Category: General News

The Financial Times has published admiring look at Portland that touches on the city’s food scene.

Culture is one thing but if there’s one area where the new Portland has truly excelled, it is food and drink. In the past two decades the city’s restaurant sector has mushroomed and, as in the rest of the country, good ingredients are increasingly high on the agenda.

The article recommends Empire, Duckfat, Central Provisions, Salvage, Eventide and Blue Rooster and draws special attention to Vinland,

But a serious star has emerged in the shape of Vinland, since last January the city’s leading contemporary restaurant, where chef David Levi favours localism, seasonality and foraging. This is the place Portland needed to crystallise its gastronomic ambitions once and for all.

The Bangor Daily News reports on O’Maine Studios and owner Rory Strunk’s current initiative to launch the O’Maine Media Kitchen.

Popular in larger cities such as New York and Los Angeles, the media kitchen concept is new to Maine. But marketing pros such as Cynthia Fisher of Bar Harbor Foods in Whiting are ready to roll.

“Oh my God. I don’t have to go to Philadelphia to shoot a video,” the company’s vice president of marketing said to the group. “We need to get everyone behind us because this is huge for Maine.”

For more information visit the O’Maine Media Kitchen Kickstarter page. Strunk has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to raise $65,000 for the project.

Portland Buy Local held an awards ceremony last night. Three local food business among the winners of this year’s Indie Biz Awards:

• Local Flavor – Local Sprouts Cafe
• Out of Sight but Not Out of Mind – Maine Brew Bus
• Portland Icon – Rosemont Market and Bakery

Foundation House, an alcohol and drug addiction recovery program, has leased the former Portland & Rochester. They’re renamed the space Triangle Cafe and plan on using it as “a multi-function space that provides a nutritional and occupational based holistic component to our program as well as a location for our residents and alumni to gather.”

According to their marketing materials their plans also include making “This new venture is also open to the public”.

Gorgeous Gelato(website, facebook, twitter) has applied for a liquor license. As they explain in their cover letter (page 77),

Espresso coffee and certain Gelato sundaes become really exquisite when some liquor is added. We would also love to serve our customers a very small selection of famous Italian liquors, such as: Lemoncello, Grappa and Sambuca.

The Business section in today’s Press Herald reports on O’Maine Studios and owner Rory Strunk’s current initiative to launch the O’Maine Media Kitchen.

Rory Strunk has built a successful outdoor sports-themed broadcast network, produced an Emmy award-winning television show and created content for such iconic brands as Absolut vodka. Now he wants to build a world-class kitchen studio in Portland that Maine’s food and beverage industry, restaurants and homegrown celebrity chefs could use to meet the growing demand for culinary-themed online video content.

For more information visit the O’Maine Media Kitchen Kickstarter page. Strunk has launched a crowdfunding campaing on Kickstarter to raise $65,000 for the project.

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald includes:

• A report on how Eliana Trenam integrates her ballet training into how she approaches work as a server at Hugo’s
• A column Joe Appel encouraging restaurants to take a seasonal approach to their wine lists
• Avery Yale Kamilla answers some vegan/vegetarian questions from readers

Earlier this week the Press Herald published an article about restaurant staff tattoos.

Walk into any restaurant in Portland, and it’s likely that the cook preparing your entree or the server pouring your glass of wine will have some kind of body art – a chef’s knife tattooed on an arm, or some mythical Japanese creature peeking out from a sleeve or pant leg. The older they are, the more likely they are to be covered in tatts to the point where it’s difficult to tell where one ends and the next begins.

Long rumored to be in the works, the name of Crema Cafe on Commercial Street has been changed to Arabica Coffee, bringing the coffee shop into alignment with owners original other spot on Free Street.

Check out this report from the Urban Eye blog for more details.

For the new issue of Booze, Fish and Coffee co-hosts Bo Bigelow and Brian Ericson have lunch at Lolita and discuss Fuji, Oxbow, Lolita, Timber, Taj, Boda, Arcadia, Hugo’s, Central Provisions and Veranda Asian Market.