Category: History

For anyone interested in the history of Portland’s restaurant scene (that’s all of us, right?), Epicuranoid has published a very interesting history of Portland’s restaurants in the 70’s and 80’s.

Long before The Old Port renaissance, Portland had a hopping restaurant scene.  There was a famous French restaurant named Marcel’s.  Several good steak houses like John Martin’s Art Gallery (where Asylum is now) and many restaurants that did all kinds of seafood baked, broiled & fried.  However, In the time before The Old Port boomed, the last great features of Portland’s restaurant landscape were Italian.  I refer to it as the old Italian guard because much like Boston’s North End today, the Italian restaurants dominated.   Only DiMillo’s was actually in the area we call The Old Port, but the city was littered with the likes of Verillo’s, The Sportsman’s Grill, The Roma, The Village Cafe, Maria’s and my old favorite, Giobbi’s.

If that’s wet your appetite for Portland food history, take a look at the restaurant timeline here on PFM.

Today’s Portland Daily Sun includes an article on Portland’s prohibitional past and a story about the naming of Rockin’ Ricky’s Tavern,

Back to famous bars though. One of my favorite bar stories is one I was told about Ricky’s, on Portland Street, across from the post office. It seems that when Italy changed sides in the Second World War an Italian submarine navigated into Portland Harbor and turned itself in, and because Italy was in dire straits at the end of the war some of the Italian crewmen decided to stay in this country. They were each given a stake by the federal government to establish themselves in their new country and the story goes that a man named Ricci used his cash to start a tavern on Portland Street, which he named after himself, and over time Ricci’s became anglicized to Ricky’s. Rockin’ Ricky’s Tavern, who would’a thought.

Pepperclub co-owner Eddie Fitzpatrick takes a walk down food memory lane for a retrospective article on the 25th anniversary of Portland magazine.

Twenty-five years ago, a new wave of restaurants in Portland dazzled diners and earned raves from The Atlantic and New England Monthly. Among them: Swan Dive, Alberta’s, L’Antibes, Brattle Street, The Vinyard, and 34 Exchange. At the time, Eddie Fitzpatrick was editor of the Maine Sunday Telegram. Today, he co-owns Pepperclub…

In the later part of the article Fitzpatrick also offers his perspective on the last few years of expansion in the restaurant industry in Portland.

A second article later in the magazine also provides another point of view on Portland restaurant past and present.

Back in the ’80’s, Portland had “just about a dozen feature restaurants,” radiating from the restored brick wharehouses of the Old Port, recalls Dick Grotton, president and CEO of the Maine Restaurant Association…

The second article isn’t available online but the new issue of Portland magazine should be available at your local newsstand and you can read the article on page 84.

A pair of vintage photos of Chinese immigrant waiters taking an “Americanization Class” have recently been added to the Maine Memory Network website. The men all worked at either the Empire and the Oriental in Portland. The Empire stood on the corner of Forest Ave and Congress Street where Empire Dine and Dance is today. The Oriental was located at 28 Monument Square in the spot that now houses the Public Market House.