Category: General News

The nominations process is complete and it’s now time to cast your ballot in the Portland Phoenix Best of Portland Readership Poll. There are a plethora of Food and Drink categories (Bagels, Bars, Barbecue, Beer Selection, Brewpubs, Brunch, etc) to vote on as well as sections for City Life, Arts and Entertainment, and Shopping.

Edible Obsessions, From Away, Mister Meatball, Portland Food Map and the Spiced Plate are all contenders in the Food Blog category.

If the 2012 polls follows the same schedule as past years then the final results will be made public in April at the Port City Music Hall.

Maine Mead Works appeared in a New York Times article on the mead industry.

While traditional meads can have more than 10 percent residual sugar, Mr. Alexander’s come in under 2 percent. Combined with a rock-bottom acidity, the result in nose and palate can be remarkably like drinking dry white wine, with a delicate overlay of fruit and floral aromas, depending on the mead.

Today’s Portland Daily Sun reports on a restaurant coupon deal at Samuel’s went awry.

“They were only supposed to sell one certificate per person per month, and not for three bucks. I hardly do any advertising, and this seemed like a good idea to get new people to try the place, but it was a mess. They sold them for like a dollar each or something on Christmas Eve, and I had one week where the same guy came in every night with a $25 certificate. My Restaurant.com sales rep guy, Jerry, is from Portsmouth, and he told me they weren’t monitoring who was buying them or how many they were selling. It was supposed to be, ‘We’re selling this amount of certificates for this certain price,’ but they went nuts and I can’t afford to do it.”

Today’s Press Herald includes an update on the Shipyard sewer bill snafu,

Contrary to what a city official said last week, Portland sewer and water officials did have experience dealing with brewery operations in 1996, when a metering mistake was made that cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue from Shipyard Brewing Co.

and a report on last night’s City Council decision to allow raw milk and alcoholic beverage sales at the Farmers Market.

After a long discussion, the City Council voted Monday night not to amend the city’s Farmers Market Ordinance to require vendors to display a placard and provide handouts to consumers detailing the risks of unpasteurized milk.

Councilors also authorized farmers market sales of malt liquor, hard cider and wine produced by Maine farms.

In a pair of articles the Press Herald has reported on the situation that lead to Shipyard being under-billed for its sewer charges. Here’s an excerpt from Friday’s article,

Maine’s largest brewery, the Shipyard Brewing Co., has been billed for only a fraction of its sewer usage since 1996, an apparent oversight that has cost the city of Portland hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in lost revenue.

and the follow-up piece that appeared on Saturday.

Shipyard, the largest brewery in Maine, has been paying the full sewer fees since March. The additional fees amount to roughly $300,000 a year, based on current production levels.

A retired Portland Water District employee said last month that Peterson told him in 1996 that all of the water was going into bottles and that no sewer account was needed.

National food blog Eater has a  report on Mario Batali’s accusation that Portland’s Otto is a copy of the Batali’s pizzeria in NYC.

And in a separate post, Eater has published Otto’s response to Batali’s statement.

Blackbird Baking has bought Two Fat Cats,

We are very happy and excited to announce that Blackbird Baking Company has bought and now owns Two Fat Cats Bakery at 47 India Street in Portland’s Old Port.   It’s been a long process, but everything has come together and ownership changed hands on January 31, 2012.  We’re very excited and pleased to have such a wonderful staff now working for us at Two Fat Cats.

Style blog Mainely Mara has published a guide to spicy hot cocktails at Grace, Zapoteca, Sonny’s and El Rayo Cantina.

The February issue of Down East includes a feature story on the Maine hot sauce industry.

Taco Escobarr has launched a pair of hot sauces which are on sale at the restaurant.

The Press Herald has published a report on East End Cupcakes and their appearance in the latest episode of Cupcake Wars on the Food Network. The show aired Sunday night and the theme for this week’s competition was to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the I Love Lucy show.

Zoidis, owner of East End Cupcakes in the Old Port, didn’t win the show’s $10,000 prize, but she did come away with some clever Lucy-inspired cupcake ideas.

A cupcake she created in the first round of the competition was an homage to the “Vitameatavegemin” episode, in which Lucy is hired to do a TV commercial for a health tonic that makes her tipsy.