On the way up to Brunswick my friend and I stopped at Robert’s Maine Grill & Market on Rte 1 in Kittery Maine for clam chowder and a shared jumbo lobster roll. It was a chilly rainy afternoon and the hot mugs of chowder made it seem a little warmer at our window side table. Our waitress, Katherine, even agreed that we could split our french fries/sweet potato fries to keep our table in feng shui.

Languages mixed and swirled around us: French Canadian, Down East Maine, Massachusetts, etc., but at our table we spoke Yum, as in “Who put all these clams in my yummmm chowder?” and “I can’t believe all of yummmm the lobster in this yummm roll!” Being a life long member of the Clean Plate Society I tried to calculate just how I could get the last bit of chowder out of my mug when I caught the look on my friend’s face, the sort of look that says you are not at home, you are eating in public. Oh. But it was soooo good – and didn’t I see a beautiful bunch of pies when I came in? A raspberry pie in particular?

We each settled on a piece of raspberry pie with 1 regular coffee and a decaf tea with milk for me. The pie was served warm a la mode. Yummmmy is all I can yummm say. I ate the pie as slowly as I could, s l o w l y before it got cold and the ice cream melted – which is an art, really, to hit those two categories so completely while eating one desert.

I told my friend that in my estimation, “The raspberry pie was even better than the jumbo lobster roll and hot clam chowder combined, if that could be possible.” And I will stand by my remark – I truly don’t think that anything will top that piece of raspberry pie, unless … no, I was right, nothing will.