The Press Herald has published a bar review of The Jewel Box,
The Jewel Box is mellow and classy, but not in a fancy way. There are moments when you feel like you’ve stepped inside a Wes Anderson film, and others when you might be on the set of Mad Men. Either way, Nan’l Meiklejohn, a.k.a. “The Bearded Lady,” and his staff will see to it that you have a well-crafted cocktail, some light snacks and a whole lot of good service.
Maine Craft Distilling is having a soft opening for their new Freeport tasting room/mixology shop today.
Maine Craft Distilling-Freeport edition is now open for biz. We are calling it our “soft” opening and are sure there is much that we will need to improve upon but come on by and try us out!!! The gala grand opening will be in the new year.
The tasting room is located at 7 Mill Street.
The Golden Dish reports that Steve and Michelle Corry have leased 46 Market Street where they plan on opening a
casual restaurant serving French-inspired café salads, sandwiches, soups and wine throughout the day with breakfast, lunch and dinnertime service. The focus, however, will be on pastry, headed by a highly regarded local pastry chef, whose name was not, as yet, revealed. Count on Parisian-style espresso and coffee, killer croissants at breakfast and classic eclairs and Napoleons, French onion soup and salad Nicoise as part of a casual menu of light fare.
Lark Hotels has announced that chef Sam Talbot will be joining Lark to launch Pig + Poet, the restaurant at Whitehall, their new property in Camden which is slated to reopen this May.
Talbot was the Founding Executive Chef at Surf Lodge in Montauk and the Imperial No. Nine in NYC. He’s the author of The Sweet Life: Diabetes without Boundaries and was a semi-finalist and “Fan Favorite” on season 2 of Top Chef.
Here are some additional details on the restaurant from the Lark press release:
Focusing on Maine’s farmland, fisheries and game, the restaurant will feature a raw bar, signature roast pork dishes, Sam’s fresh take on lobster rolls, chowder and blueberry-sweet corn cobbler just to name few items. A charcuterie bar will offer sausages and cheese selections. The “poet” in the name is a nod to the chef’s role in the creative process, as well as a subtle wink to Edna St. Vincent Millay, a Pulitzer-prize winning poet who was discovered at Whitehall Inn in 1912.
“I’ve always loved the great outdoors and having a real connection to the food that comes out of my kitchen,” Chef Talbot said. “It’s become a bit of a cliche to say that my food is farm-to-fork, but that’s truly what it will be. Being in Camden is an inspiring opportunity for me to work with new local vendors, flavors and experiences. I have always been drawn to the water and waterfront towns and I’m excited to join the amazing food movement going on in the MidCoast, Portland and throughout Maine.”
Lark Hotels runs a several well regarded boutique inns including the Pomegranate Inn in Portland.
The Press Herald has published an interview with Shipyard co-owner Fred Forsley.
Q: From the business perspective, is it complicated?
A: It looks like a simple business, but it can be complicated in the sense of getting a brand to grow and to get more than an initial sampling. From day one, the product was world-class and that made it easier to sell. At the end of the day, sales and marketing is a key ingredient, but it’s the quality of the product.
The Golden Dish has a report on the as-yet-unnamed new seafood restaurant being developed on the Portland waterfront by Dana Street and Sam Hayward.
It hasn’t been named yet, but Street described it to me as a classic New England seafood house reminiscent of the way fish houses were in the early part of the 20th century as brasserie-style dining rooms. While he didn’t go into much detail about the menu, he offered this: It will resemble the simplicity of Fore Street’s straightforward approach, using the finest and freshest local ingredients. The focus will be on seafood but will also include steaks, chicken, lamb and pork done in the inimitable style of Hayward and his team of chefs. The food will be at once old-fashioned yet contemporary…
The New York Times published an article this week about the impact warming sea temperatures are having on cod and other fisheries in the Gulf of Maine.
In the vast gulf that arcs from Massachusetts’s shores to Canada’s Bay of Fundy, cod was once king. It paid for fishermen’s boats, fed their families and put their children through college. In one halcyon year in the mid-1980s, the codfish catch reached 25,000 tons.
Today, the cod population has collapsed. Last month, regulators effectively banned fishing for six months while they pondered what to do, and next year, fishermen will be allowed to catch just a quarter of what they could before the ban.
Today’s Press Herald includes an article about the Catbird Creamery in Westbrook.
“Vanilla in the summertime pretty much walks out the door,” said Corey DiGirolamo, who runs the shop with her husband, Andrew Warren.
That’s fine, DiGirolamo said, but the couple put a lot of effort into stretching the idea of ice cream flavors in a lot of different directions, like Furious George, which features caramelized bananas and dark chocolate chips. And, oh, hot pepper.
Catbird is in the midst of a $60,000 Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to raise money so they can move the business to new quarters.
The Golden Dish has put together a survey of Portland-area neighborhood markets: Fresh Approach, Smaha’s Legion Square Market, Pat’s Meat Market and Rosemont.
Neighborhood food shops are virtually a thing of the past, yet Portland has held onto a few. These neighborhood stores are not relics, rather they’re critical to their communities and where residents get the basics like meat, produce, groceries and even baked goods and avoid the hassle of congested supermarket lots or glacial waits at check-out lines.
For the past two and half months Damian Sansonetti, chef and co-owner of Piccolo and Blue Rooster, has been battling a significant illness. He’s now returned home from a long hospital stay. His wife and partner Ilma Lopez has asked me to post this letter to make the situation public and express the gratitude of the family for all the help they’ve received during this time.
Ten weeks ago, Isabella and I took Damian to the hospital. Finally this week, he returned home to Portland from Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. What has been a long, difficult and uncertain period for our family is finally coming full circle. Damian is home and beginning again to do what he loves to do more than anything in the world: eating food.
Due to the medical ambiguity and uncertain outcome of Damian’s condition, we have strived to keep the situation private. Thankfully, today we are able to publically acknowledge that, while much mending is to be done, Damian is well and will be returning to the kitchen soon. We would like to thank those that have worked in his stead and kept the restaurants running like clockwork. Luke Aberle, Kelly Nelson, Dan McCarthy, Randy Cruse, Jason Williams, Kim Rodgers – we owe you the world. Thank you–and for all the support we received from the community we are eternally grateful.
We hope to see you soon at Piccolo or Blue Rooster soon.
Ilma Lopez