Year: 2009

Restaurant Worker Art Show

| Posted in Events

The Portland Daily Sun has published a report on the art show taking place next Monday at One Longfellow Square. The show will feature creative work produced by Portland area restaurant workers.

Local waitstaff, bartenders, chefs, cooks, bussers, dishwashers, prep cooks, hostesses and hosts will present their photography, sculpture, ceramics, paintings, drawings, sketches, films, music and more. The gallery segment of the event will start at 6:30PM and feature over a dozen visual artists from the southern Maine restaurants. At 8 p.m., various documentary presentations, performance art and musical performances will begin featuring local favorites Brenda and Over a Cardboard Sea.

Bangkok Thai –> Boda

| Posted in Under Construction

According to an article in today’s Portland Daily Sun, the owners of Bangkok Thai are planning on turning it into an Asian fusion restaurant to be called Boda.

The restaurateurs are closing Bangkok Thai, their popular lunch and dinner restaurant at 671 Congress St., and converting it into a new Asian fusion eatery similar in some respects to their other Congress Street restaurant, the Green Elephant Vegetarian Bistro. Boda should be open in December.

“The food will change every two weeks, and we’ll have five to 10 items every night, that’s all. We’ll make it simple but good quality,” said Wongsaichua.

Maine at Work: Senior Brewer Mark Boissonneault

| Posted in Profiles

The Press Herald has kicked off a new series, Maine at Work,with a look at the work life of Mark Boissonneault, a senior brewer at Shipyard.

And, to my horror, there was math.

Boissonneault showed me his recipe sheet for the day’s batch of Shipyard Export Ale, and I instantly had a flashback to high school algebra. There were numbers with six or seven numerals after the decimal point, and equations where “bitterness values” are assigned to various kinds of hops. (The bitterness value is calculated by multiplying the alpha acids by the weight of the hops, by the way.)

This is way too much math, I thought. I need a drink.

Maine Beer Co.

| Posted in Profiles

A Blog About Beer has published a profile of Maine Beer Co.

I really see great things in the future for the Maine Beer Co. They are providing Maine-made beer unlike every other beer made here. In Portland, it’s either all English-style ales or the Belgians of Allagash, but there wasn’t anything like the great beers being made in the Midwest and West Coast of the U.S., something Maine was severely lacking. Until now. If they can keep pumping out beers equal in quality and taste to the Spring Peeper and their first experimental (and Brown IPA which was on tap at Novare and the GLB a week or two ago) beer, they have nowhere to go but up.

Open Creamery Day

| Posted in Events

Edible Obsessions has posted a report on yesterday’s Open Creamery Day.

Too many makers are quick to get their products to market, creating a more mild cheddar, but Jim [at Winter Hill] ages his wheels at least 8 months before offering it up to their customers–you can find their raw milk, yogurt and cheese at Rosemont in Portland or, better yet, become a regular customer and pick up directly from them–and you can tell the difference. Not only is it raw, the color is absolutely striking in it’s deep golden yellow paste.

This Week’s Events

| Posted in Events

The next Food Film Series meal is taking place tonight at One Longfellow Square, Larry Mathews from Back Bay Grill is preparing a meal to complement a showing of Sideways. The weekly Piatto per Tutti cooking class and the Foodie Trivia Contest are also taking place Monday evening. The last Wine Flight 5k Training Run is scheduled for Tuesday night with the final event taking place on Saturday. On Wednesday The Salt Exchange is running their weekly wine and canapes event and on Thursday there will be a wine tasting at Leavitt & Sons. Portland’s weekly Farmers’ Markets are being held in Monument Square on Wednesday and at Deering Oaks Park on Saturday. On Sunday there’s a pumpkin carving event taking place at the Inn by the Sea in Cape Elizabeth, and the Maine Ambassadors are running a Tower of Chocolate ascent at Portland Observatory to benefit the East End Holiday Light Project. For more information on these and other upcoming food happenings in the area, visit the event calendar.

Review of Grace

| Posted in Reviews

Grace received 3½ stars from this week’s Taste & Tell review in the Maine Sunday Telegram.

Grace is a restaurant that took over an old dilapidated church, its owners renovating and redeeming a place no congregation could support financially. The interior is magnificent.

Our present-day adoration of dinner could see it through the next era of its existence. But first, it would be good for Grace to drop some of the more baroque contortions in the menu, focusing instead on what tastes good.