SHOW GIRL: Little Lola's a dizzy delight
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A meal at Bar Lola will seem familiar to anyone who headed down near SMCC in the last 18 months to try One Fifty Ate’s experiment with dinner. That is because dinner at 158 was actually Bar Lola in development all along. It was how Stella and Guy Hernandez, who along with Josh Potoki run both 158 and the new spot on Munjoy Hill, crafted their approach and worked out any kinks.
It turns out 18 months is the perfect gestation period. Humans are pregnant for half the time, and what emerges is an intermittently cute but incoherent and slobbering mess. By contrast, Bar Lola has sprung from 158 like Athena from Zeus: elegant, wise, and fond of good olive oil. That oil is served already sprinkled with coarse salt and pepper, on a lovely and unusual plate hand-made here in Maine, along with 158’s wonderful bread. It’s the appropriate introduction to a meal that will be comfortable and familiar even as it is unique and intriguing.
Bar Lola has all of 158’s strengths, which are directly related to the personalities of the people who run it. Stella, who runs the front of the house, is Portland’s most engaging host — whether she is offering a relieved thank-you for making a reservation on an unexpectedly busy night, or squatting down for a chat about the unfamiliar white anchovy in the fish and chip small plate.
The guys back in the kitchen (Guy, Potoki, and Christian Kryger) continue to come up with unexpected combinations served on small ($3 to $4), medium ($7 to $8) and large ($12 to $14) plates. The food is very good. Potoki and Kryger came up through Street and Co. and Fore Street respectively, and the skill that they honed in Maine’s most venerated kitchens are on display at Bar Lola. But here they are expressed through more varied, playful, and sometimes experimental dishes. The result is that even though Bar Lola is a comfortable, casual, and affordable place, you end up thinking about the food as intently as you might at Hugo’s. It can get a little dizzying, and with the wine so affordable you might not know a mango from an apricot by dessert (we confused them on our lemony, light, not too sweet crepes), but you have enjoyed yourself.
Though the feel is low key, the space is really great looking. Tall windows line two sides, and walls of grayish-olive and stained red wood give way to a busy kitchen that is open but not aggressively so. While I was impressed with how this group dressed up 158 for dinner, this is much better still.
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They seemed to be experimenting with very salty fish when we were there. We tried it in the fish and chips, a meaty white anchovy served with hand-cut potato chips and a silky aioli, and the air-cured tuna, in which chewy and salty shavings of fish were served with a more textured dill aioli and tiny halved potatoes. Both small plates were very unusual and worthy experiments. A plate of small meatballs with cucumber, dill, and yogurt managed to convey the essence of great shwarma.
We were tipped off that Thomas, the French guy in the kitchen, makes a great pomme de terre. They were thin, greasy in the best possible way, and topped with a casual slab of Muenster. The crab and avocado salad offers lots of both, along with bits of parsley and thick bacon. Sweet, crunchy carrot salad sneaks into all sorts of dishes, just as it did at 158. We found it cuddling up to our potato pancakes, and hiding under a very nicely done, very light, oven-roasted white fish.
In the meantime, the poor folks in South Portland don’t even get quite the good breakfast and lunch they used to enjoy, since 158 seems stuck in a post-partum funk in which things have gotten slower, sloppier, and less friendly. Having all that talent move a couple miles north must have been disorienting. No one said giving birth was easy, even when what’s born is delightful.
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Brian Duff: bduff@une.edu