home : zachary's guide to portland

A Guide to Portland: By MECA Alum Zachary Reese '06.

Eat and Drink /  Things to Do and Places to Go

Eat and Drink

Bubble Maineia // 136 Commercial Street // 207-871-9999

Bubble Maineia is a specialty store in every sense of the word. They sell only bubble tea. You may have heard of this stuff referred to by one of it’s ‘street names,’ like boba drink, pearl tea, BBT, zhen zhou nai cha, or QQ pearls. It’s fantastic… milk tea with giant tapioca pearls at the bottom. You get an almost novelty-sized straw with every drink to suck the pearls up with. While somewhat of an acquired taste, it’s just exciting to know that places like this exist in the city. Try it, and even if you don’t like the tea you’ll still be happy with the oversized industrial strength straw. They have a thousand and one uses. I have four of them reinforcing my coffee table right now.

The Downtown Lounge // 606 Congress Street // 207-773-1363

The Downtown Lounge is directly across the street from the Baxter Building, where all the liberal arts classes take place. Directly across the street. While the food is really fantastic, I’m more attracted to this place because I only have to walk thirty feet to get dinner after my art history classes. One of my defining memories of college will always be sitting in the DTL (that’s shorthand for Downtown Lounge, saves time) with my professors, eating tapas and discussing linguistics, post-postmodernism, and Steve McQueen. Before I went to college, I didn’t even know what tapas were. If you’re under twenty-one, try Norm’s, owned by the same people and directly next door to Baxter.

Benkay Sushi // 2 India Street // 207-773-5555

Some people think the Americanization of foreign culture is exploitative and insulting to those cultures. I don’t. Well, maybe I do, but not for this specific case. I have never heard of the phrase Rock and Roll Sushi before I came to Portland. The name itself makes me think of really bad action movies of the eighties… I’m sure some Hollywood executive pitched a movie by that name at some point. Anyway, Benkay does Rock and Roll sushi every weekend from 10PM to 1AM. It’s just like regular sushi only the prices are cut in half and they play music from a certain genre which I can’t seem to remember the name of at the moment. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to get two California rolls for five dollars on a late Friday night. Actually, I can: it’s very refreshing. Also, they don’t charge for additional wasabi. So you could, in theory, turn a one-dollar side salad into a full meal by just adding six pounds of wasabi to it. I would not recommend this.

Rosie's // 330 Fore Street // 207-772-5656

Rosie’s has five condiments on every table. Think about that for a second. Five condiments. Now, I know what you’re thinking… “But I go to a restaurant where the wait staff is obscured by striped suspenders and flashy buttons and they have, like, seventy condiments on the tables!” Well, to counter that: One, Rosie’s doesn’t get their food shipped in frozen from some country that I’ve never heard of; and two, how can you eat at a table that has seventy condiments on it, let alone have room for your books? Also, who would even put imitation nacho cheese flavoring on pub food, or any food for that matter? Rosie’s has the perfect number of condiments right there waiting for you. Words can’t describe how beautiful it is to be able to choose from two different types of mustard without having to ask the waitress for anything. Just seeing such a perfect balance of meal augmentations is an almost spiritual experience. Furthermore, the food is rather good and inexpensive, but that’s second only to the condiment cornucopia that they offer.

Other MECA students recommend:

Tandoor Restaurant   //  88 Exchange St. // 207-775-4259

"Excellent Indian cuisine."

Cold Stone Creamery // 180 Middle St. // 207-774-7100
www.coldstonecreamery.com/

"For ice cream creations!"

Stir Crazy // 579 Congress St. // 207-871-1689

"Cheap, yet tasty Chinese food without MSG."

Silly's Restaurant // 40 Washington Ave. // 207-772-0360
www.sillys.com/

"It's my all time favorite restaurant. It's cheap, has great food and milkshakes, none of the furniture matches, and you can play Mancala or a game of Barrels of Monkeys while you're waiting for your food."

Wild Burritos // 574 Congress St. // 207-761-1600

"Not huge portions or mind-blowing food, but they're dirt cheap ($1.50 for a burrito), right next to school, open until 9, and open to suggestions from students. They're now going to carry ice cream because some kid told them that would be cool."

