Category: Under Construction

The North Point has published a set of photos of their newly completed interior. They began interviewing potential new staff over the weekend and hope to open in mid-February.

Chef Chris Gould is making progress on the new Portland restaurant he has under development and is aiming for a July 1 opening day. Gould tells me he’s very close to signing a deal for a location in the Old Port. In the meantime he’s spending time lining up contractors, suppliers and key staff so the work of building and fitting out the restaurant can get off to a fast start once the space is secured.

Gould plans on serving a menu of international small plates that will in part draw on his interest in Spanish cuisine. 44 North will be creating a custom blend for the coffee service. The name for the restaurant is still under wraps. Might & Main, the folks who developed the branding for Eventide, have been hired to handle marketing for the restaurant.

Gould is currently working at Eventide with his friend and former colleague chef Andrew Taylor. He moved to Portland last year from Boston where he worked for Ken Orringer’s restaurants Uni and Coppa.

He was the winner of the 2012 Shucks Maine Lobster Chef World Series with a dish of “butter-poached lobster with ragout of sauteed knuckles, roasted fingerling potatoes, cinnamon-roasted carrots, roasted corn and sweet miso puree, and piquillo pepper”.

A new shop called Cia is under construction at 72 Ocean Street in South Portland. Cia will be selling Coffee, Ice cream and Art, hence the name. They plan on opening this spring.

Eater Maine and Maine a la Carte posted reports today about two Damian Sansonetti projects:

• Taco Escobarr – Sansonneti is working with owner Tom Barr to revamp the menu “trying to bring in more bold flavor to (Taco Escobarr), almost a little more street food…We’re trying to give it a little bit more of a deeper soul”.
• Blue Rooster Food Co. is the official name (or not depending which article you read) of the restaurant Sansonetti and partners (including Barr) have under construction at 5 Dana Street.

The Insurance Guy Beer Blog has put together an interesting list of all the breweries he knows of that are under development in Maine—20 in all.

In the Portland area, in addition to In’finiti, he also lists Austin Street Brewery, Bissel Brothers Brewery and Brasserie Ici.

Bob and Laura Butler, former owners of Rachel’s, plan on opening a new restaurant called Enio’s at 347 Cottage Rd in South Portland. The restaurant will serve Mediterranean cuisine. The Butlers are aiming to open in March.

Rachel’s was originally located on Exhange Street. In 2003 the Butler’s moved the restaurant to Woodford Street to the space currently occupied by  JP’s Bistro.

Update: The Forecaster has published an article about the closing of the Buttered Biscuit and the plans for Enio’s.

The Chinese Laundry has announced that they’re targeting February 20 for an opening date. You can see a draft menu on their Facebook page.

Zapoteca owners Tom and Shannon Bard are opening a second restaurant in Durham, NH. The new restaurant will be called Mixteca Taqueria Y Cantina is slated to open in early March.

The Bards are also tell me that they’re searching for the right property in the Portland area to open a third restaurant with a different concept sometime this fall.

This week’s edition of the Portland Phoenix features a behind the scenes look at the new 5,000 square foot space being developed in East Bayside by Eli Cayer, owner of Urban Farm Fermentory.

Exploding out of the mind of Portland idea-man Eli Cayer, 39, and with financial backing from his Urban Farm Fermentory, is the conversion of a former East Bayside taxi garage into a home for food processors and preparers right on the Portland peninsula.

With his eye ever fixed on the Next Big Thing for the Forest City (he’s had his hand in everything from public transit to community engagement to booze), Cayer is not only projecting the February 1 opening of the yet-to-be-named new space, which will house an expanded space for Bomb Diggity Bakery and an all-natural fruit-popsicle maker — he has also offered the Portland Phoenix a behind-the-scenes look at how ideas like this one arise, develop, change, adapt, get wrecked, get salvaged, and ultimately, if the stars align, actually happen.

Allagash Brewing has leased 70,000 square feet of space to expand the brewery’s warehouse and distribution space.