Category: People

Interview with Claire Stretch

| Posted in People, Uncategorized

Tuesday’s Portland Daily Sun included an interview with Claire Stretch, bartender at The Back Bay Grill,

What’s Underrated: Bubbly, like champagne, Prosecco, brut. Maine is number 50 in sales of bubbly, at the very bottom. Fresh squeezed juice isn’t used enough either.

and article that gathered opinions from diners restaurateurs and restaurant workers on this year’s Maine Restaurant Week.

Martha Bryon, co-owner of The Salt Exchange, has been very pleased so far. “It’s absolutely amazing. About half of the people who come in are for restaurant week and they’ve been very enthusiastic about making reservations. The experience has been beautiful, particularly coming off of a very hard winter. “

Interview with Declan McGough

| Posted in General News, People

Friday’s Portland Daily Sun included an interview with Declan McGough, the sous chef at Blue Spoon,

What’s missing from the Portland restaurant scene: My dad works on the waterfront and I know how much seafood comes across so I’m surprised that there aren’t more exclusively seafood restaurants, like cevicherias.

and a look at some of late night dining options in the city.

Interviews with Pete Sueltenfuss & Nicholas Nappi

| Posted in People

The Portland Daily Sun has continued its restaurant worker interview series. Wednesday’s paper included an interview with Pete Sueltenfuss, a line cook at Fore Street,

What’s missing from the Portland restaurant scene: Late-night dining. This town rolls up its sidewalks at 11. There’s a need and desire to have a place that serves until 1. There are lots of restaurant folks in this town and there’s nowhere to eat when we get out of work.

and Thursday paper included an interview with Nicholas Nappi, the Chef de Cuisine at Local 188,

What’s missing from the Portland restaurant scene: Chinese food that hasn’t been Americanized. We joke that Portland ought to put a moratorium on Thai restaurants until we got one good dim sum place.

Interviews with Pete Sueltenfuss & Nicholas Nappi

| Posted in People

The Portland Daily Sun has continued its restaurant worker interview series. Wednesday’s paper included an interview with Pete Sueltenfuss, a line cook at Fore Street,

What’s missing from the Portland restaurant scene: Late-night dining. This town rolls up its sidewalks at 11. There’s a need and desire to have a place that serves until 1. There are lots of restaurant folks in this town and there’s nowhere to eat when we get out of work.

and Thursday paper included an interview with Nicholas Nappi, the Chef de Cuisine at Local 188,

What’s missing from the Portland restaurant scene: Chinese food that hasn’t been Americanized. We joke that Portland ought to put a moratorium on Thai restaurants until we got one good dim sum place.

An Interview with Erik Desjarlais

| Posted in People

Find Eat Drink has published an interview with Erik Desjarlais, chef/owner of Evangeline.

What is your least favorite new culinary trend and why?
I dislike the fact that there are culinary trends. Food is food. I don’t think food is fashion. Fashion goes out of style, food shouldn’t. Nose to Tail cooking is not a trend. It has been going on for centuries. But since it is now mainstream to eat offal, it is a trend. I guess I’m thankful that it has become mainstream because I love to cook with offal. In 2003, very few would even consider eating pig tails, head cheese, blood sausage, tongue or brain. Or even pork belly! I was scoffed at for having them on my menu. People would come storming in to my restaurant screaming at me for having offal and extremities, saying “Who would eat brains????” My only answer was, “Well, probably your great grandmother.”

Beer 30, Bar Lola Interviews and Food Snobs

| Posted in General News, People

Today’s Portland Daily Sun includes an interview with Josh Peck and Sue Taylor, the sous chef and pastry chef at Bar Lola. Here’s Peck’s response to the question What’s missing from the Portland restaurant scene?

A butcher shop similar to the one Barbara Lynch has in Boston where you can get rillade, pate and various salamis. We could also use a good raw bar that showcases the 15 to 20 types of oysters that you can get here in Maine.

In her weekly Locavore column Margo Mallar answers the question “what do you do if you’re a third shifter and beer thirty comes at 7 in the morning?”

It’s a funny co-existence, sort of like the shift change in the old Warner Brother cartoons. It seems a little odd to be drinking so early. But with an inverted circadian rhythm it’s not early at all … it only seems that way to those who get up with the bread, the bagels and the muffins freshly made by people they never see unless they start their day with a little breakfast at Ruski ‘s.

And columnist Bob Higgins admits to being a very bad restaurant customer and his own brand of food snob.

Hannaford: Super Market for Star Chefs

| Posted in People

A couple years ago when Jonathan Levitt introduced Boston Globe readers to Bresca (see A Chef’s Vision Becomes a Tiny Treasure of a Restaurant), he explained that “Because Bresca is so small, Kern can pick up a lot of her own groceries. She buys locally, from farmers, fish markets, and supermarkets. This morning her first stop is Hannaford’s.”
And recently when the Maine magazine published an article—also by Levitt—about Rob Evans from Hugo’s, I read that the James Beard Award winner also sources some of his raw ingredients at Hannaford: pommegranates, offal, pumpkin seeds, etc.
It makes me wonder if I were to hang out in the Hannaford produce section one morning would I see a parade of Portland’s culinary notables streaming through. Are these two outliers or would I see Corry, Hayward, Villani, Matthews, Desjarlais, Hernandez, Harmon, and others  shopping trips for the night’s menu?