Marcy's Breakfast & Lunch  // 47 Oak St. // 207-774-9713

"Opens at 6 am, closes at 2pm. Good cheap breakfast food. Great for when you pull an all-nighter and need some coffee and grub in the morning to keep you awake for your 9 am class."

Becky's Diner // 390 Commercial St. // 207-773-7070
www.beckysdiner.com

"A little far away, but they are open from 4am until 9pm. If you go at 4 am you can get your muffins fresh from the oven and sit with a bunch of fishermen before they go out on the boats."

Denny's // 1101 Congress St. // 207-774-1886

"Standard Denny's, but they're open 24/7 just like MECA."

Norm's Bar & Grill // 617 Congress St. // 207-828-9944

Norm's East End Grill // 47 Middle St. // 207-253-1700

Downtown Lounge // 606 Congress St. // 207-773-1363

"Really great food. If you're over 21, Downtown Lounge across the street is also owned by the same people."

Flatbread Company // 72 Commercial St. // 207-772-8777
www.flatbreadcompany.com

"Amazing brick oven flatbread organic pizza. I also recommend their banana bread sundae."

Portland Pie Company // 51 York St. // 207-772-1231
www.portlandpie.com

"Might just be the best delivery pizza in town."

Coffee By Design // 620 Congress St. // 207-772-5533
www.coffeebydesign.com

"My favorite coffee place. They also support local artists."

Big Sky Bread Company // 28 Monument Square // 207-228-2040
www.mainebread.com

"Great paninis/salads/etc."

Mister Bagel // 539 Congress St. // 207-774-8704

"Right across the street. The owner is the sweetest man alive – students get a 10% discount and if you're a bit short on cash and you're a friendly regular, they'll totally hook you up."

Arabica Coffee Company // 16 Free St. // 207-879-0792

"Great coffee, snacks, and comfy atmosphere."

One City Center Food Court // Off Temple St.

"Some of it looks kinda skanky, but my jaw dropped when I found it. Check it out."

Artemisia Cafe // 61 Pleasant St. // 207-761-0135

"Has AMAZING soups and sandwiches for suppa duppa cheap, plus the staff is always so sweet and smiley which makes the food taste better. Check out their chai too. Hot or cold, it's the best!"

DiMillo's Floating Restaurant // 25 Long Wharf // 207-772-2216
www.dimillos.com/restaurant

"It's a floating restaurant filled with dusty old nautical stuff (complete with a 1950s deep-sea diving suit) that has droves of 60 and over couples filing in and out of it all day long. Definitely seems like a not-so-friendly-to-poor-MECA-kids kinda place, but I swear this place is a GEM! If you go during happy hour (which goes on every day of the week), you can buy a drink for half price and gorge yourselves on the FREE BUFFET! That's right guys and gals, come one come all to DeMillos floating restaurant, where you can buy a $2 PBR (or diet coke) and stuff yourselves for hours with crackers, cheeses, dips, chicken fingers, fried shrimp, baked seasoned potato slices, soup of the day, and MORE! It's all free people! And if you're like me, you can shamelessly go every week, hog the fireplace couches for 2 or 3 hours and not leave until they take the food away. The servers are always wonderful as well, so make sure you throw them a little more than pocket change as a tip. After all, they do have to deal with the droves of 60 and over couples filing in and out all day long…"

Slainte // 24 Preble St. // 207-828-0900
www.myspace.com/slainteme

"This is a super cool relatively new bar across the streed from the old Portland Public Market and it's got great, pretty cheap grubbins, good drink prices, and GREAT atmosphere! And since no one really knows about it, it's not crazy packed on weekend nights so you can go with your friends, grab a couch, listen to local musicians, and have a good time. Plus, if you have one too many and leave your wallet there, they kindly call you in the morning so that you can stop tearing your apartment apart and go get it. Though of course that's never happened to me. Heh heh."

