Category: People

Ilma Lopez, pastry chef and co-owner of Piccolo, is a finalist for a Golden Bowl award from the Women Chefs and Restaurateurs Organization. The award recognizes “excellence in baking and pastry arts and honoring a woman whose skill in the baking and pastry arts inspires others”.

Annemarie Ahearn, owner of Saltwater Farm in Rockport is a finalist in the Golden Pencil category. The award recognizes “dedication to teaching that is making a difference to the culinary world and honoring a woman who inspires her students to achieve both technically and creatively”.

Chef Cara Stadler was interviewed for a New York Times article on Chinese-American chefs.

“No one would give me even the lowest kitchen job in Beijing,” said Cara Stadler, 28, who grew up in Massachusetts and moved to China with substantial experience in the kitchens of the chefs Guy Savoy and Gordon Ramsay. Instead, she started the city’s first underground supper club. “Going to the markets every day forced me to really learn about Chinese produce,” she said.

Condé Nast Traveler has included chef Cara Stadler in their list of 10 Young Chefs to Watch.

Terrible students can make for fine young professionals. That’s true in Cara Stadler’s case, anyway. Despite some self-proclaimed lackluster grades in high school, Stadler, 27, had a star pupil kind of year in 2014, with a James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef Award nomination and Food & Wine Best New Chef nod. Seems that bad grades don’t mean a thing when “the kitchen is my jam,” says Stadler, who owns Tao Yuan in Brunswick, ME, and Bao Bao Dumpling House in Portland, ME, with her mother, Cecile.

Great Beer Adventure has posted an audio interview with Luci Benedict. Professor Benedict teaches a class on fermentation at the University of Southern Maine.

Many of us first discovered beer; especially our love for drinking beer in college. But what if you could take a class about beer? Luci Benedict, a Chemistry Professor at the University of Southern Maine, does just that. Her students love the class on Fermentation and the science behind everyone’s beloved brews. We got out of the rain and met up with Luci at the Thirsty Pig in Portland where she told us more about the science of beer warming up over pints of Bissell Brothers Angels with Filthy Souls: an American Porter with maple syrup perfect for a rainy cold day.

The Portland Phoenix has published an interview with the owners of Piccolo, Damian Sansonetti and Ilma Lopez,

Can you tell me a little bit about your background? What made you get into the restaurant business, and what made you stay?

Ilma Lopez: I was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. I studied to work in medicine, but was also drawn to the techniques and specifics of the kitchen and baking. The people and the ingredients (kept me in the business).

Damian Sansonetti: Growing up in a big Italian family in Pittsburgh, Penn., you are always around food and cooking. My father was in the business, but I never thought it would be a career path until when I was in my university chem and bio classes and all I was thinking about was food. (I love) the adrenaline rush of service and the way you get to connect to guests with the food and service. It’s awesome when you trigger a food memory or emotionally move people with what your team can do.

and an article on how two chefs are finding work/life balance once they became mothers.

The funny thing about work/life balance, though, is that for most people the balance is truly key. Too much work can be a bad thing, and so can too little. Now, separately, [Krista Kern] Desjarlais and [Lee] Farrington have turned to breakfast and lunch service, with occasional evening engagements on their own terms, as a way to equalize work and life.

A front page story in today’s Press Herald profiles Michael Reilly as his 50-year career running Reilly’s Bakery in Bidddeford comes to a close.

That demanding schedule is about to change. On Dec. 29, his 65th birthday, after the pork pie Christmas rush, Reilly will put away his rolling pin at precisely 10 a.m. – the time he was born – and retire from full-time work at the family baking business he has owned since 1983. His daughter and son-in-law, Elizabeth and Kevin Hussey, who represent the fourth generation, will be taking over management of the old-fashioned bakery well-loved for its maple cream doughnuts, which sell for $1.25 apiece. They’ll celebrate with an open house retirement party from 1-4 p.m. on Jan. 2.

The new issue of the Colby alumni magazine highlights the stories of 9 graduates making their mark in the Maine food industry including Maine rice farmer Ben Rooney, Pemaquid Oyster Company co-founders Jeff McKeen and Carter Newell, Blue Ox Malthouse founder Joel Alex, James Beard nominated chef Mike Wiley, Ocean Approved co-founder Paul Dobbins, and several others.

I don’t if it’s because I also went to Colby and so am more likely to notice the connection but my sense is there are a lot of Colby alumni working and leading in the Maine food industry.

The Portland Phoenix has interviewed Cara Stadler, chef/owner of Bao Bao and Tao Yuan.

LO: What made you decide to stay in the industry?
CS: I love food, I love cooking, I love the science behind it, and I love the effect it can have. The fact that you can take someone’s terrible day and turn it around is pretty awesome. We want people to come in and be happy at the end of the day. We do our best every day to deliver something fun and enjoyable.

and interviewed Tim Adams, head brewer and co-owner of Oxbow.

Blending various barrels is clearly an important practice in creating your finished beers. How do you determine what beer to blend with what beer?
It starts with the end goal of having a balanced and complex product. I’ll have a beer in mind, usually that starts with having a color in mind that will need to be accomplished. Flavor profile-wise I want barrel character, but not too much barrel character. I like blending different types of barrels to enhance complexity. I do a lot of mixing of wine barrels and bourbon barrels, and barrels of various ages. I like working with at least a small amount of bourbon barrel beer for the vanillin, I find that it’s a really nice smoother-outer, if you will, on the pointier and sharper notes of acidity.