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Congress Street Salmagundi
Salmagundi Salmagundi Congress Street
As the top-secret Quimby Culinary Colony takes shape inside the former Roma Café, the whispers are growing: What are those people doing in there? By Judith Gaines
For people who care about all that makes for a vibrant culinary culture, the Quimby Colony seemed like a dream. It would house Portland’s own food lab: an imaginative resource center with a big, high-tech kitchen and tastefully appointed rooms that could be used for workshops, cooking demonstrations, talks, special dinners, and wine tastings.
Initially, the center was slated to begin operation last March. When that didn’t happen, observers worried that plans had been put on hold or even eliminated. But Dan O’Leary, CEO of the Colony and two other Quimby foundations, wants to make clear they have not.
“We’re as open and interested in all that as we were when we started the Colony,” O’Leary says in an interview. “We’re just finding our way as we go along.”
The Colony began in 2009, when a partSoundsimple?Wethoughtso.That’swhyforthepriceofanordinaryhotelroom,everyoneenjoysanership led by Roxanne Quimby, a cofounder of Burt’s Bees personal care two-roomsuite,complimentarycooked-to-orderbreakfastandaneveningManager’sReception*.Notto products, bought the red-brick mansard at 769 Congress Street, famous to Portlanders as the Roma Café. Workers redid the floors andNoBlackoutDates.OnlyfromHiltonHHonors®.Abiggercombinationyou and much of the woodwork, added decorative touches, and created a spanking new, won’tfindatotherfull-serviceupscalehotelsisallyoursatEmbassySuites®.Inquireaboutourexceptional state-of-the-art kitchen. “Roxanne likes to have very good kitchens,” says O’Leary, meetingspaceandexecutiveboardroom. who directed Portland Museum of Art from 1993 to 2008 and then served for three years as head of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, NY, before Quimby Tobookastay,visitportland.embassysuites.com,orcall207-775-2200. lured him back to Maine.
not long after the renovation was complete, Quimby began working with Don and Samantha Lindgren of Rabelais, Portland’s bookstore for fine food, wine, farming, and gardening. In the Lindgrens’ vision, the Colony would become “a food lab–not a cooking school but a place for classes, workshops on topics like canning and preserving, guided tastings, talks, a kind of incubator for product development, all tied into the local food scene plus visits by some outside experts,” Don says. And they hoped it would become “a place where guest chefs could put on special meals and groups like MOFGA, which has no location in Portland, could meet and hold events.” But the culinary incubator in most of these manifestations has yet to materialize, and the Colony’s direction has appeared unclear. Lindgren says he and his wife were “disappointed by the lack of action” and are no longer affiliated with the project, although they remain interested. According to O’Leary, the conversations with the Lindgrens “enriched our understanding of what could happen at the Colony. As we explored these ideas, we saw we were ready to go with some of them, not with others.” So he and his staff have been “initiating events on a test basis.” One of these test events, held last June, was “a wonderful Italian festival of food, wine, and art. About 140 people attended, with a chef from Siena,” O’Leary says. “That was the first of what we hope will be a series of similar gatherings.” In July and August, Slow Food Portland held potluck dinners and meetings at the Colony. In September, the building was the local site for Slow Food’s National Day of Action. Any interested person was invited “to put $5 in the kitty and then go with us to
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the farmers’ market in Deering Oaks to see what we could buy,” says Karl Schatz, who heads Portland’s Slow Food group. With guidance from a local chef, they all went “back to the Colony to cook and eat lunch,” he says. The event was intended “to show healthy, delicious, sustainable food doesn’t have to be expensive.”
The second and third floors of the Colony building currently house its administrative offices and studios for five artists-in-residence who specialize in textiles, costume, or design. Initially, one of these visiting artists was a chef invited to use the new kitchen to explore innovative cooking styles and techniques. But this project seems not to have been successful.
“It isn’t that chefs don’t like the new kitchen,” O’Leary explains. “But the career path of aspiring chefs flourishes when they can connect with people who teach them” how to improve their skills and give feedback on their creations. Young chefs didn’t want to knock
Members of Slow Food Portland marvel at Quimby Colony’s enormous stainlesssteel kitchen inside the Roma building.
–chef James b. Simpkins
around by themselves in a beautiful but empty kitchen. So the chef-in-residence program has been temporarily discontinued. “If we could find a master chef who’d like to be a cooking mentor, we’d be interested to take advantage of that,” he says.
The first and only culinary artist-in-residence, James B. Simpkins, 35, tells a different story. A former Boston chef with a Master’s degree in literature and American food culture from the University of Connecticut, he was invited to join the Colony for six months, beginning at the end of August, 2010. “In exchange for producing ten meals a week, I was free to use the kitchen to pursue my own artistic interests,” he says. He intended to create “a series of dinners with subjectspecific audiences”–for instance, to invite the director of Maine’s Culinary Historical Society “to discuss aspects of the history of food in Maine” with a menu featuring historical dishes, and to offer a meal with the head of Allagash Brewing Company “exploring Belgian beer in 19th century America.
“But to my surprise and chagrin, when I went to put dates on the calendar, I was told no money was available,” Simpkins says. At about the same time, his laptop was stolen from his rooms at the Colony. He threatened to go to small claims court to get reimbursement. After he’d served just seven weeks of the promised six-month tenure, “the chef-inresidence program was cancelled and I was given a deadline by which to leave. No further explanation. It was all a bit odd.”
Simpkins insists, though, that the original concept of the chef-in-residence program is sound. “Even in the most illustrious restaurants, unless you’re the executive chef or chef-owner, creativity is frowned on. Your job is to make the same dishes in the same way over and over. Most artistic chefs would love to have a blank slate they could enjoy for six months. But then, of course, not every chef is an artist.”
Whatever the situation was, the Colony’s culinary program has now shifted “to focus on partnerships and collaborations rather than residencies,” O’Leary says. “Portland has some wonderful organizations and an amazing food culture at all levels. We’re finding that MOFGA (the Maine Organic Food and Gardening Association), Permaculture, Slow Food, and other groups can be ideal partners. We’re trying to figure out how to connect with them in positive, helpful ways.”
And what about the future of the Bramhall Pub that previously was part of the Roma? “People ask me about that all the time,” O’Leary says. “It had a long and memorable tradition in the city. We’re considering several proposals for its next era. The challenge is to figure out how to combine a nonprofit operation like the Colony with a for-profit venue that has a liquor license.”
If progress on the multi-faceted culinary center has been a bit slow and confusing, this may be because O’Leary, who just began his job in February, has a lot on his plate. He also heads the Quimby Family Foundation, which gives grants to promote wilderness values and access to the arts, and the Elliottsville Plantation, which supports land conservation. Plus, he adds, “All of this takes place simultaneously as we are exploring the possibility of preserving a significant part of the Maine woods by creating a new national park next to Baxter State Park. Roxanne wants to strengthen the things that make Maine special–its natural resources, its arts, and its food culture.” n
>>Formore, visit portlandmonthly.com/portmag/2011/09/
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