Local 188

"Best cheap breakfast in town. AMAZING food! Toast, home fries, eggs of all styles for $4.25. Max price is $7.50 and that's for the best damn steak and eggs in town! It's got a funktastic feel to it, and since there's quite a few MECA people staffing the place, there's always a friendly face smiling at you and saying hi!"

The Front Room // 73 Congress St. // 207-767-9070

"On top of Munjoy Hill, this little oasis offers up a bounty of home-baked DELICIOUS pastries, muffins, breads and more. Plus, their food is some of the best in Portland. It's all sort of peasant-style cooking, which just makes you feel old worldly, cultured, and warm all at the same time. We go there usually for breakfast, which runs a little more expensive than Local 188's (6-10 bucks max), but it's so damn good."

Sapporo Restaurant // 230 Commercial St. // 207-772-1233

"Great little sushi place down by the water. Tastes great and some of the cheapest n town. Besides, if you go after 10 on Fridays and Saturdays, sushi rolls start at $2. That's TWO DOLLARS for amazing little tasty rolls! Plus, they play movie videos on the wall with a disco ball spinning, so you can eat salmon rolls while trading stories about the 90s as you watch bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Sound Garden, and many more. Some of those stories can be pretty interesting, especially if you splurge for a cheap pitcher of Sapporo…"

"BEST sushi! Staff is super nice. Get to know them and they will treat you nice. Very nice."

Bangkok Thai Restaurant // 671 Congress St. // 207-879-4089
www.bangkok-thai.com

"The best and CLEANEST Thai place. Wonderful staff, and the owners are some of the nicest people that you will ever meet!"

Geno's Rock Club // 625 Congress St.  // 207-221-2382
www.myspace.com/genosrockclub

"Best staff ever! The girls there are not afraid to cut you off if you are being mean, drunk, or just stupid. Hands down the best bar in P-town. JR is the best. Support locally owned establishments and music by going here."

King of the Roll // 675 Congress St. // 207-828-8880

"I highly recommend King of the Roll. It's close, cheap, and wonderful! You can get three rolls for $2, or 6 pieces for $3. They close in the afternoons and reopen at 3 for dinner. Check it out, it's worth it!!"

JavaNet Coffee Shop // 37 Exchange St. // 207-773-2469

"Free unlimited wireless with any purchase and no minimum for debit!"

Little Lads Bakery // 482 Congress St. // 207-871-1636

"Vegan buffet and good vegan sandwiches. They make their own break, vegan cheese, and pastries too. Kickass."

Things to Do and Places to Go

Strange Maine // 578 Congress Street // 207-771-9997

I’ve walked past this store every day on my way to school for the past two years, and I still have no idea what it is. In fact, I’ve been in the store and I have no idea what it is. I’ve even bought a great deal of merchandise from this place. I just don’t know what it is. It’s a store that sells stuff. Lot’s of stuff. If you ever need an idea for a project, or maybe you want to buy something but you don’t know what, go to Strange Maine. The gentleman who owns the establishment is very nice as well. This is the only store I’ve ever gotten a discount from by just describing what a coupon looked like. Seriously. I just said that it was blue, or maybe purple, and that it had some kind of picture on it and it was for some kind of discount, and he gave me a discount on Pee Wee‘s Big Adventure. That’s a model of trust the world could benefit from embracing.

Two Lights State Park // 66 Two Lights Road // 207-799-5871

Maine is known for four things: winter, lobsters, blueberries, and rocky coasts. If you were to combine all of them into one ultimate Maine experience, it would probably be something like eating blueberries while catching lobster off a rocky coast in the middle of winter. The problem with that lies in the fact that blueberries aren’t in season in the winter; also, you probably have no interest in lobstering. So the next best thing is just visiting the rocky coast during the winter. It’s undeniably beautiful and inspiration, if you’re into that sort of thing. My favorite spot is Two Lights Beach, just because of the shear size of it. It’s forty acres of rocky headland overlooking nothing but Atlantic. You could also probably reenact lots of art-house movies here if you wanted to, they always have lots of winter beach scenes.

