Category: General News

Yesterday’s Portland Daily Sun published a trio of articles on local food, locavorism and the market factors that resulted in the close of the Whole Grocer and the birth of the Portland Food Co-op. According to the Sun, “Last month’s purchase [by the Co-op] from the Crown of Maine, the statewide distributor of organic Maine goods and products, exceeded the amount purchased by Whole Foods.”

A new food blog called Portland Food Coma has started up. The most recent post lists ten things to eat in Portland when you have “no time or patience for being disappointed“.
What’s your top ten list?

The list of nominees for this year’s James Beard Foundation awards has been released:

• Fore Street was nominated for Outstanding Restaurant
• Rob Evans from Hugo’s was nominated in the Best Chef Northeast category
• Clark Frasier and Mark Gaier from Arrows in Ogunquit were also nominated in the Best Chef Northeast category

The winners will be announced at a ceremony on May 4 in Avery Fisher Hall in New York.

The Bollard has published an op-ed against bottled water.

This water is systematically and relentlessly pumped from land that belongs to Maine communities. Poland Spring, which began bottling water generations ago in the town of that name, is now an arm of the global conglomerate Nestlé. Poland Spring is trying to strong-arm Maine so Nestlé can continue to extract our water, for free, and sell it back to us.

There are numerous proposed changes/additions to Maine food law being considered by the Maine Legislature. Here’s some highlights:

Wine & Liquor Tastings—as Chow Maine‘s Bob Rossi recently explained there are two bills before the Legislature regarding wine tastings. The first would “repeal the provision in the wine tasting statute which limits wine shops to one tasting per calendar month.” The second is more far reaching and would allow tastings for liquor as well as change rules regarding wine tastings. There are also proposals regarding Maine wineries, hotel minibars, agency liquor stores, etc.

Force Feeding—LD 9 “makes force-feeding birds in order to produce the food product known as foie gras a civil
violation”. Hugo’s Chef Rob Evans was on site in Augusta back in February and spoke up in defense of the agricultural practices of his supplier Hudson Valley Foie Gras in this story on MPBN radio.

Nutrition—lawmakers are discussing a requirement for restaurants with more than 15 locations to post calorie counts on their menus. There’s also a bill that seeks to “defines ‘food containing artificial trans fat’ and prohibits the storage, distribution or use of these foods in an eating establishment”

There’s a round-up of several food community news items in the Food & Health section of today’s newspaper. The article reports on the Portland Food Co-op, the Maine Senior FarmShare program, spring CSA shares, Eco Appetito and Tango & Tapas on Peaks.

USM Free Press has a report on the competition at Cajun Cookin’ Challenge that took place last week. According to the article, Silly’s won best Cajun dish with a vegan entry.

According to a report from the Portland Daily Sun, “A Portland man is charged with burglarizing one Coffee by Design store and attempting to break into another one early Wednesday”.