Category: People

Restaurant Staff Weight Loss, Girl Gone Raw, Wine with Tofu

| Posted in Wine, People, General News

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald includes an interview with raw vegan chef Elizabeth Fraser,

The ease with which she made the almond milk coupled with its flavor was like a health food revelation to me. But to Fraser, it was just another day in the life of the Girl Gone Raw.

That’s the name of her raw vegan chef business, which offers classes, private parties and food coaching from her Munjoy Hill studio to groups and individuals.

an article about a staff weight loss program being run by the owner of David’s,

David Turin, the owner of David’s, noticed his staffers’ girth increasing from year to year, and decided to do something about it. He started a 90-day weight-loss competition at the restaurant and will be rewarding the “biggest losers” on his staff with lots of cash.

and advice on pairing wine with tofu.

She literally laughed. “I have no idea. You can’t drink wine with tofu.” With that, she was off to pay, and I started to say, Yes-Wait-Yes, but she laughed again and was gone.

This was what’s known as a teachable moment, and although I missed the opportunity then, I’ll try to re-seize it now. First of all, you can and should drink wine with tofu! There’s wine for everything.

Bob & Dan, Petite Jacqueline, Tips

| Posted in People, General News, Under Construction

Today’s Portland Daily Sun includes an interview with the owners of Boda. They were asked “What one dish and one drink really define you?”

Bob’s signature dish is braised pork hock with star anise. It’s the only thing on the menu that is his alone. He carmelizes sugar in a pot, adding star anise, cinnamon, black pepper, garlic, galanga, fermented yellow bean paste and both dark and sweet soy sauces to give structure to the broth for the pork to simmer for hours on a back burner while the evening’s ingredients are prepped. It’s a dish he learned from his father, a building supplies salesman who loved to experiment in the kitchen.

an interview with Steve Corry on the new French bistro, Petite Jacqueline, he’s in the process of opening in Longfellow Square,

Corry plans to open Petite Jacqueline in the first or second week in March, he said. The concept of the new restaurant, Corry said, is “authentic French comfort food” with a “vivacious bistro atmosphere,” where customers can sit down for lunch or dinner.

and a piece on the potential changes to the law regarding tips before the Maine legislature,

Last week, this paper covered the issue before the legislature regarding changes to the “tipping” rules for restaurant employees in this state. I now know that at least one wary local was paying attention.

Profile of Haven’s Candy

| Posted in Profiles, People

The Maine Sunday Telegram has published profiles of Haven’s Candy,

“What I love about Haven’s is that we are 96 years old, and although we have expanded our size and scope, and adopted some technology, we still make candy by hand,” Charles said. “We are sticking to our roots. That’s the soul of the company.”

and its owner Andy Charles,

“I was in my early 40s and thought, if I don’t get busy with this, I’ll wake up in my 70s with regrets,” he said of his decision to purchase the company in 2001. “I had an ‘Aha!’ moment.”

Charles, now 53, said he bought Haven’s because he was impressed with the company’s rich legacy in Portland and reputation for high-quality products.

Gorgeous Gelato, Angela Landsbury and Going Vegan

| Posted in Cooking, People

Read the Soup to Nuts article in today’s Press Herald and learn about the connection between the TV show Murder, She Wrote and the opening of Gorgeous Gelato here in Portland.

Opening a gelato shop in Maine in December seems a little like opening a hot chocolate stand in Phoenix in July, when the average high is 105 degrees.

You really want to ask: “What were you thinking?”

Donato Giovine and Mariagrazia Zanardi, owners of the new Gorgeous Gelato shop at 434 Fore St., are happy to explain.

Today’s Food & Dining section also includes an article on an online service that helps people convert to a vegan diet.

Tony’s Donuts & Lobster Certification Controversy

| Posted in Profiles, Fisheries, People

For this week’s Maine at Work article reporter Ray Routhier makes donuts at Tony’s.

My first question was: When do I flip them? I was hoping for a specific answer, such as “in three minutes.” But I soon learned that Proulx, a 10-year veteran doughnut maker at Tony’s Donuts in Portland, didn’t have a lot of specific answers.

“When they’re done on one side,” was Proulx’s reply to my flipping question.

…and for a good laugh watch this 3-Minute Maine video produced by Down East about making donuts at Tony’s.

Also in today’s Press Herald is a report on the controversy surrounding efforts to get Maine’s lobster fishery certified as a sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council.

“To have somebody in England evaluating our product and our conservation and how we do things doesn’t really cut it,” said Sheila Dassatt, executive director of the Downeast Lobstermen’s Association, which represents about 300 lobstermen along the Maine coast.