The Merrill Auditorium // 20 Myrtle Street // 207-874-8200

The Merrill Auditorium is the big concert venue in Portland (well, there’s also the Civic Center, but since you’re reading this on an art school website I’m just going to assume that nothing there would interest you). It’s got all that high-class stuff that’s somewhat necessary to any art student’s life. This is where the Portland Symphony Orchestra plays and also where you’ll see all those Broadway plays with funny titles. But the big kicker is the Kotzschmar Memorial organ. When this thing was installed in 1912, it was the second largest organ in the world. It’s huge. There are regular concerts on it or, on occasion, silent films with live accompaniment. What seals the deal is that these are all for a suggested donation of ten dollars. I probably don’t have to tell you how wonderful the phrase ’suggested donation’ sounds to college students.

Battery Steele // Somewhere On Peaks Island

There are a few reasons Battery Steele might interest you. If you’re like me, you just really enjoy the ferry ride. Or you’re up for a completely bizarre experience like walking through a pitch-black hallway that’s half a mile long. Battery Steele was a WWII military defense installation that’s been completely stripped down. Now it’s just basically a huge concrete structure in the middle of an island. It’s full of long corridors and maze like passages. If you’re brave, it’s an awe-inspiring test of will. I get maybe thirty feet in before I get scared and start hugging my friends. If you’re like me and not so brave, Battery Steele is transformed into an amazing performance festival every September. Each abandoned room is given to an artist to create their own environment in. It’s basically one of those “wow, this is awesome” experiences.

Space // 538 Congress Street // 207-828-5600

You know how some restaurants have a special item on the menu that’s basically everything on the menu all together? Yeah, it’s a good concept, but food isn’t the best application of it. What is a good application of it is an arts venue. One space that’s all the other types of venues mixed together, and that’s exactly what The Space is. It’s a theater, a club, a gallery, and a lecture hall; it can be anything where people gather. In a nutshell, it’s where the cool stuff happens. A good deal of the events are free, and most concerts cost under ten dollars. This is one of those things that make you wonder how you ever lived without it.

Carlson & Turner // 241 Congress Street // 207-773-4200

Casco Bay Books is great; in fact all the bookstores in Portland are great, but you may perhaps want something a bit harder to find. Carlson & Turner has over 50,000 antiquarian books as well as tons of old maps, prints, and manuscripts. But the most amazing part of this place is the owner. Now, if I had 50,000 books sitting around, there’s no way I would be able to keep track of them, let alone know any significant information about each one. Somehow this guy knows his collection inside and out. Probably better than just inside and out, maybe upside and down too. You could ask something as obscure as “Hey, I’m looking for this book, the cover’s blue, and it’s about… stuff. I think there was a trout involved.” He’ll know it. It’s amazing. People like him make me want to believe in a higher intelligence, even if that higher intelligence may only care about Victorian bindings and literary anecdotes.

Other MECA students recommend:

BLUE // 650A Congress St. // 207-774-4111
www.portcityblue.com

"Great place to chill with friends and see live local music."

Longfellow Books // 1 Monument Way // 207-772-4045
www.myspace.com/longfellowbooks

"The ONLY place to shop for books in Portland."

Movies on Exchange // 10 Exchange St. // (Box Office) 207-772-8041 // (Recorded Schedule) 207-772-9600

www.moviesonexchange.com

"Plays independent, underground, or under-budgeted advertised films."

Peaks Island via Casco Bay Lines // 56 Commercial St. // 207-774-7871
www.cascobaylines.com

"Roundtrip cruise costs 6 bucks. Bring a lunch and a towel with you and walk the circumference of the island. Or just go to the super cool abandoned military fort towards the back of the island. There is also a nice small beach and a good ice cream shop right as you get off the boat."

East End Beach // 207-774-1066

"Small beach with a super nice view. In the winter, this is the spot to go sledding."

Bubba's Sulky Lounge // 92 Portland St. // 207-828-0549
www.bubbassulkylounge.com

"Go to 80s night. 21 + and no cover if you dress in 80s garb. Lots of dancing."

First Friday Art Walk
www.firstfridayartwalk.com

"All the galleries and museums are open for free!"