Review of Cafe Miranda

Pictured is funky little Cafe Miranda in Rockland, Maine. It came highly recommended by all the guidebooks and the owners of the bed and breakfast we stayed in.

Cafe Miranda can only be described as schizophrenic, but in a good way - like Robin Williams in The Fisher King. The menu is hand scribbled and incredibly long. There's no room to divide items up with nice sub-headings like "salads" or "entrees" so it's all just squeezed in together.

The menu items are even more schizo than the menu scrawl. Items include Big Duck Unit, Polish Hippie (grilled knokwurst sausage on an arugula and beet salad), and Six Week Itch (rigatoni pasta with red sauce and romano cheese). We went with the seared sea scallops with green chili tartar sauce, sweet potato fries with secret spice, Et tu Brutus (the salad that "kills a Caesar"), and the fish special of the day.

The scallops were cooked perfectly. They were in two sauces, the tartar I didn't like so much, but the spicy duck sauce-like substance was delicious. The sweet potato fries turned out to be covered in Indian spices (which makes sense since they served it with yogurt). They were good, but I'm partial to hotter spices on my potatoes. The caesar was a bit heavy on the dressing for me, but good. The real treat was the fish. It was cooked in the wood oven in a light broth with tomato and seasonings and some wide noodles. The flavor was incredible.

Of course we left a little room for the homemade ice cream, which was creamy and delicious. Then we rolled our big bellies out of there. If your headed that way, Cafe Miranda is worth a trip. Not all of the dishes hit it completely, but that's how it is with art.