November 19, 2009
The Platonic ideal of a good diner: The Front Room
As Congress Street tips at the peak of Munjoy Hill and tumbles into Casco Bay, the aesthetic appeal of The Front Room is pretty self-explanatory. Around dusk on an autumn Monday, there it is, framed by the leaves left with a deep blue background, slinging drinks for some of the best happy hour values in town.
The East End staple, and its phenomenal homemade sausage ($2), has buoyed many a dull brunch conversation when guests come to town, always impressing with its vibrant menu and darkly hued decor. As a weekend mid-morning hot spot, with bloody-marys spicy as you can handle, Harding Lee Smith's street corner gem is the Platonic ideal of a good diner. Or it's the refined diner of the future.
Regardless, conversation battles clattering cookware for din-supremacy, and the energy is unrelenting. The place is the best venue around for the anything-goes talk, with ample tall booths forming a ring around a cluster of intimate 4-tops.
And yet, despite the wonderfully blurred line between kitchen and dining area, the Front Room saves its entire southwestern corner for a hearty watering hole that, every day, unassumingly, churns out a hot little happy hour every day from 4 - 6 pm.
The approximately 10 seats at the bar are the fodder for an ongoing game of musical chairs, with a large, muted flat screen TV adding the requisite sports news to your conversation. Monday is Happy Hour's slowest day I learn, but today it's 5 pm and the bar is cranked.
It's this weird mix too, some ladies, dressed with a mind for glitz, are giggling over their Absolut drinks, ($3.50), while some smoke-throated fishermen crowd a different corner, nursing Miller Lites ($1.50).
Defying the melee, bartender Eva notices me right away, and I'm asked what I'd like to drink within 48 seconds of entering, with the drink specials offered in a crisp list. On Saturday and Sunday, I'm happy to learn, this masterful happy hour allows the booze-artist some autonomy with the Bartender's Choice special, a seasonal, creative cocktail. Eva has made a delicious-sounding Cinnamon Manhattan in past weeks, for example.
It's genius, really, for a rock-solid restaurant to accommodate a sometimes raucous bar scene spilling into where people eat. An unsuspecting couple, a group of college drinking buddies, a business meeting that needs a couple stiff ones to loosen the proceedings, whoever comes through that door for happy hour inevitably sees the sparkling New American Comfort Food menu, and goes all in for dinner.
Or maybe after toddling up the hill from an Eastern Prom picnic, a group of friends wants to dash in for a quick, affordable cocktail. Believe me, $2 for a glass of house white is deadly. It's not like it's unwelcome, but beware the snares of these inspired food options. Your allotted hour will turn into the whole night without you knowing it.
The worst part? You probably won't even mind.
Mike Olcott is a freelance writer.
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