Category: General News

The Food & Dining section in today’s Maine Sunday Telegram talks with business owners about the current state of the restaurant industry, and explores the need for federal and state programs to help them survive.

In Maine, especially in Greater Portland, small, independent restaurants are a huge part of both the economy and culture, drawing visitors from all over the country who come here to explore the city’s food scene, named the best in the nation in 2018 by Bon Appetit. Many of these restaurants, often owned by the chef, have suffered enormously during the pandemic, and say that efforts to help them so far have not been enough. The state shut down restaurants in mid-March and allowed them to reopen in June, initially only to outdoor dining in Maine’s more populated counties, then two weeks later to indoor dining with requirements for capacity, spacing, mask-wearing and sanitization – measures that cost money to implement and reduced the number of customers that could be served, on top of those unwilling to dine out because of the health risks.

Restaurant critic Andrew Ross tries to identify “what made Drifters Wife and Piccolo so special“.

Both restaurants shut their doors permanently last month – Portland’s first high-profile casualties of the novel coronavirus pandemic. But it’s only now, after weeks of thinking about their absence, that I’ve started to see why the two restaurants were so important, and how their example can become a model for whatever sprouts from the fallow of the city’s locked-down food scene.

Today’s Maine Sunday Telegram includes an article on options for shaved ice treats available this summer.

When the temperature rises in Maine, Mainers typically turn to ice cream for a little cold comfort. This unusually sweaty summer, though, when so many people are working from home without air conditioning, calls for bigger ammunition to fight the heat and humidity – icy treats such as shave ice, snoballs, and boozy ice pops.

Featured in the article are: Belfast Shaved Ice, Brrrr! Harbor, Haole Ice, Hawaiian Jim’s, Little Easy Snoballs, Snowology 207, and Vena’s.

The Food & Dining section today’s Maine Sunday Telegram includes articles on:

• Perspectives from servers on working at restaurants during a pandemic
• Increased use of technology by restaurants and other food service businesses during the pandemic
• How the pandemic is impacting the food truck business
• The changes in business climate for Maine veggie burger producers
• A new food truck finder app called Food Trux, which recently merged with Maine Food Truck Finder

Leigh Habegger, executive director of Seafood Harvesters of America, and Andrew Taylor, Arlin Smith and Mike Wiley, the co-owners of Eventide, Hugo’s and The Honey Paw have co-written an article for the Press Herald advocating for passage of the Restaurants Act and funds to support the seafood industry.

The connection couldn’t be clearer: Without restaurants, many fishermen have nowhere to sell their catch. Without fishermen, many restaurants have nothing to offer. We’re proud to harvest and serve the best-managed, most sustainable seafood in the world, especially when it comes on a steamed bun or slurped down with a squeeze of lemon. By passing the RESTAURANTS Act and providing additional assistance to the commercial fishing industry, Congress would make sure fresh oysters, lobster tails and haddock filets continue to make it to consumers, returning hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of jobs in the process.

For more information on the challenges faced by restaurant during the pandemic visit the Independent Restaurant Coalition website.

A bill has been proposed for the Maine Legislature which would enable restaurants to sell alcohol to go through 2022, according to a report in the Press Heraldi.

But Sen. Louie Luchini, D-Ellsworth, who sponsored the bill to extend the to-go law until April 2022, said it has helped prevent many restaurants from going out of business during the pandemic.

The latest issue of Edible Maine is now online. The summer 2020 issue focuses on women in the Maine food community and includes articles about:

• Cara Stadler from Canopy Farms
• Mary Allen Linderman from Coffee by Design
• Sarah Jackson, a bartender from Hunt & Alpine
• State Apiarist Jennifer Lund
• State Senator Heather Sanborn, co-owner of Rising Tide Brewery
• and several other articles

Today’s Maine Sunday Telegram includes a survey of sidewalk dining in the Old Port by restaurant critic Andrew Ross,

My plan on this sun-soaked Saturday afternoon is to take my new mask out for a spin on a walk through downtown Portland, starting where new, planter-topped concrete barricades fence in a pedestrian-friendly stretch of Exchange Street. The blockade offers restaurants and bars a bit more outdoor real estate to help rekindle business as customers begin their cautious return to dining out.

an article about Maine-grown ginger,

[Ian] Jerolmack, now in his seventh year of tending the young ginger rhizomes that sprout from mature ginger root he imports from Peru, has a reputation among local farmers as the best ginger grower in Maine. One flower farmer I spoke with grew it for a couple of years until the novelty wore off; the crop was too labor intensive and not always productive, he said. He told me to call Jerolmack.

and an overview of vegan/vegetarian ratings garnered by Portland.

Portland may be a small city, but it ranks alongside Chicago, Los Angeles and New York as a hot spot for vegans and vegetarians. Over the past five years, Portland has gained a national reputation as a top city for vegans, reflecting the city’s growing roster of vegetarian restaurants and residents’ easy access to locally grown vegetables and fruits.

The Bangor Daily News reports that Preble Street will be changing over to food delivery in order to increase social distancing among people who depend on the soup kitchen.

Preble Street Resource Center, one of the largest social service agencies in Maine, will shut down its to-go soup kitchen on Monday and shift to a mobile food distribution program that “brings food to people where they are.”

The initiative aims to provide basic food needs and dissuade crowds from gathering at its Bayside site during the pandemic, according to Ali Lovejoy, a program director at Preble Street.