breaking the maine shell
~written by zack bowen~
~edited by lynn crothers~
i love food. but, i don't know shit about it. i grew up in southeast Texas, in a town that would barely pass for a city and whose restaurant culture centered around Sysco distributors. like many other Texas towns, Beaumont was an oversized strip mall in which Chili's and TGIFriday's shared a parking lot with one of the many Baptist churches – not really the breeding grounds for a cultured palate.
my one saving grace was that i came from a cajun family. the food was amazing. no, i mean fucking amazing: the seafood gumbo, made with gulf shrimp and blue crab caught that morning; the maquechoux (pronounced "mock-shoe"); dirty rice; cornbread; green beans; boiled mudbugs; cracklin’; garlic turkey breasts; shrimp creole; meat pies (and not that mincemeat bullshit); pecan pies... i could go on, i just need to stop there before i get too homesick. it was amazing, and every bit of it was homemade. i remember the looks an aunt of mine -- and only by marriage, thankfully -- received when she walked into one gathering carrying a chocolate cake with the grocery store label plastered on the casing. i could see it in my grandmother's eyes: "bitch!"
but, in the true form of cajun food, the ingredients were simple: onion, celery, green pepper, garlic, some tomato, and cayenne. if you wanted more flavor, you added more cayenne or some tabasco. and the base for many of the dishes was roux: slowly cook equal parts flour and vegetable oil, constantly stirring in a skillet so that it doesn't burn; cook until a medium to slightly dark brown, then start adding shit to it. pretty damn simple. so, even though the food would -- in the words of bessie jackson's song "shave em' dry" -- "... make a dead man come," there was little diversity in ingredients.
when i moved north to Dallas, my food experiences still didn't gain much ground. i sustained myself on fried catfish and chili con queso -- and when i say queso, i am not referring to cheese. i make this clarification because i realize that in Maine, people don't know the chili con queso i know. it is not a Mexican dish, nor, in it's truest form, even cheese. it is Tex-Mex for bowl-of-melted-cheese-food. it is velveeta with peppers, which were probably more for color than taste when i think about it. it is also tasty as shit! i lived on the viscid crap for too damn long. i still have such strong withdrawals that i have to head to Tortilla Flat on 302 for a fix; at one point, i was even making specific trips to On the Border in South Portland just to have something vaguely resembling queso.
it's alright, you can judge me. i have come to grips with it now. as a native texan, attributing the word "fresh" to food meant the grease in the frialator had recently been changed.
when i moved to Portland, i immediately moved onto The Hill (one of the best decisions i have made since moving here). shortly thereafter, or so it seems now, Bar Lola was set to open, and then the Front Room. i now had three great restaurants within walking distance of my home: Blue Spoon, Bar Lola and the Front Room. it sounds rather ridiculous, but it was at the Blue Spoon that i had my first vegetarian meal. it was also the first time i think i ever ate summer squash -- actually, it was the first time i had ever heard that there was more than one type of squash! this was a fancy meal to me. then i tried Lola -- wow! it is because of Lola that i even started in food photography. and then the Front Room -- great. fuck, they were all great. i learned what gnocchi was. i learned there were more fish in the sea than catfish and bass; what frisée is; that vinaigrettes aren't explicitly made in Hidden Valley.
i mention that Lola was what inspired me to want to shoot food. i have been shooting for catalogs and magazines for years; product and fashion mostly, but never food. one day i asked to speak with the owner or manager at Lola. Stella came over and i laid out my proposition: if she would let me shoot their food during off hours, i would give them a copy of all shots to use for anything they wanted. i would get the beginnings of a food portfolio; they would get free photography to use for advertising. it was a risk on their part, though. i had never shot food before and, frankly, i didn't know what i was doing. all things considered, the shoot was successful. i learned a ton and they got some decent shots.
from Lola, i bounced across the street and proposed the same exchange to David at Blue Spoon. either i'm a good salesman or David is a person who can find charity in someone, because he said yes. again, a successful shoot, and with the portfolio pieces i had gained from Lola and Blue Spoon i was able to get my first paying food photography client out of Cambridge.
i was learning about shooting food the best way anyone can learn: by actually fucking doing it. aside from learning to shoot, i was getting to see these chefs in action -- i was getting in their way every possible moment with a lens large enough to make people think i was compensating for something. and, i was asking questions. i was asking what spice they were adding to that dish, or why they were raking the back side of a blade along the skin of a fish filet. and no matter how asinine my questions may have been (bear in mind the questions were coming from a guy who didn't know that filet meant without bone), the chefs were eager to answer. and not just give an answer but provide an explanation that usually ended with a tasting. these chefs were eager and sometimes giddy to share what they were doing. it was a love affair they could publicly share without worry of misdemeanor charges. it was their passion and you couldn't help but be in awe of it.
after seeing these chefs in action -- coupled with the fact that the peninsula has no major chain restaurants -- my outlook on food was beginning to change. fewer and fewer meals were centered around sustenance. i became more aware of what i was eating. above all, dining became more personal -- i now knew what was going into each meal, what the chef was performing in the kitchen, and therefore developed a new appreciation. the thought that went into where their ingredients came from, the pairings, the portion sizes, and presentation of the meal right down to the timing between courses -- at times, it felt more a performance than a meal, which was intimidating. they never cared about presentation at the Iron Skillet. i felt uncouth and uncultured, but i was wrong for feeling that way. these newly discovered chefs weren’t conjuring up their meals to try and flex their gastronomic muscles, or flaunting knowledge of spices to try and pick up chicks. they were people who loved food, and loved the challenge of preparing new tastes. they just wanted to share. they wanted you to enjoy their treats, and they wanted feedback. at the root, they were no different than my family back in Texas.
everyone -- the chefs in Portland and my family back at home -- adhered to the same core thought: food was meant to be communal and enjoyed and nourishing to more than just your belly. it is a social bond -- our cells remember a time when we would gather around the campfire after a day of killing mammoth to share stories and compliment the chef on the tenderness of the mastodon shank. it transcends cultures and economic status. it is also the biggest Maine shell breaker. the people i have met, the knowledge i have gained and the portfolio i have garnered would not have been possible without the openness of those i know in the Portland food community.
