Category: Profiles

Steve and Renee’s Diner

| Posted in People, Profiles

The Portland Daily Sun has published a profile of Steve and Renee’s Diner.

Renee was having trouble getting into the interview because she saw that my breakfast was getting cold. We had to take a break so I could finish eating, then things were fine. She cared. Just couldn’t get away from it.

Therein lies the tale. At Steve & Renee’s Diner it’s all about people. Has been for the twenty-nine years they’ve been in business. “Just don’t call us a restaurant,” she said, “there’s restaurants all over the place. We’re a diner, like the ones that used to exist in Portland. When people come in here they’re family.”

Three Buoys Seafood Shanty

| Posted in People, Profiles

The Munjoy Hill News has published a report on the Three Buoys Seafood Shanty and Grille which opened earlier this week on Cumberland Ave.

The two business partners behind 3 Buoys are former Legal Seafood officials.  Bill Park, chef/owner, directed the test kitchen for it.  “I got tired of being a number,” Park said recently.  Legal Seafood has 30 restaurants between Boston and Florida.  Although they do have growth in mind, the first and highly successful 3 Buoys in York will always be the flagship restaurant for Park.  Currently, he’s looking for the right chef to step into his shoes here so Park can return to the larger York restaurant.  The other business partner is Bill Holler, formerly vp of purchasing at Legal Seafood, Boston, with his wife Nikole.  She’s  former employee in the seafood business and is the operations manager at 3 Buoys.  Nikole is looking for a few good servers, to fill out the staff.  Currently Katie Haggerty is doing that job.

Jeremy Sossei Interview & Dean’s Sweets

| Posted in People, Profiles

Dispatch has published an interview with one of my favorite Portland bartenders, Jeremy Sossei at Boda,

Because you were a novice until three years ago, did you find yourself researching drinking history like a mad man?
Oh God, yeah. Absolutely. I still am. I also went around to different bars and tried to watch and see how people made things. I was never much of a cocktail drinker before this job and honestly I don’t drink a lot of cocktails still right now. This job has kind of spoiled me in that I just developed a taste for hard liquor and it’s hard to go back once you get used to it.

and a profile of Dean’s Sweets.

As [owner Dean] Bingham humbly began recounting his journey in chocolate-making, his wife chimed in. “You were making some chocolate truffles and your friends all said ‘You should sell these!’”

“And I tell people that I foolishly believed them!” Bingham playfully countered.

Eatocracy @ The Holy Donut

| Posted in Profiles

Eatocracy has published an article about The Holy Donut.

“I’m trying to convince myself it’s not a sin to eat donuts,” says regular Nathan Hagelin as he takes the first bite of the shop’s seasonal apple cider flavor.

“Everybody wants it. They think they can’t have it, but we tell them they can,” says owner Leigh Kellis. Traditionally the poster child of unhealthy treats, donuts here are made with all natural colors and flavors, local Maine ingredients and no preservatives.

Boston Globe: The Holy Donut & 2 Dark Beers

| Posted in Beer, Profiles

The Boston Globe has published a profile of The Holy Donut,

This is a typical Saturday morning for the 5-month-old shop in Portland’s Deering Oaks neighborhood, even though Kellis and her staff, several of whom are family members (she co-owns the business with her father, Allen), have continuously ramped up production since they opened. Nowadays, they turn out roughly 1,200 doughnuts a day in at least a dozen different flavors: plain wide rings dredged with cinnamon-sugar or dripping with maple, lemon, vanilla, or “mojito” lime glaze; sweet potato doughnuts laced with ginger; best-selling dark-chocolate doughnuts flecked with coarse sea salt.

and has highlighted a pair of dark beers from Maine Beer Co. and Peaks,

Thick pine and citrus flavors hit your tongue first, but they’re balanced by a smoky backbone. There’s sweet caramel in here, too, but the hops never go away. They remind you of their presence from start to finish. This is a truly exceptional beer.

Off-Peninsula Coffee

| Posted in Profiles

Bourbon. Portland. Beer. Politics. has published a list of coffee shops and cafes off the Portland peninsula.

With coffee shops and cafes like Arabica, Crema, Speckled Ax, Tandem Coffee Roasters, and Bard, the peninsula has no shortage of great coffee and places to enjoy it at. If you are like me, though, you regularly find yourself traveling around off peninsula in the Greater Portland Area and less than knowledgeable about where to grab a cup of coffee.

Portland Beer Week & VitaminSea

| Posted in Beer, Profiles

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald includes an article about Portland Beer Week. Portland Beer Week is is taking place November 4-11.

The inaugural year of beer week was well received, but in a lot of ways, beer lovers say, it was kind of like Restaurant Week with beer as an add-on. This year Stevens, who owns The Thirsty Pig on Exchange Street, and her fellow beer geeks have structured an impressive line-up that is overflowing with nearly 60 events. And they did it all in barely two months.

Also in today’s paper is a profile of VitaminSea, a company that sells energy bars and other products that are made with seaweed.

Right now, company founders Tom and Kelly Roth have reached capacity with the number of SeaCrunch bars they can make in the licensed commercial kitchen in their Buxton home. They’re currently churning out about 1,000 bars a week of the mixture made from almonds, sesame seeds, dried cranberries, kelp and maple syrup. Yet, sales of the bars keep growing and the company plans to introduce two new flavors in the coming weeks, Blueberry (with dried blueberries and dark chocolate) and S’mores (with milk chocolate and marshmallows).

Frosty’s Donuts Profile

| Posted in Profiles

The Portland Daily Sun has published an article about the new Frosty’s Donuts located in South Portland.

The selection isn’t huge nor is the dining room large. The drink menu is simple and straightforward and has no call for a seasoned barista to steam or spoon elaborately prepared hot beverages. The precision branding clings to the past on all signage and marketing materials, with a feel-good retro font proudly pointing out that Frosty’s Donuts has been providing Maine with famous, hand-cut donuts since 1965. Since then, the path that led to the recent opening of the third Frosty’s Donuts just over the bridge in South Portland is made up of the stuff we Mainer’s love.

Cousins Maine Lobster

| Posted in Profiles

Mainebiz has published a report on Cousins Maine Lobster, a West Coast lobster food truck run by Jim Tselikis and Sabin Lomac who hail from Cape Elizabeth. The cousins recently appeared on the ABC venture capital TV show Shark Tank and were successful in getting financed by Barbara Corcoran.

To that end, the duo appeared last week on the ABC reality show “Shark Tank,” where entrepreneurs pitch their business and seek capital from a board of seasoned and well-heeled investors, including the likes of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and real estate magnate Barbara Corcoran.

Tselikis and Lomac’s long-term plans include a food truck in Portland.

With strong roots in Portland, Tselikis says he and Lomac have talked about expanding back to their home turf, but not in the near future.

“It’s a saturated market, which is why we didn’t start here, so it’s not on the 2013 schedule, but you’ve got to be where you came from eventually,” says Tselikis.