A badly needed night out

Traditionally either the Board or the Friends organization at my library has given each of the staff a little Christmas bonus, usually in the form of a gift certificate. This year I had purchased fancy but cheap Christmas stockings at the Dollar store for each of us, put our names on mailing labels and affixed them to the stockings, then hung same along the edge of the checkout counter. People were amused...and put things in them! The Friends put in $25 gift certificates to what is probably the best restaurant in the Augusta area: Slates, located just a couple of blocks from the library, on Water Street. And a couple of weeks ago, one of my staff and I treated ourselves to dinner at Slates, courtesy of the Friends.

Slates is such a popular local institution that when it burnt down three years ago, there were numerous fund-raising events, aimed in particular at helping the help who were out of a job until the restaurant could be rebuilt. The restaurant, which is housed in one of the many old, three-story red-brick buildings that line Water Street, now looks better than ever, and everybody's working again.

I was the tiniest bit disappointed when I walked into the place and saw that Barb, who had arrived ahead of me, had us a table, but in the bar area, rather than the main dining room, or the smaller room beyond. Just not as much of a dining "event," when you have to eat in the bar. On the other hand, it was better than having to eat at the bar, and Barb assured me that she had been told we were getting the very last table in the place, so obviously I had to count my blessings (one really should make reservations on a Friday or Saturday night, which thought had actually passed through my head, but then I failed to follow up on it.) And as a matter of fact, our location proved fascinating, because the table beyond us was a nonstop people-magnet throughout the hour we were there. When we got up to leave I saw why: at the end of the table I had not been able to see, because Barb blocked my view (and she had not been able to see because her back was to that table), sat the newly-elected mayor of Hallowell, essentially holding court. Slates is that kind of place.

The food was very good. I've eaten at Slates a total of three times, over the past four years, and the food has always been imaginative, and perfectly prepared. I had the haddock stuff with fresh Maine crab, at $22 the second most expensive entree on the menu. The most expensive, at $25, was the haddock stuffed with lobster. I was very torn between the two, loving both crab and lobster. It is so typical of me to want the most expensive item on the menu; indeed, my champagne taste and beer pocketbook has been the curse -- well, one of the curses -- of my life. People who can only afford beer and pizza and like living on beer and pizza are the lucky ones; the rest of us must wait for gift certificates to indulge in what we really like to eat.

Barb had the Mahi mahi, which she also proclaimed excellent. She also ordered, as one of her accompanying vegetables, caramelized onion, moments after I'd been wondering aloud how they could think someone would want to eat a dish of just plain onions. I had pureed winter vegetables, which proved to be a little pile of pale green mush, disconcerting to look at, but quite tasty.

We both ordered a drink to start. I wanted to have something I couldn't get from my own kitchen cabinet (the drinks I most often drink -- Wild Turkey over ice or with coke, rum and coke, white or black Russians, Brandi Alexanders and Rusty Nails -- I have the fixins for all of those at home), but was also in the mood for something warm as it was very cold out -- something like ten degrees, with a wind chill value of minus something, and I'd just walked the two blocks from the library -- so I ended up ordering a hot buttered rum. That's something I could make myself at home, but never do, so it, too, was a "treat."

Barb and I are the same age, have a similar sense of the absurd and the ironic, and can talk intelligently about a myriad of subjects. So...a good meal with a good drink at hand, good conversation, in a friendly, if somewhat noisy restaurant (I decided when we were standing at the archway leading into the dining room, buttoning up for the trip out into the elements, that I was just as glad we hadn't been seated in there, since besides the conversation of all the diners, there was Friday night music.)...for a lovely evening, Friends, we thank you.