Category: People

For the past two and half months Damian Sansonetti, chef and co-owner of Piccolo and Blue Rooster, has been battling a significant illness. He’s now returned home from a long hospital stay. His wife and partner Ilma Lopez has asked me to post this letter to make the situation public and express the gratitude of the family for all the help they’ve received during this time.

Ten weeks ago, Isabella and I took Damian to the hospital. Finally this week, he returned home to Portland from Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. What has been a long, difficult and uncertain period for our family is finally coming full circle. Damian is home and beginning again to do what he loves to do more than anything in the world: eating food.

Due to the medical ambiguity and uncertain outcome of Damian’s condition, we have strived to keep the situation private. Thankfully, today we are able to publically acknowledge that, while much mending is to be done, Damian is well and will be returning to the kitchen soon. We would like to thank those that have worked in his stead and kept the restaurants running like clockwork. Luke Aberle, Kelly Nelson, Dan McCarthy, Randy Cruse, Jason Williams, Kim Rodgers – we owe you the world. Thank you–and for all the support we received from the community we are eternally grateful.

We hope to see you soon at Piccolo or Blue Rooster soon.

Ilma Lopez

Coffee industry insider Sprudge has published an interview with Will Pratt and Briana Holt from Tandem Bakery.

Are you able to do anything different with coffee service at the second space?
Pratt: We’re doing Fetcos over there, which has been pretty good. It’s actually been harder to dial in than we thought—we thought it was just press play and forget about it, but it presents a lot of fun challenges. And we’ve actually been using the Mahlkönig K30, we’ve been doing espresso shots—longer shots—and the espressos up there are amazing. We’re adding AeroPress and other made-to-order stuff in the next couple weeks as well. It’s been crazy how the reaction to the space makes people forget that we’re a coffee company, so we’re trying to put that back in there as well. Every picture we see is of the food!

A Blissful Interlude has published a Q&A with Scratch Baking co-owner Sonja Swanberg.

<strong”>What’s your favorite thing (you, personally) to bake at Scratch?

Sunshine Cake.  It’s an old family recipe, which we don’t always have, but I really love making it.

A Blissful Interlude has published an interview with Andrew Taylor co-chef/owner of Eventide and Hugo’s.

Taylor says that the distinguishing factor about Eventide Oyster Co. is that “we wanted to be able to take as many liberties as we could with that style.  Our culinary approach is that we are farm to table, but what really excites us is our love of international food.  One of the things we love is that the techniques are so unique compared to what we were taught.  Using the basic blueprint, we then applied our own framework using the culinary influence of international cuisine.”

The Press Herald has published an interview Heather Sanborn, co-owner of Rising Tide Brewing.

Q: Since the business has grown, have you stepped back from the actual brewing?
A: As we’ve grown, I have been able to do less and less on the production side. Back when we had one employee, I would work on the bottling line and clean out the tanks and brew a pilot batch now and then, but now I can focus on other things I like. And I can say, “I want a beer that tastes like this,” and Nathan and the others can come up with the recipe and try that. The thing I enjoy doing the most is working on financial projects – how we can finance the next tank and making sure everyone gets paid and working on hiring plans. We’re a team of 11 right now and we hired our first full-time employee in 2012. So there’s an HR role and CFO role that falls to me as well.

Longtime Portland bartender Andrea Lee passed away last week at the age of 65.

Andrea Lee, a beloved bartender at Sangillo’s Tavern who offered comfort, laughter and “really good drinks” to its patrons for 37 years, died unexpectedly on Nov. 6. She was 65.

Ms. Lee worked Wednesday and Friday nights at the popular Portland neighborhood bar, which usually drew large crowds with Lee behind the bar.

For details on services see the obituary in today’s Press Herald.

A new supper club and catering operation called The Hunter’s Bend (website, twitter, instagram) is now in operation in Portland.

Founders Frank Anderson and Rebecca Ambrosi originally hail from northern Maine and Chicago respectively. Frank has spent the last 15 years cooking restaurants across the country including as the chef de cuisine at Son of a Gun in Los Angeles. Rebecca is a graduate of the Natural Gourmet Institute and has worked for both Thomas Keller and Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

The supper club is described as a “closed-door restaurant offering an intimate, dinner party style experience at unique locations around Portland.”

The hunter’s bend club is a closed-door restaurant offering an intimate, dinner party style experience at unique locations around Portland. The evening includes a guided food tour of the one of a kind menu, where Frank and Rebecca explain every course, it’s ingredients and why they chose it. Their favorite parts of the dinners so far include bringing people together, strangers who are seated next to each exchanging their information by the end of the night and answering guest’s questions about technique, ingredients and anything else they might be curious about.

The upcoming dinner they have planned is a 6-course meal featuring Ora King king salmon from New Zealand.

The Hunter’s Bend is a reference to a type of knot credited to Dr. Edward Hunter.

Shift Drinks has published a Q & A with Kelly Nelson from Piccolo.

Can you talk a bit about the relationship between a guest and someone who works in the front of the house?
…I have always seen it as a performance as I used to dance and act and my personality is distinct and strong. I found that over the years, I have come to be able to read what the customer wants. You gauge what is pleasurable for the diner and you can then provide whatever service you think would be best for them. Sometimes that means leaving them alone entirely. You give them their food, make sure everything is perfect, and you are a ghost. To the other extreme, you become part of the experience by performing and engaging them in discussion of food and drink. It becomes a full circle of experience between the human interaction and the pleasures of well-paired food and alcohol.