Category: General News

The list of nominees for the 2019 James Beard Foundation awards were released today.

There is one nominee from Maine this year. Rob Tod from Allagash Brewing Co. is a nominee in the Outstanding Wine Beer or Spirits Professional category.

This year’s semifinalists were announced in February. The 2019 award winners will be announced on May 6th at the Awards Gala in Chicago.

Related information:

• Award and Nomination Process – learn more about the award nominations process.
• James Beard in Portland – James Beard taught several days of cooking classes in Portland in 1964.

The new issue of Down East is out and it’s all about Maine Food. The articles include:

• A discussion of some of the leading female chefs of Maine
• A list of the 35 “Maine-iest” Foods
• An article by  Guest Editor Sam Sifton
• A look at the diverse cuisines being served on Forest Ave
• An article about American Unagi
• A profile of a 97-year old lobsterman
• and a lot more

Most of the articles are not yet available online.

The number of local coffee roasters has significantly expanded over the past decade and many run cafes where you can try their coffee such as Arabica, Bard, Burundi Star, Coffee by Design, Speckled Ax, Tandem in Portland, and Elements and Time & Tide in Biddeford.

But there are also a growing number of roasters you can try by visiting coffee shops and restaurants that don’t roast their own and have opted to bring in beans from elsewhere in the state or the country. Here are the ones I know of:

• Acadia Coffee – Scratch
• Astro Coffee – More & Co
• Bucklyn Coffee – Forage
• Carrabassett Coffee – Crooked Mile Cafe
• Crossroads Coffee Beans – Terlingua
• Flight Coffee Co. – Proper Cup
• George Howell Coffee – HiFi Donuts
• La Colombe – Navis Cafe
• Parlor Coffee – Cong Tu Bot or Rose Foods
• Seacoast Coffee – Central Provisions, Omi’s Coffee Shop
• Speedwell Coffee Roasters – The Purple House
• Vivid Coffee Roasters – Little Woodfords

The Lost Kitchen has released details of their 2019 reservation process. It follows the same pattern as last year, so dust off your stack of 3×5 cards, find an envelope and a stamp and get your letter ready to mail on April 1st.

The Press Herald is seeking nominees for this year’s Source Sustainability Awards. Past year’s winners have included butchers, grocers, aqua-cultivators. If you know of a person or organization (or are one yourself) that are “contributing to the state’s environmental well-being” then take a moment to nominate them for consideration.

A pair of Portland restaurants have gotten some national press:

• Neil Ross from Little Giant was one of the featured chefs for an article in Esquire about using cocktails as inspiration for specialty burgers.
• Chef/owner David Levi was featured in a Marketwatch article about “hyperlocal” restaurants.

Yankee magazine has published an article comparing the Portland and Boston food scenes, and declaring a winner.

Clearly, it’s time to sweep away some assumptions and compare Boston and Portland side by side, category by category, setting aside the buzz and that Vacationland glow. What is really the best food town in New England? And what does that title even mean?

The Food & Dining section in today’s paper reports on the growing number of restaurants producing and bottling their own hot sauces.

Now, interest in hot sauce is soaring in Maine kitchens and chefs are playing around with peppers, making their own sauces to serve and sell – traditional vinegar-based hot sauces as well as fermented ones. And it’s not just a Portland craze; restaurants from Tao Yuan in Brunswick to Anju Noodle Bar in Kittery are impressing hot sauce-loving diners with their in-house creations. Local entrepreneurs who are part of the hot sauce subculture are developing new lines of sauces for the marketplace, and at least three Maine farms are growing peppers destined for bottles of hot sauce.

The Food & Dining section in today’s Maine Sunday Telegram includes articles on rampant theft from restaurants,

At DiMillo’s on the Water in Portland, customers steal steak knives, souffle cups, and nautical decorations from buffets. A chef who owns several Maine restaurants says pictures have been removed from their frames. And someone once stole a large ficus tree – like Volk’s painting, a gift from a parent – at one of his openings.

and on the improved availability of vegan breakfast sandwiches.

A few years ago I couldn’t buy a vegan breakfast sandwich in Portland for love or money, and now at least five places sell them. The sandwiches reflect a wider boom in vegan breakfast taking place across the city. From sandwiches to tofu scrambles to pancakes and doughnuts, it’s become easy to eat vegan in the Forest City for the first meal of the day.