What sets Hugo’s apart from every other restaurant in Maine, if not all of New England, is that chef/proprietor Rob Evans is a genius of cuisine, creation and showmanship. Whether one is in the mood or mind to have little packets of prosciutto floating in soups of melon and yogurt remains a matter of taste and discretion.

Yet there is no doubt that we have an individual in our local culinary scene that can fight sword for swipe in a much larger universe of kitchen magicians. If he were in New York or any other city where the buildings are taller and the gentry more fashion-conscious he would no doubt woo them wild.

I’ve occasionally heard complaints about the food: tiny portions, inexplicable combinations and so forth. Well such diners should refrain from going. It’s not a steak house or a hamburger joint or even a house of Continental fare.

When Food and Wine Magazine called him one of the best chef’s in America, he entered the international consciousness of restaurant mavens. Tourists and savants flock to Hugo’s to see what it’s all about. I’m sure those of like mind don’t leave disappointed. If only we had a decent hotel in which to stay so that visitors can not only eat well here but sleep in fine surroundings too.

A friend of mine who is planning a trip to Maine this month asked if I would suggest a hotel. I mentioned our two most luxuriously charming bed and breakfasts, the Pomegranate and the Danforth. “No,” he said, “I’d rather go to a hotel where I can order up a good breakfast and have a massage.”

I informed him that breakfast won’t be a problem but that he better go to a different state other than Maine for the massage. He settled on the The Portland Harbor Hotel.

For the restaurant challenge I had no problems coming up with recommendations. If one were to spend a week in our city, the fundamental choices to dine would include Hugo’s, Bandol, Fore Street, Cinque Terre, Uffa and Five Fifty Five.

Many observers will group Hugo’s and Bandol into the same camp. This is a mistake because the two restaurants are totally different. Evans reinterprets food into an art form, which for lack of a better word can be described as New Cuisine; whereas Erik Desjarlais of Bandol adheres to the standards of classic French cooking in a very concise manner. Portions and presentations border on the precious at both establishments, but the culinary concepts are worlds apart.

Food and Wine gave honorable mention to Bandol in a recent issue when they should have devoted an entire page to his efforts. But his time will come. After all, how many galaxies of stardom could possibly shine at once in such a small city as ours?

That said, I went to Hugo’s last night for the first time in several months and enjoyed my meal immensely. I was somewhat disheartened not to see co-owner Nancy Pugh there, where normally she graciously swirls around the room chatting up patrons as proprietors should in restaurants of this ilk. The diffident hostess who tried to shove us to a table by a pole in the middle of the room didn’t sit well with for me, nor should it with anyone else.

But after that I was perfectly happy to settle into a nice large table along the side. Our favorite waitress tended to us. I was impressed that she remembered my choice of cocktail, her only question being, “On the rocks or straight up?”

The meal flowed flawlessly. Each course came out at a comfortable pace. When you’re dining on food such as this you don’t want long intervals forcing sensory pleasures to grow stale

We began with a little amusement in the form of crab salad suspended in bread molded into a little tartlet shell sitting atop a shot glass filled with a cream of asparagus and a dollop of whipped cream (perhaps crème fraiche) flavored with miso.

The crab was the size of a large thumbprint and easily went down the hatch leaving a trail of wonderful flavors to ponder. The soup was sublime, showing off the essential essence of asparagus beautifully.

What followed next was the aforementioned Melon soup. I’ve never been a fan of these fruit soups when they first were introduced 30 years ago on the heels of nouvelle cuisine.

But I took exception to what I had last night. The presentation was a palate of striking colors; had I worn a Hawaiian shirt it would have clashed.

The soup had such elements as watermelon with rose water gelee, balsamic lavender jelly with honeydew, hibiscus granite and those little balls of prosciutto filled, I think, with an essence of ricotta that gave it a wonderful delicateness.

My companion began with Maine Raised Rabbit Charcuterie. This turned out to be a sensational dish--beautifully presented and alive with exquisite flavors. On the plate were warm rabbit rillettes, rabbit liver pate, and rabbit galantine with chicken, a thimble of rabbit sausage, which I loved, and saddle of rabbit wrapped in bacon.

Our next course among the four that we had that evening was Flash Fried Toro Tartar. Toro is actually tuna belly, the prize catch for sushi. It was, as the dish suggests, flash fried and served over cucumber, radish, miso and scallion puree. We joked that there must be a thousand prep people in the kitchen manning the puree table to produce these esoteric thimbles that appear so beautifully presented.

My second course was Maine Raised Elk and Lentil Raviolis. The ravioli were more like Chinese dumplings than the traditional pasta. Apparently the elk came from a source in Scarborough, and I'd like to know where those elk roam, hopefully far away from I95. Nonetheless it was delicious. With it were English pea, chanterelle mushrooms, celery root milk and fenugreek.

I was stumped by the fenugreek and looked it up this morning. To my utter amazement fenugreek is an herb that’s used to augment the productivity of mother’s milk, and it also causes the sweat of mother and baby alike to have a sweet maple syrup odor. I’m sure the amount used last night was not offensive and certainly wasted on me as far as side effects go. What its contribution to the dish was it’s hard to say. But I enjoyed it thoroughly regardless.

Our third or main course, accompanied by a nice Zinfandel from their excellent wine list, was pan roasted Tasmanian Sea Trout for me and Sous Vide Duck Breast and cooked Leg for my dinner guest.

I was a little puzzled by the term Sous Vide and forgot to ask last night what that meant Upon further investigation I found that it’s a method of cooking foods en papillote, chilled rapidly, stored and reheated when needed. It’s a tool for caterers to basically make the food in advance. I’m not sure how this method related here. In any case the duck breast was quite interesting indeed, perfectly rendered and presented; but if you’re looking for crisp duck skin, this is not the dish. This was my least favorite dish, though I'm up for giving it a second try.

The duck was served with sweet potato kola. This was an interesting morsel. It was a gelatinous cube of sweet potato, flavored with the South American herb, kola, which according to my book on herbs is an ingredient in the healer’s repertoire that works wonders on swollen ankles.

Ingredients such as these are amusing, though I wonder how much they add. I wasn’t pregnant nor did I have a problem with swollen ankles; still, I was easily fooled by the flavor impact of these herbs.

This is where chefs like Evans go out on a limb of experimentation. It’s a wonderful limb, I suppose, from which to perch, and either you go for it or you don’t.

At this point in our dinner it became so evident to me how far Evans has progressed as a chef. He’s like the scientist who’s discovered the secret and is now finding uses and benefits for mankind.

My Sea Trout would not heal the world, but I loved all the flavors. It was set over fried fennel, pineapple salad, white anchovy and lemon grass. It was beautiful and I felt like I had been transported to a feast in the South Seas.

For dessert my friend had the panna cotta. It was incredible. Its base was Greek yogurt topped by a rhubarb jelly that shimmered and had the most incredible shade of pink. Its accompaniment of grilled pineapple upside-down cake was a rather crude description of a sweet that was beyond compare.

To dine at Hugo’s is an experience--one that should be savored, thought about and enjoyed. As a dining odyssey it becomes an adventure to the unknown, which is not so bad when you consider how familiar everything else can be.

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