12/16/02’s illustrious band:

The Oronoka

Brought to you by the Oronoka Restaurant and Hotel on Route 2 between Orono and Veazie, Maine.

As many of you know, the Media Sensation attended graduate school at the lovely University of Maine in Orono (about 8 miles north of Bangor) for a couple years. Among the many, many lessons I learned during my time there was (A) it’s pronounced “Bang-gore,” not “Banger” and (B) it’s pretty hard to get off the beaten path in Maine because the whole state is off the beaten path.

In the way of graduate students everywhere, my cohorts and I were always on the lookout for inexpensive places to eat and enjoy an evening of socializing. So I hadn’t been in town long before the previous year’s crowd introduced us newbies to the phenomenon that was, and perhaps still is, the Oronoka.

The Oronoka Restaurant and Hotel sat just off the not-too-beaten path between our university town and the thriving metropolis of Bangor. The Oronoka didn’t really take reservations, but if you called ahead and said you were bringing a crowd, they pretended they did. As a courtesy, you also mentioned that you’d be bringing some wine to drink with your meal, as the establishment did not serve liquor.

So you’d arrive at the Oronoka around 6:00 p.m. expecting to be seated and served by about 6:30. O naïve innocent! You’d be seated, all right; the place was never busy any time my friends and I were there. But served? Well, in a way. You’d be eating, that’s for sure. No one ever went home hungry from the Oronoka.

It started with the bread. There would always be a basket of homemade bread on the table, which quickly disappeared. More arrived to take its place — several baskets’ worth over the course of the next couple hours. You might also receive veggies and dip if there were extras sitting around the kitchen. And chunks of strawberries, watermelon and pineapple with margarita glasses full of powdered sugar for dipping.

And then the homemade potato chips, a spud lover’s dream. An inch or two in diameter and sliced in varying thicknesses, they’d arrive still sizzling from the grease. Some were crunchy, some were tender, and all were good with generous amounts of ketchup and salt. They were almost enough to make you forget the menu.

But eventually, around 7:30 or so, you would remember the menu, and ask for it. You’d scan the standard list of fare, which always included lobster due to the town’s proximity to the Maine coast. You’d place your order and turn back to your chips and cheap wine. Or you might wander into the back room, where live music was as likely as not to be performed. Around 8:30, after dancing and more chat, you’d realize that no one had been served a meal yet. But what the hell, there was always the homemade bread.

Sometime around 9:00, meals might start to arrive. If you were in the back with the music, someone would come to fetch you. Maybe you’d get what you ordered and maybe you wouldn’t; it depended on what the kitchen had available and whether the staff thought you might enjoy trying something different instead. If you acted appreciative, though — and graduate students are always appreciative in the presence of food — some extra dishes might find their way to your table.

So then there’d be an hour or two of table time, and more wandering back and forth between rooms. Eventually, around 10:30 or 11:00, as the musicians began to yawn and the staff to sweep floors, you’d think about heading out. Then came the search for and tallying up of the bill. This always took quite a while, especially for the mathematically challenged English students I hung out with. But you’d get it sorted, always owing less than you expected but not complaining, and say your farewells.

But wait! Don’t you want some more bread to take home, or some carrots, or a plate of lasagna? The hostess never let us leave until everyone was holding a doggie bag of some kind. Finally you’d stumble on home and dine on memories the rest of the week.

I heard a year or two after I left Maine that the Oronoka had been shut down — apparently not for the first time — due to health code violations. No wonder their food was so good! I’ll go back if I ever visit Orono again, but it couldn’t possibly be the same.