Category: Profiles

The Salt food blog from NPR has published an article about Maine Mead Works.

“Mead has the quintessential terroir,” says Alexander, 36, who began developing his mead in 2007 after becoming fascinated with its history as the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world. “You can get good honey anywhere, and it always has this sense of time and place.”

That idea resonates especially well in Maine, which has one of the strongest locavore movements in the U.S. Spend a little time in Portland, and you get the sense that every new food product on the market better be made with native Maine ingredients or no one’s buying.

Kate’s Homemade Butter was featured in a New York Times article that was published earlier this week.

Today, Kate’s produces more than a million pounds of butter a year, all from the same tiny garage. And last year, the company became the first large-scale bottler of a dairy product that has almost disappeared from American tables: real buttermilk, the creamy liquid that remains in the churn after the butter comes together.

Love & Lobster has published an interview with Grace.

L&L: We love your fun cocktail names and Maine-themed menu.  Does your menu change often?  Do you take special requests for rehearsal dinners and weddings as well?
GRACE: Our menu changes constantly. We try to utilize as many local ingredients as possible and work with farmers and other local purveyors in order to do so. We do have a lot of special requests, from signature cocktails to cakes in the shape of a stack of pancakes for one couple that got engaged over a special breakfast.

Kristin Thalheimer Bingham and Dean Bingham are the subject in an article in today’s Press Herald about how they balance between the work at the chocolate shop and their other jobs.

Kristin Thalheimer Bingham so easily moves from the role of textbook editor to fitness instructor to business coach that the notion of starting a chocolate shop with her husband, Dean Bingham, appeared almost effortless. Dean Bingham, a self-taught chocolatier and the name behind Dean’s Sweets, also works as an architect.

The Blue Hour has published a very nice set of photos taken at Tandem Coffee Roasters.

LiveWork Portland has published a profile of Tandem Coffee Roasters,

While Portland already has a wealth of high-quality local coffee shops, the trio noted that there weren’t many roasters focused on high-end wholesale coffee for the city’s restaurants, and they moved here early this spring with plans to establish their own roasting company in a year or two. But when a real estate broker showed them the mid-century brick industrial building on Anderson Street — a former office for a scrap metal recycling business — they decided to go for it, and open up a small retail coffee shop of their own in the light-filled corner room at the front of the building.

Check the LiveWork Portland blog later today for a profile of Tandem’s East Bayside neighbor Bunker Brewing.

Vrai-lean-uh has published a report of her visit to Spring Day Creamery.

[Owner] Sarah [Spring] makes both cow and goat milk cheeses, pasteurized and non-pasteurized, and gets her milk from a few different nearby Maine dairies. She produces mostly traditional French cheeses, with some forays and experiments. What struck me the most about her, and I think part of why I enjoyed our visit so much, was her palpable passion and enthusiasm and curiosity for the craft. You don’t make these cheeses accidentally: they are fussy and demanding and particular.