Oakhurst Dairy, Who Owns Organic, Ending the Currant Ban, Overfishing Ends

| Posted in Fisheries, Farming, Profiles, People

Also in today’s paper were articles about Oakhurst Dairy and the Bennett family who have run the business since it started in 1921,

“We have been able to stave off being bought by maintaining a strong brand identity. People know what we do and what we stand for,” Oakhurst President and Chief Operating Officer William Bennett said during a tour this week of the Oakhurst production plant on Forest Avenue.

reports on the effort to repeal the ban on growing currants in Maine, and on organic programming at the Maine Agricultural Trades Show,

Lisa Fernandes of Cape Elizabeth, who leads the Portland Permaculture Meetup, is coordinating the effort to get an old Maine law banning Ribes plants repealed. The law was enacted decades ago in an effort to control white pine blister rust, a plant disease that requires both pines and Ribes plants to persist.

and on statements made by the former chief scientist of NOAA’s Fisheries Service that overfishing will end this year,

The projected end of overfishing comes during a turbulent fishing year that has seen New England fishermen switch to a radically new management system. But scientist Steve Murawski said that for the first time in written fishing history, which goes back to 1900, “As far as we know, we’ve hit the right levels, which is a milestone.”

Hayward’s Maine Fresh Seafood Pies & the Local RootZ Project

| Posted in Cooking, People

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald includes an interview with Fore Street’s chef Sam Hayward about his new line of Maine Fresh seafood pies,

“It took months of trials – mostly down here at Fore Street in my spare time, and also in my home – to come up with a format that worked for different seafoods, and we settled on four species that are harvested locally,” Hayward said. “So there are Maine shrimp, Maine scallops, Maine lobster and rock crab.”

and a profile of a Portland couple who have just finished a year of eating locally and blogging about it,

On the first day of the local eating adventure, Fuller and Madison showed this isn’t a deprivation diet. Their meals that day included a kale, onion, Gouda and goat cheese omelet with home fries for breakfast and a dinner of boiled lobster, roasted red beets and parsnips complemented by a wheat berry salad with delicata squash.

Chef Bob Smith, 49

| Posted in People

Members of the Portland and broader Maine food communities are mourning the loss of Bob Smith. The Locavore column in today’s Portland Daily Sun is a remembrance of Bob.

Generous, vivacious, energetic, hilarious; those words come quickly when people speak of Bob Smith.

“I see him in his white t-shirt with a flannel shirt over it, jeans and a pair of clogs, moving a million miles an hour. His goatee, perfectly parted hair and those signature eyebrows. Nobody had more passion for life than Bob had,” said Marc Doiron who worked with him at the Commissary, the lunch and dinner eatery at the Portland Public Market.

A Passages article on Bob appeared in today’s Press Herald,

“He was brilliant, funny, and had a huge heart,” Wright said. “Bob’s motto was, ‘Food is love,’ and there was more than enough of it wherever he was.”

Steven Gerlach, his friend for the past 31 years, remembered Mr. Smith on Monday as a “beautiful and joyous man” who had a deep appreciation for “beauty in the world.”

and the Maine Cheese Guild also posted a small notice about Bob this weekend,

This is a shock – a loss of one of our own…Terribly sad – such a sweet guy and wonderful cheesemaker.

Jack Rosen

| Posted in People

Jack Rosen passed away on Sunday. Rosen was a long-time fixture at Full Belly Deli working along with his son David who is the restaurant’s owner. Today’s Press Herald includes a Passages article on Rosen and an obituary.

His son said it was his father’s dream to open a deli. He said customers expected to see him there – even those who he insulted for ordering a sandwich wrong.

“It’s inappropriate to order corned beef or pastrami on white bead,” his son said. “He wouldn’t let them do it. He told them to order a different bread and they listened.”

Winter Markets & Terry Thiese

| Posted in General News, People

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald includes an article on Portland area winter farmers markets,

“As long as the (Monday) meeting goes well, we’ll be in the Irish Heritage Center starting Jan. 8,” said Lauren Pignatello of Swallowtail Farm, who is one of the coordinators of the Portland Winter Market and a vendor at the Brunswick Winter Market. “We’ll have lots of winter greens, root vegetables, cheese, yogurt, kefir, hard salami, pork, beef, chicken, lamb, rabbit, tempeh, bread, eggs, apples and flower bulbs.”

and an Appel on Wine column about wine guru Terry Thiese. Thiese will be in Portland Tuesday for a book signing with Rabelais and a sold out dinner at Bar Lola.

This is simultaneously the hardest and easiest column for me to write. Easy because it concerns Terry Theise, my personal wine hero (and writing hero, and life hero), and I have waited a long time for the opportunity to write publicly about him. Hard because the stakes are so high: if I fail to convince you to form a long-term relationship with Theise’s work, then I wonder why I speak about wine at all.