The newest member of the Veranda Thai family of restaurants is under development in South Portland. Hana Thai will be located at 740 Broadway is the mall that is also home to the branch location of Two Fat Cats.
Hana Thai is owned by Than Pham, the younger brother of Hai Pham who opened the first Veranda Thai in Deering.
Than Pham is currently hiring staff and plans to open the 1800 sq ft Hana Thai in June.
A new coffee bar called All Those Who Wander (website, facebook, instagram) is under development at the corner of inner Washington and Marion Street. ATWW is one of several businesses located in the Black Box space including The Cheese Shop.
Owners John-Henry and Cynthia Mlyniec recently moved to Portland from Providence where they worked in the coffee industry. They will be sourcing their coffee for All Those Who Wander from Parlor Coffee in Brooklyn. The Mlyniecs hope to open sometime in June.
Urban Sugar/Eighty 8 Donut Cafe owner Kevin Sandes and his business partner David Gilbert are developing a new restaurant in Waterville called Money Cat Fried Chicken and Donuts. The restaurant will be located at 173 Main Street and is slated to open in summer 2018.
Gilbert and Sandes were culinary school classmates and are longtime friends.
“This is more than a business,” said Sandes. “It’s about building community, friendships, connections.” Added Gilbert: “This is a partnership that has grown out of friendship. Twenty years after culinary school and some pretty wild adventure travel, we’re reconnecting and bringing together these two concepts—that’s where the magic is.”
Gilbert was a 2013 Beard award semifinalist in the Best Chef: South West category. He has traveled through Asia and used those experiences to inform the cooking at his restaurant Tuk Tuk Taproom in Texas.
Sandes spent years as a hotel chef and in catering before launching Eighty 8 Donut Cafe (formerly Urban Sugar) first as a food truck and then as a brick-and-mortar location at Sugarloaf Mountain.
The pair selected the restaurant’s name to “reflect the restaurant’s Asian inspiration, abundance for Waterville, and good fortune for all”.
Yesterday’s report from Mainebiz on the 100-acre mixed use development off Brighton Ave in Westbrook reports that a business group run by famed chef Tom Colicchio will building out a “25,000-square-foot beer and food hall” on the site.
One of the features of the village area will be 25,000-square-foot beer and food hall, developed by the group run by celebrity chef Tom Colicchio. The hall will have 18 to 22 local and regional vendors, and a brew pub, but also a place where local breweries can showcase their beer. The second floor would be office incubator space, he said.
Update: Mainebiz has excised reference to Tom Colicchio from the article. The business involved in the project is Colicchio Consulting, which isn’t owned by Tom Colicchio.
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Here’s a look inside the construction site of Sagamore Hill (website, instagram), the new cocktail bar going in to the former lobby of the Lafayette Hotel at the corner of Park and Congress. Owner Ryan Deskins is planning to open the 58-seat lounge in late May. An additional 30+ seats are planned for the sidewalk. Sagamore references Teddy Roosevelt, the nation’s 26th president, as a touchstone for the bar’s name, interior design and cocktail menu.
The Press Herald reports that Shipyard is planning to completely renovate its facility on Hancock Street, retaining the brewery and tasting room but replacing the rest of the building. The new structures will include a 105-room brewery/hotel aka ‘brewtel’.
According to planning documents given to the city last month, the existing brick brewery building and tasting room would be renovated. But the rest of the buildings on the 2-acre site – including the bottling plant – would be demolished to make way for the 105-room hotel, a three-story residential building with nine units at Hancock and Newbury streets, a large office building and a four-story garage for 360 vehicles.
LB Kitchen (website, facebook, instagram) is opening a second location, in the West End. The new LB Kitchen will be housed in the former Outliers on York Street as part of an overall wellness center that focuses on alternative medicine and therapies.
LB Kitchen co-owners Lee Farrington and Bryna Gootkind are planning a very similar concept and menu to their first cafe. Folks who live in the neighborhood will be happy to hear that plan includes coffee service, something the neighborhood has felt the lack of since the departure of Omi’s.
Renovations of the building are slated to kick-off in the next couple weeks and the new LB Kitchen will open sometime in October or November.
Rosanna’s Ice Cream (website, facebook, instagram, twitter) has leased the former Salty Sally’s space at the intersection of Congress and Saint John Streets. Rosanna’s will be using 953 Congress as a production space, as well as a pick-up spot for the ice cream.
Owner Salli Wason shared on facebook that she’s continuing to search for a retail space to be a permanent home for Rosanna’s but that for the next year this will be a transitional space as the business continues to grow.
Standard Baking Co. has had a bakery cart built. It was stationed out in front of the bakery Sunday for an Earth Day collaboration with the Portland Gear Hub.
They haven’t decided yet on how they’ll use it this summer. I’m hoping for a roving bakery and coffee cart and bread delivery service. “I’ll have a pain au chocolat, small coffee, and 2 baguettes please.”
