Drink Up and Get Happy has posted a happy hour review of El Rayo.
El Rayo Scarborough is definitely a stand-out on Route One and is a great spot to catch a delicious drink without having to venture in town. Give it a chance if you live or work nearby, it’s worth the visit. They also have daily specials Sunday – Wednesday if you can’t make their happy hours or need something more substantial to accompany your drinks.
The Maine Sunday Telegram has reviewed Eve’s at the Garden.
Located on the second floor of the Portland Harbor Hotel, Eve’s at the Garden is a quiet, club-like space with a predictable hotel restaurant menu – and a penchant for over-embellished food. Skip the more complicated starters (such as “pickled beet salad with verjus vinaigrette, goat cheese, speck ham and broiled grapes”) and try a simple plate of creamy burrata. Then enjoy the flavorful stuffed Cornish hen served with polenta. And definitely ask about dessert: There’s a revolving list of specials and the maple panna cotta introduced by the executive chef is a sweet, ethereal standout.
Happy hour specialists, Drink Up and Get Happy have posted a review of Vignola.
Overall we had a great time at Vignola Cinque Terre despite the short amount of time. We all managed to fit in a couple of glasses of wine, eat, and hang out. Matthew was fun and talked with us about wine and happy hours in general…Vignola is definitely a great place to meet for drinks with family or a date. Show up for the wine, stay for dinner. It’s a Portland experience that should not be missed.
The Press Herald has reviewed Big Sky.
The egg salad has just the right balance of tarragon, enough to scent it but not overwhelm. Big Sky doesn’t go overboard on the mayonnaise either, so what you get is the sense of say, a good deviled egg stuffed into a sandwich instead of yellow mayonnaisey glop. It comes on wheat bread unless you ask otherwise, with lettuce and tomato (not too bad for out of season) and sprouts. If you like egg salad – it’s one of those foods people run very hot or cold on – Big Sky’s is delicious.
Portland tops the Daily Meal list of Best American Cities for Food.
If Portland (the other Portland) doesn’t immediately make you think of food, you might need to rethink your assumptions. Recently included on Condé Nast Traveler’s list of Best American Cities for Foodies, Portland has come a long way from the lobster roll (though you can still find those, too). The city is currently offering up some of the country’s best and most innovative seafood.
The Maine Sunday Telegram has reviewed the Miss Portland Diner.
The Miss Portland Diner serves all you’d expect at a classic hash house, from scrambled eggs and pancakes to sandwiches and burgers. Ask for a booth in the restored 1949 lunch wagon, and try a traditional Reuben. Stacked with sliced corned beef, sauerkraut, melted Swiss and Thousand Island dressing, it’s a paean to all things deli. Burgers here are good, but sides are even better: ultra-bright and crispy coleslaw, thick-cut potato chips and sweet potato fries with a welcome snap. Definitely try dessert from one of the countertop cake stands. A single slice of homemade whoopie pie cake (a riff on Maine’s official state treat) is weighty and rich, with frosting enough for four.
The Golden Dish has reviewed DiMillo’s.
The entrée menu is hardly ground-breaking, and all one can hope for is for it to be wholesome and tasty. Of the two local haddock dishes, I chose the more complicated one instead of the simpler broiled haddock with bread crumbs. I figured, try the more complex version. So out came a giant piece of haddock stuffed with butternut squash and cornbread covered in a maple-cream sauce. It was so sweet it could have doubled as dessert. The baked potato was served without butter, and the little tub of sour cream with chopped scallions helped to moisten the dry flesh. With it were the predictable spears of broccoli, slightly overdone.
Map & Menu have reviewed the new East Ender.
It turns out that all of our worrying was for naught because now that we’ve tried Karl Deuben & Bill Leavy’s reincarnation of the East Ender on our favorite block of Middle Street (read: one of the most delicious blocks in all of Portland), we realized that it’s not the truck that made the meal, but the chefs behind the grill.
The Portland Phoenix restaurant critic Brian Duff has reviewed Sur Lie.
Sur Lie calls their very first category “to settle” and their dessert category “closure” (the latter features a pair of fantastic fresh donuts, with a tart blueberry filling). But the power of a well-designed list is to trigger what anthropologists call the seeking instinct — rooted in our brain’s most robust neurocircuitry — which never settles nor reaches closure. It’s what drives us through the Internet, click by click, and the rest of life, too. Sur lie’s best innovation might be making small plate dining seem affordable and accessible, but still intriguing and ambitious. It will leave you seeking another chance to visit.
This week’s edition also includes a visit to Lolita with Petite Jacqueline’s chef Fred Eliot.
A.C.: Now that you’re back on marrow, what makes this version special?
It’s super rich, but not an enormous portion. After a long day at work I like to have something that’s not too big because I want to go to bed. But I do like something rich like this or ramen noodles. What’s really cool here is they do it over the fire, so it adds this smokey flavor to it. It’s nothing intense but it’s woody. It’s messy, interactive. It gets everywhere. You need a lot of bread.
James Beard Foundation has announced the final nominees for this year’s awards competition. Of the 10 Maine-based semi-finalists announced in February, 4 are final nominees:
The award winners will be announced May 4th at the Lyric Opera in Chicago at the JBF Awards Gala hosted by Alton Brown.
Update: Both the Press Herald and Bangor Daily News have published reports on the award nominees.