Travel

Charlie Clevenger

May in Maine and the lobsters are crooning. Leaves sprout on the trees around midmonth but you can’t plant your garden until Memorial Day because lingering nighttime frosts are always a threat to wipe it out. The real sign winter’s finally over: In New Harbor, Shaw’s Lobster Wharf opened on Mother’s Day to serve the world’s best lobster roll and a few miles up Route 32 in Round Pond, the Muscongus Bay Lobster Company fired up its boiler; you can sit at a picnic table and devour your crustaceans as you gaze out at the view of water, boats, islands and trees so stunning that it is where superannuated picture calendars go die.

Muscongus Bay Lobster was a tiny affair when we started going 20 years ago, a half dozen tables and a small cook shack. Dan Renny’s family ran it but about 10 years ago (he’s in his 30s now, as hard working a guy as you’ll ever meet and handsome as the devil) he took it over and has managed growth without sacrificing the rustic charm. The wharf has been enlarged, more tables added to handle the crowds, a bigger cooking shed. The big news this year is that he’s put light bulbs in the port-a-potties.

I learned to eat the year
I starved in Paris.

Like so many American kids, I lived the cliché of being a poor, broke, foreign exchange student there to lap up some culture and meet some romantic French men.

All the myths came crashing down the first month. The guys were scruffy, unwashed and uninterested. The universities went on strike. The dollar crashed against the franc, sending Paris food prices beyond the reach of U.S. students.

I was 19 and living in a 12th century building on the rue Seguier and I refused to go home. 

The tremors began on the couch.

Shannon and I were leisurely thumbing our way through an Hawaiian tour book, making lists of potential activities for the trip we had just booked.

“Swimming with dolphins sounds like fun.”  We wrote it down.

“Let’s go to the volcano!” More notes.

“How about skydiving?”

Palpitations.

Dry mouth.

Quaking.

I clasped my hands together so that he would not see them shake violently.

“Sure.” I replied, nodding robotically.  “Sure.  Sure.”

“You okay honey?  You look a little pale.”  Shannon got up to get me a glass of water and I tried to calm myself down.

I think skydiving is one of those things that everyone considers for at least a moment or two.  It’s a thrill that you might feel 100% capable of or interested in when you’re sitting, say, at a bar or a restaurant in the middle of New York City in the dark depth of winter.  But here it was on the table for real. 

We couldn’t have picked a better day to immerse ourselves in Korean tea shops than a day filled with brisk temperatures and a slight chilly rain. It made our check ins of tea houses much more cozy even though we were on a seriously ambitious mission to sip and sit in a combination of traditional and modern establishments.

We started at Miss Lee, a colorful and playful tea house washed in bright colors and natural woods. If I was looking for a quiet austere place for tea this sure wasn’t it! We arrived for an early lunch of bento boxes with a variety of teas. There’s something to know about the world of Korean tea:  it’s not necessarily always based on traditional tea plants and their leaves. It’s a world that encompasses fruits, seeds, twigs, roots and leaves, not to mention some grains and barley and rice.

The flavors of a rainbow are all here, from sour and astringent to candy-like and sweet. One of my favorites was Omijacha, made from the dried berries of the Schisandra chinensis and called the Five Flavors tea because it has sweet, salty, bitter, sour and pungent notes. Served either hot or cold, Korean teas are consumed for health and vitality but to me some are just plain fun: give me a cup of Yujacha (citron) any day for dessert and I’d be a happy man.