Category: Profiles

The Natural Foodie column in today’s Press Herald examines the regulatory challenges encountered by two farmers in setting up a prepared food cart at the Farmers’ Market. The collaborative venture is called Farmer’s Cart and appears at the weekly Wednesday markets.

When life gives you bruised potatoes, make homefries. Or potato salad.

This is what Simon Frost of Thirty Acre Farm in Whitefield and Daniel Price of Freedom Farm in Freedom are doing with their unsold and B-grade potatoes. The two farmers sell vegetables, meats and fermented foods each week at the Portland Farmers’ Market. A month ago, they launched the city’s first local food street vendor venture, aptly named the Farmer’s Cart.

This week’s edition of the Portland Phoenix includes an interview with Steve Corry, chef/owner of Five Fifty-Five.

As a chef in Portland, one of the challenges has been striking a balance between the local and tourist communities. “In trying to please those from afar, it’s hard to anticipate when and how to adjust the menu and still keep the savvy Portland community happy,” he said. A spike in culinary awareness in the city, thanks largely to national and local media attention as well as a thriving culinary-focused blogosphere, has increased expectations among patrons — local and visitor.

The Boston Globe has published a profile of Cinque Terre with a focus on the restaurant’s farm-to-table approach.

If local farmers can’t supply a vegetable he needs for his Northern Italian kitchen, Skawinski will likely grow it from Italian seed at the restaurant’s Grand View Farm in Greene. “If we could only raise citrus in Maine, we’d be set,’’ he says. “All the other produce, there’s a way.’’

The Portland Phoenix has published an interview with Rachels L’Osteria about their move in 2003 out of the Old Port and to Woodford Street.

“People thought we were crazy,” says Bob Butler, co-owner and front-of-the-house manager at Rachels L’Osteria. But moving out of the Old Port and into their current space at 496 Woodford Street was more of a dream come true for the couple. “This is what we’ve always thought of as our restaurant,” says Laura Butler. “It’s more personal for us and for our customers.”

The owners of Uffa made a similar move when they left Longfellow Square and moved to Westbrook and became The Frog and Turtle. Are there other examples out of restaurants that moved away from the peninsula?

Spicelines has posted a write-up on her recent visit to Rabelais Books.

Rabelais is a different sort of “clean, well-lighted” place: a tranquil but cheerful gathering spot for food-obsessed souls in a food-obsessed town. And what a location: It’s in Portland’s burgeoning East End, next door to Hugo’s (chef Rob Evans won the 2009 James Beard award for Best Chef Northeast) and within walking distance of half a dozen great restaurants, including Bresca, Duckfat and Fore Street. There’s something irresistible about a destination cookbook shop just a couple of blocks from the world’s best Belgian frites and Tahitian vanilla milkshakes.

Maine Mead Works was the focus of a video profile put together by the Channel 6 news team. You can see the piece online at the Blog About Beer website.

Today’s Portland Daily Sun includes a profile of the Captain Mowatt’s line of hot sauces which are produced here in Portland.

Jolly Roger is one of the 20-odd sauces from the Captain Mowatt line that Stevens brews up in his East End munitions factory. A former Casco Bay Line ferry captain, Stevens was introduced to the wild world of hot peppers during a stint in the Gulf of Mexico some 15 years ago. Upon his return to Maine, he found slim pickings in the heat department: only Frank’s Hot Sauce and Tabasco so he began mixing up his own sauces.

Captain Mowatt’s sauces and its owner Dan Stevens were also written up in the latest issue of Portland magazine (not available online).

The new issue of The Maine Switch includes a profile of Lucky Catch Lobster. Lucky Catch provides tourist with the opportunity to try out lobstering in Casco Bay.

That’s the way it works at Lucky Catch Cruises on Long Wharf in Portland. Make a reservation for the lobster boat tour and you’ll have the opportunity to pull lobster traps with the captain, complete with handling bait, measuring the catch, banding the claws and then taking your prize pounders with you when you leave.

My niece and nephew recently visited for the weekend, and when we took them aboard a Lucky Catch cruise with Captain Dave Laliberte and First Mate Brian Rapp it didn’t take long for expressions of awe to take over their faces. At one point we heard: “This is the best thing I’ve done in my whole life” from the soon-to-be 9-year-old.

The latest issue of Sherman’s Travel magazine profiles Portland calling it “a gutsy little city baits visitors with a second wave of pioneering chefs and a clutch of cool designers”. Fore Street, Hugo’s and Five Fifty-Five are all mentioned. The article also draws attention to what it calls “a second, equally compelling wave of smaller, less-polished restaurants”  Caiola’s, Paciarino, Bresca and Evangeline.