Category: Openings

Finestkind (website, instagram) is scheduled to open on Thursday. The 26-seat breakfast and lunch cafe is located at 17 Pepperell Square in Saco. It’s being launched by Victoria and Tom Barthelmes along with their business partners Chris and Paige Gould.

Finestkind will serve (see menu below)  a wide range of house-made baked goods like Pumpkin Cake, Mudslide Cookies and the Tiny Debra’s. Breakfast sandwiches, lunch sandwiches, salads and other cafe dishes are available all day. Shown above is the Maine Grains bowl (warm farro over cabbage, charred corn, shishitos, cherry tomatoes, pepita, salsa verde vinaigrette) topped with crispy chicken. Finestkind is serving Tandem Coffee, as well as beer, wine, brunch cocktails and non-alcoholic drinks.

Pastry chef Kim Rodgers has joined the team at Finestkind. Rodgers is a cofounder of Little Spruce Baking Company was previously the executive pastry chef at Big Tree Hospitality. The Goulds are the owners of Central Provisions and Tipo. Victoria Barthelmes was the GM of Tipo and remains the wine director of both restaurants. Tom Barthelmes has transitioned to fully focus on Finestkind from his position as the kitchen manager at Central and Tipo. The Barthelmes met when attending The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park and worked together at the Apple Pie Bakery Café. In New York City, Victoria worked in the pastry department at Lincoln Ristorante where she produced pastry for the Metropolitan Opera and wedding cakes for the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Tom worked at Lincoln before moving to Per Se where he worked for Thomas Keller.

Finestkind will be open Thursday through Monday, 7:30 am – 2 pm.

WCYY reports that the Old Port bar Lincolns has opened a new location in Denver.

Lincoln’s Denver officially opened over the weekend. While it’s a new location on new turf, the concept hasn’t changed. The menu remains five bucks. And as with the other two Lincoln’s locations, it’s a speakeasy whose location needs to be found, not told.

The Portland location launched on June 15, 2015.

Owner Sai Guntaka plans to open the new Taj (website, facebook, instagram) restaurant on Tuesday. The new location for his well-loved Indian restaurant is in the Clarks Pond Shopping Center very close to its current spot on Gorham Road in South Portland. It’s been under construction since this past winter.

The restaurant will seat ~70 people with an 11-seat bar, a larger space for the lunch buffet, and a dedicated area for takeout pick-up. A much bigger kitchen will enable the staff to not only handle the dining room but also prepare takeout food quicker than at their current location.

Chef (and Sai Guntaka’s mother) Hema Latha Guntaka will be adding a selection of street-style appetizers like panipuri and frankie to the offerings on the current Taj menu.

The cocktail menu (see draft menu below) will also be a new addition at Taj. Sai Guntaka has long had a vision for a Indian cocktail program at the restaurant and the move to the new location has created the opportunity to bring that to life. Jim Baldi has joined the team as the restaurant’s bar manager, he formerly worked at the Bar of Chocolate in the Old Port.

Woodhull handled the build out of Taj, the mural in the buffet room (bottom right) was created by Mike Rich and the neon Taj sign at the end of the bar was created by David Johansen (aka Neon Dave).

The kitchen will be open Monday through Friday, 11 am – 9 pm, and Saturday/Sunday 11 am – 9:30 pm. The bar will stay open until 11 pm on Friday through Sunday.

Lucky Cheetah (website, instagram) is scheduled to open in August (tentatively planned for August 6th). The 110-seat restaurant is being launched by Wills Dowd and Jared Dinsmore, the owners of Bird & Co, in the former Old Port Tavern space on Moulton Street.

Lucky Cheetah bar manager Ben Bozeman is creating a cocktail list that showcases Asian spirits. The restaurant will have a sparkling wine list with a 20+ bottle selection of champagnes including the 2013 Dom Perignon and Laurent-Perrier La Cuvee Brut. Bozeman had previously been the bar manager at The Honey Paw.

Chef Zachary Johnson will serving a menu of Cantonese-style dim sum like xiaolongbao and char siu bao. The menu will also include some dishes with modern twists like a foie gras blackberry dumplings topped with a brown butter miso crumb. Johnson has previously worked at Central Provisions and Bird & Co.

Ana Jovic will be the general manager for Lucky Cheetah. She was previously the food and beverage manager at Earth at Hidden Pond in Kennebunkport.

