cheese-makers explained that a high-end cheese shop in New York City would buy the cup-cake shaped cheeses and wrap them in sumac leaves to mature in their cellar before re-selling them.

The second purchase was one of the Tommes, a firm disc of aged goat & cow cheese that was steeped in olive oil laced with juniper and pink peppercorns. There were a few blooms on the Tommes that lent a soft blue-cheese tickle that quickly mellowed.

Located just off Route 3, it's an easy drive for anybody visiting Bar Harbor.

Maine Diner - Lobster Roll & Blueberry Pie

Located just north of the Maine-New Hampshire state line is the Maine Diner - just take Exit 19 to Wells and follow the signs down Route 1.

This is an old-school diner wrapped in a postcard-stand simply crawling with tourists...but hey Maine is known as Vacationland, so I won't hold it against them, even despite the fact that the adjacent gift shop bears the title (groan) Remember the Maine.

There was a 30 minute wait to be seated and several people were electing to take the counter seats to cut down on the wait. Once we were in and seated, service was awesomely fast yet I never felt rushed. Specials on the board announced things like Red Flannel Hash and Potluck, but were here for the seafood and began to zero in on the highlights of the menu.

The bowl of seafood chowder here was well stocked with a mix of Maine shrimp (read jumbo salad shrimp), scallops and potatoes; you can see the abundance I dredged up from the bottom of my cup. Elizabeth ordered the she-crab soup, which was a little too gelatinous, having the consistency somewhere between cottage cheese and Elmer's glue . I offered to cut the gooey mess with several spoonfuls of the delicious golden broth of my chowder and after which her cup of she-crab began to resemble a soup.

This is what we were really in search of...the lobster roll. The Maine Diner featured two kinds of lobster rolls, cold and hot. We opted for the classic cold lobster in a hot bun; I was worried that the lobster would be too mayonnaise-coated but it turned out to provide just enough of a binding agent to hold together the sweet lobster claw and knuckle pieces that nearly spilled out from the bun with every bite.

There was also a "Lobster Pie" advertised as a special, but the description seemed to conjure up visions of lobster and stuffing, scooped into a small casserole dish and thrown under the broil to heat through till crunchy.

I was skeptical about the awesome accolades of the blueberry pie on the menu until I saw one go by to a neighboring table. The diminutive Maine blueberry packs more berry flavor due to the smaller size lending more skins to the pie mix. Coupled with the fact that the pie filling itself was not overly sweetened and the crust was homemade, I'd have to say this was the best slice of pie I've had in recent memory.

When I went to pay the check, I mentioned to the cashier how excellent the blueberry pie was and he confessed to never having tried it. I guess being surrounded by lobster and blueberries, you don't really see what all the fuss is about...I know when I used to work in an ice-cream store as a kid the customers would ask how one of the 31 flavors tasted and were somewhat surprised to hear that I didn't know because I never touched the stuff.