The Corner Room (110 Exchange St., Portland, ME) is named such because it sits at the corner of 2 streets (Exchange and Federal Streets) at the "top" of the Old Port section of Portland. They do not take reservations, but there were plenty of tables free when I went there on a Friday night.
There are tables lining one wall that is primarily windows, some booths in the center of the space, and the kitchen and a bar to the left as you enter the area. There are also a few tables outside on the fairly busy sidewalk on Federal Street. Since the sidewalk isn't very wide and the tables outside aren't very big, this would not be a good place to sit if you want a bit of privacy.
Then again, this space has a slight problem with acoustics -- it's pretty noisy. Not as bad as some places I've gone, but it's still a bit loud for my personal taste.
There are several different wines available by the glass, carafe (which is about half a bottle) or bottle, and the menu is quite varied -- though the food is Italian. There are appetizers, pastas, pizzas, and entrees, all of which are varied.
For an appetizer, I ordered arancini -- fried rice balls. Creamy risotto rice was wrapped around aged provolone cheese and prosciutto, breaded, formed into balls, and fried. This was quite heavenly, with the interior's creaminess being a great contrast to the hard, crispy shell. The aged provolone gave a nice bite, and the prosciutto was not so salty that it overpowered anything. The flavors matched quite well.
My companion had "egg and sausage," which is a deceptively simple name for the dish. One egg, cooked perfectly over-easy, was on top of a few slices of sausage -- which is made at the Corner Room -- and all this was served over a bowl of creamy warm polenta. This is the kind of dish you could have for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner, and it would be appropriate -- and tasty.
We both ordered an entree and decided to split a pasta dish. We ordered a rigatoni and lamb sugo. The pasta was brought out as its own course, which is traditional in Italy. The pasta was wonderfully chewy, and a good complement to the robust lamb sauce. The sauce was not very "lamby," for lack of a better word. It could have been made with any other ground meat. It was also a little thin, with a pool of the tomato base of the sauce in the bottom of the bowl.
My entree was the chicken marsala, served with asparagus spears and polenta. The polenta (as in the "eggs and sausage") was fantastic, and the asparagus was cooked just right. There were no mushrooms in the dish (though mushrooms are traditional in this recipe), but the server advised me of this when we were ordering. The chicken itself was tasty, but not outstanding. I kept going back to the polenta.
My companion had a fish special, served over quinoa -- a "pseudoscereal"which had a texture similar to kasha or buckwheat. The dish was quite nice, and the quinoa was a wonderful surprise.
In all, our two entrees, large pasta, two appetizers, and carafe of wine was $81. It's a little pricy, no doubt, meaning The Corner Room will likely be relegated to "special occasion" type of meals for me, but the quality of the food is worth it.
OVERALL RATING: 7.5 out of 10.
There are several different wines available by the glass, carafe (which is about half a bottle) or bottle, and the menu is quite varied -- though the food is Italian. There are appetizers, pastas, pizzas, and entrees, all of which are varied.
