IN THE CAN: Morrison’s people’s-favorite chowder. |
The big winners of this year’s Chili and Chowder Challenge soup-cooking contest aren’t the best restaurants in town. They’re not even places you or I could go eat.
At last month’s event, a fundraiser for PROP’s Foster Grandparent Program, it was hard to miss the nursing homes.
Schooner Retirement Community, of Auburn, and the Atrium at the Cedars, located here in Portland, were set up beside each other, and both offered excellent fare. The Atrium’s chili was delightful, full of steak and peppers, if a little too robustly flavored for the elderly, and the chowders from each retirement home were excellent, full of lobster, scallops, and crab. They were so full of pricey seafood, in fact, that it was difficult to picture that chowder being served regularly to Me-maw and Pe-paw back at the facility.
And if the clients of the participating nursing homes aren’t being served cups of creamy chowder full of lobster and scallops, then when families scouting where to put their older relatives see the winners’ certificates on the wall, we’re not really talking about truth in advertising, are we? That didn’t stop the nursing homes from dominating. They took five out of the 12 awards, awarded in six categories by both judges and popular vote.
In order to avoid leftovers, we waited a few days before trying the stuff the winners actually ladle out to the public.
The restaurants did pretty well. The judges’ second and third choices for chili, Federal Jack’s of Kennebunkport and Thatcher’s of South Portland, served up reasonable facsimiles of their winning concoctions. Same for Pedro O’Hara’s of Brunswick, the people’s chili winner. But the judges’ favorite (and people’s third choice), from the Fire & Water, Fish & Chop House in the Sable Oaks Marriott, wasn’t even on the restaurant’s menu.
For the chowders, we left the people’s-favorite (and judges’ third-place) Morrison’s Maine Chowder House off our itinerary because their product is available at Hannaford.
The judges’ favorite (and people’s third-place) chowder was from the Cedars, but when we went there, we were politely informed that not only was it unavailable, but we couldn’t be served anyway, because the Cedars is “a private dining facility.” However, since management wanted to advertise their win, we could “make an appointment” to return and sample the chowder.
That left the Schooner Retirement Community, of Auburn, second-place winners from both judges and the people for chowder, as well as the people’s second-place award for chili. Up in the City on the Androscoggin, the soups we sought were unavailable.
A member of their culinary staff said the winning recipes were unavailable to the kitchen staff, but noted that the gray heads at Schooner Retirement Community had recently been served “a nice corn chowder.” After we described the seafood chowder from the contest, overflowing with lobster, crab, scallops, and shrimp, she replied, “they don’t give us those ingredients.”
