The Golden Dish has published a review of the new Sebago Brewing location on Fore Street.
Yet it also offers Portland diners a much needed option: a casual dining spot with decent, moderately price food in a space that is modern, light and uplifting. None of this changes the fact, however, that the chain’s standard menu items that rely on phrases like “piled high” and “heaping” which are very accurate descriptions indeed.
John Golden’s food blog also recently posted a profile of Gingko Blue.
The Portland Daily Sun has published an article about Mark’s Hot Dogs and the food cart’s longtime owner Mark Gatti.
The entrepreneurial spirit and history of the cart began when Mark was fresh out of college. He did a brief stint setting appointments for insurance sales, a high pressure job he was good at, but “hated” and struggled to make money doing a variety of different temp assignments. He reminisces, “I was pushing a broom after a really long and difficult day doing manual labor, making the going minimum wage rate of $3.35 an hour. It was the early ’80s and I had just moved back to Maine from Colorado and had seen a few vendor street carts in my travels. The idea set in and I worked fast to get it going. I knew I had to sell a lot of hot dogs.”
Mark is celebrating his 28 year anniversary this Monday. Mark’s can be found nearly every day at the intersection of Middle and Exchange Streets in front of Tommy’s Park.
The Maine Foodie Tours blog has posted a article about Vervacious.
I was most intrigued by her Basque Piri-Piri Table sauce and Harissa spice blends. Piri-Piri and Harissa are both blends of spices that can vary widely depending on the region of the world. Vervacious’ Piri-Piri is spicy, but light, a well-balanced blend of vinegar and chilies.
The new issue of Maine Ahead magazine includes a profile of Oakhurst Dairy,
“It’s a competitive market, and we’re very fortunate to be in our 90th year and still own the business,” he says. “My grandfather started it back in 1921, with the help of the Cushman family, who ran Cushman’s Bakery. They helped put up the money so that he could buy a small dairy down the street. Back then there were probably 50 dairies in Portland. If you had a farm, you had a dairy.”
and a profile of Gelato Fiasco,
Top-quality gelato, the Italian cousin of ice cream made with milk rather than cream, was, of course, the first step. Some gelaterias simply use powdered flavors and bases, add milk, and freeze. At The Gelato Fiasco, Tropeano, a 28-year-old raised in Brookfield, Connecticut, oversees a truly-from-scratch process in the tiny kitchen, cooking the base ingredients in a “hot” process that makes a smoother, more stable base than powdered mixes. The crew then adds flavor—nearly 700 since 2007, with 30 available every day—using real fruits, nuts, liquor, candy, and so on.
Today’s Portland Daily Sun includes a profile of Coastal Maine Popcorn on Exchange Street.
Offering off-beat flavors from root beer and toffee to wasabi soy and buffalo wing, Coastal Maine Popcorn Co. offers over 60 varieties of flavored popcorn both sweet and savory.
“It’s a cross between an ice cream and Jelly Belly jelly beans,” said Paul Roberts, who along with his wife, Julie, owns Coastal Maine Popcorn Co.
Today’s Portland Daily Sun profiled Deux Cochon and its owner Adam Alfter,
“I love pickled pig’s feet, they are so good, but people are kind of scared of them,” said Adam Alfter, owner of the Public Market House’s newest BBQ joint, Deux Cochon.
“Probably about three people will eat it and I’ll eat the rest of them, but I’m cool with that, because those three people get to know what it’s like,” said Alfter.
reported on the upcoming return of the Groceria Cafe (aka Cafe at Pat’s),
“I had leased it for the last five years, and now I have it back with Greg Gilman, who is the original chef who built it with me. He’s coming back. Everybody’s excited,” [Jaime] Vacchiano said.
The cafe won rave reviews in local media, and one patron who dined at the cafe in its early years said Gilman’s return is great news.
and spread the word about Broke 207’s call for more affordable restaurants and the PFM Top 10 List.
Vincent Maniaci and Jill Dutton, owners of The Cheese Iron, were interviewed for a Boston Globe article that profiled the top cheese shops in New England.
“We like to talk cheese and geek out about cheese,’’ says Vincent Maniaci, who with his wife, Jill Dutton, opened this pine-paneled gourmet food, wine, and cheese emporium in 2007, just an olive’s throw from downtown Portland. “We have about 130 cheeses at any given time, about 50 percent from New England and 50 percent international,’’ says Maniaci, who learned cheesemongering at Formaggio in Cambridge.
The Portland Daily Sun has published a profile of Pat’s Meat Market.
In the era of “Big Joe” Vacchiano, Jaime’s great-grandfather who immigrated to Portland from Italy and started a butcher’s shop at the base of Munjoy Hill, there was a meat market in every neighborhood. Over time, Pat’s Meat Market held on while others vanished. Jaime Vacchiano said the business pressures are demanding, yielding little in profit, which may explain the scarcity of private butcher shops today. He also theorized that a 24/7 world is inhospitable to an old-fashioned family business built on quality over expediency.
The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald includes a profile of Dobra Tea. Dobra is located on Middle Street in the same building as Bull Moose and Videoport.
Walking into Dobra Tea feels like stumbling upon an eastern European cafe.
The arched windows, the warm mustard and burnt-orange walls, and the curvy woodworking details that look like something out of the genie’s bottle all shift your mood from rat-race mode to a lower-gear humming with old-world Bohemian tranquility.
Today’s paper also includes an update on the Urban Farm Fermentory. Among the many projects underway now is an experiment with Tilapia farming.
Under the glow of special lights, tomato plants and basil grow fast and lush. This unusual indoor garden sits atop two fish tanks where six freshwater tilapia swim, and the nutrient-rich water from the tanks is circulated through the hydroponic system feeding the plants’ roots.
Down East has published a profile of Figa and chef/owner Lee Farrington.
Lee Farrington was just six when she began to understand the alchemical power of an open flame. “My earliest recollection is coring a tomato, dropping it in boiling water, and watching the peel come off,” says Farrington, who first learned to cook in her grandmother Mary’s Kentucky kitchen.