The Twin Swirls (instagram) ice cream shop is slated to open this Saturday. They’ll be serving a limited menu on Saturday but will eventually have on offer hard serve and soft serve cones and dishes, milkshakes, sundaes and coffee.
The name Twin Swirls is inspired by owner Sarah Palmer’s twin six year old girls, Alex and Sage.
The shop is located at 865 Brighton Ave in the Nason’s Corner neighborhood, and their regular hours will be Thursday through Sunday, noon to 8 pm.
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Zu Bakery (website, instagram) owner Barak Olins is aiming to launch his new West End location in early November.
In the coming two weeks he’ll be holding a series of pop-ups from his bakery at 81 Clark Street on Wednesdays and Fridays, 3 – 5 pm. Stop by to try some of the the breads and baked goods he’ll be featuring in his shop.
When Zu Bakery is fully open Olins and his team will be serving pastries and coffee at the start of the day and with baguettes and other breads going on sale as they come out of the oven and offering two types of pizza alla Romana at the end of the day.
Olins plans to make most of his bakery products with Maine grown grains he mills in-house. In addition to morning pastries and breads, Zu Bakery will also sell biscotti, granola, seasonal pastries and a small selection of bottled wine.
Olins originally launched Zu Bakery in 2000. Previously he was a co-founder/chef of the highly regarded Cafe Uffa, which was located in Longfellow Square and opened in 1995.
Joe Fournier has relaunched the former Dirty Dove cocktail bar with a new name and concept as the Saint Joe Restobar (instagram).
The restaurant will be serving “pan-continental fare” prepared by “Executive Cheftender” Ezra Dunn. Locally Dunn has worked at Evo and Black Cow. Before moving to Portland from the Hudson Valley he led the kitchen at The Stagecoach Inn.
The Saint Joe Restobar—named after Joe Strummer from The Clash—is located at 229 Congress Street. It is open noon to 9 pm, Monday through Saturday.
Separately, Fournier and Matt Moran are opening A & C Soda Shop in South Portland as a successor to Fournier’s popular business A & C Grocery which closed on Washington Ave last year.
The Bangor Daily News has a report on a new robot food delivery service at the University of Southern Maine.
The bots receive orders via the app and an internal phone SIM card, then proceed to a campus food kiosk — which includes the Hungry Huskies food truck — where a Sodexo employee loads them up with vittles. The machines then trundle on to their destination using GPS mapping software to guide them. Stopping outside their destination building, folks who’ve ordered food then use the app to open the Kiwibot and retrieve their lunch.
A new Middle Eastern restaurant called Layalina (instagram) is scheduled to open today at 10 am. Layalina is located at 275 Main Street in Biddeford a few doors down from Elements Coffee Shop.
Layalina will specialize in Middle Eastern food Arabian Gulf region. Owner Talal Alzefiri will be serving a menu that includes lentil soup, fatoush salad, falafel sandwich, chicken or beef shwarma sandwiches, grilled lamb sandwich, a mixed grill plate, stuffed grape leaves and hummus. You can pre-order takeout online. Alzefiri is also the owner of Alhadidi Market in Biddeford.
Layalina will be open Wednesday through Monday, 10 am to 9 pm.
Sacred Profane Brewing (website, instagram), the Czech-style brewery and tankpub, is scheduled to open on Thursday. Sacred Profane is located at 50 Washington Street in Biddeford. Sacred Profane will be exclusively serving light and dark Czech-style lagers along with a menu of ‘classic beer hall fare’.
The menu will include dishes such as:
Cretons – pork/dark lager mustard/pickled red onion/saltine
Beef Tartare – top round/mayo/shallot/pickled mustard seed/toast
Salad – little gem/ranch/dorito dust/lardon
Poutine – French fries/curds/beef gravy
Schnitzel – pork loin steak/potato salad/dark lager beer mustard
The dessert menu will feature salty chocolate and basil chip flavors from Parlor Ice Cream.
Sacred Profane is being launched by partners Brienne Allen (head brewer), Michael Fava (former head brewer at Oxbow), and Erin Sheehan and Carson James (co-owners of Lorne Wine).
Sacred Profane will be open Thursdays 4 to 10 pm, Fridays and Saturdays noon to 10 pm, Sundays noon to 6 pm, and Mondays 4 to 10 pm.
To read more about Sacred Profane check out the recent article in the Maine Sunday Telegram.
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Cabana (website, instagram) the new Latin American cocktail bar, restaurant and social space will be opening this Friday. Cabana is located at 111 Middle Street in the space formerly occupied by Piccolo, and will be open 5 pm to 1 am, Friday through Tuesday.
The small plate menu will include dishes like ceviche, pork and beef albondigas, cubano sliders, maduros with house-made ice cream (bottom right), and a seasonal tostones plate.
The beverage program includes mocktails, wine, beer and specialty cocktails like the Valentina (rum, Irish whiskey, velvet falernum, guava, lime, oat froth) and the Perla (pisco, yerba mate, lime, hibiscus dust).
Owner René Emilio Peña (top right) also operates La Bodega Latina on Congress Street. He moved to Portland 12 years ago from Miami where he worked in the fashion industry. His vision for Cabana has been to meld his passions for fashion, music, art and food into a fully immersive experience that makes use of the small space as part of its personality.
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Keg and Kraken (instagram) opened tonight. The new restaurant is located at at 653 Congress Street in the space formerly occupied by Kushiya Benkay. Owners Jiraphon and Steve Richards along with Nisachuan Young are serving a menu of sushi, yakitori, and Thai dishes.
The Richards also own a laudromat in Biddeford. Nisachuan Young has experience in the hospitality business in Thailand where she was the assistant director of food and beverage at the Four Seasons Hotel in Samui as well as the manager of Luca Cafe in Maine.
Allagash Brewing has begun producing cider which will be available at their Portland tasting room starting this Thursday.
The cider used a mix of Cortland, Honey Crisp, Golden Delicious, Goldrush, Crimson Crisp, Northern Spy, Roxbury Russet, Hudson’s Golden Gem, and Esopus Spitzenburg and is fermented with a Pét-nat yeast strain and a yeast strain harvested from their spontaneously fermented Coolship beers and then aged in oak barrels. It weighs in at 6.1% ABV.
Allagash also produces a notable cider-adjacent product is the Allagash Coolship Pomme which initially launched in 2021.
For a complete list of Maine cider producers see our Guide to Maine Cider.