Dowd and Dinsmore have worked with Susie Smith Coughlin on the renovation and interior design of the 5,000 sq ft space. It now features a 10-seat Italian pink marble bar, a lounge area, a dining room with circular corner booths and a 16-seat private dining/event space. Displayed throughout the dining room are a collection of large format prints by photographer Slim Aarons.

Lucky Cheetah will be open Tuesday through Sunday, 5 – 10 pm. Reservations will be available via OpenTable.

Leisure Time Cocktail Company (instagram) is set to open on Wednesday next week.  Owners Kai Parrott-Wolfe and Matt Noyes have renovated the 1,400 sq ft former Rwanda Bean coffee shop on Thompson’s Point into a 50-seat bar with a mix of bar, banquette and table seating.

The Leisure Time drinks menu (see below) will feature a range of draft and freezer cocktails like the Strawberry Rhubarb Lemonade (top left), Teeny King’s Tea Martini and Negroni (both bottom right). There’s also a selection of wine and beer. The food menu (see below) prepared by chef Emma Reed includes pierogis, salads and house made hot dogs and sausages. Shown above are the Kielbasa sausage sandwich and the wild mushroom and kraut pierogis.

Leisure time will be open Wednesday/Thursday noon – 9 pm,  Friday/Saturday noon – 10 pm, and Sunday noon – 8 pm.

Owners Deen Haleem and Carol Mitchell are ramping up to reopen Tiqa (website, facebook, instagram). The pan-Mediterranean restaurant on Commercial Street had announced they were temporarily closing back in April 2023 while they “consider all possible future options.”

Haleem shared that after “a year of contemplation and self-reflection” they’ve decided to relaunch the restaurant. Philip Sokowolski will be the new chef at Tiqa. Sokowolski has moved to Maine from Annapolis where he had been the chef at Libations Tavern and previously at The Severn Inn.

Tiqa will be launching with a new menu but with the same concept of exploring the various cuisines of the Mediterranean region. Haleem and Mitchell hope to reopen Tiqa sometime in the next few weeks.

Tiqa originally  opened on January 21, 2015 and the  Tiqa Cafe in the Deering Oaks Castle (now closed) launched the following year.

The new Dok Mali restaurant in South Portland, Dok Mali Noodle Bar (website, facebook, instagram), is now open for business. It is located at 169 Ocean Street in the space formerly occupied by Judy Gibson.

Chef/owner Nonglack Thanephonesy, general manager Khaney Muyderman and their team are serving a menu (see below) that features a pan-Asian selection of noodle-based soups and dishes. Shown above is a Korean dish, Japchae, that’s made with sweet potato glass noodles, red bell peppers, carrots, spinach, mushrooms, onions, scallions and beef. They have a selection of cocktails, wine, beer and nonalcoholic drinks available (see menu below).

The layout of the restaurant has remained largely the same but with an interior design that makes use of photographs and books that highlights the family’s history and Thai culture. The restaurant is open daily 11 am – 9 pm.

Dok Mali on India Street opened in November 2022. Judy Gibson went out of business in November.

Rabelais Books (website, facebook, instagram) opened for business on Friday. The culinary bookstore is located at 93 Washington Ave in one of the Black Box shipping container spaces.

Bookseller Don Lindgren has stocked the shop with printed books, ephemera and manuscripts spanning across the past six centuries and covering a wide range of culinary subjects from mushrooms and mixology to farming and food photography, and of course cookbooks covering nearly every corner of the globe.

This Rabelais pop-up shop will be in business now through the end of September, Wednesday through Monday, 11 am – 7 pm.

For more information on Rabelais and Lindgren see this article from June.

Here’s a look at two of the food trucks that have launched in Portland this year.

The Toku Truck (website, instagram, order online) was launched in early June by chef/owner Felicia Dumont. Dumont previously ran Harvest Bar in Bethel and since moving to Portland has worked at The Shop. When you go, be sure to try the delicious roasted veggie sandwich (shown here topped with blackened shrimp). The name of business is a reference to Dumont’s family heritage and means wave in the Passamaquoddy language. You can find the Toku Truck at 82 Parris Street in West Bayside. They’re open Tuesday through Saturday, 8 am – 3 pm.

Vendredi’s (website, instagram) is operated by Matt Lair with Michael Irish. Their burgers are gaining some ardent fans which shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise once you learn that Lair worked for acclaimed Chicago burger restaurant Au Cheval prior to moving to Portland. Vendredi’s is open today 4 – 11 pm. They’ll be launching a new Sunday brunch service this weekend 11 am – 4 pm with coffee from the Side by Side (website, instagram) cart. Vendredi’s is located at Oxbow on Washington Ave.