Interview with Love Cupcakes

From Away has published an interview with Amy Alward, co-owner of Love Cupcakes.

5. Do you plan to try and transition your truck to a more traditional restaurant someday?
We recently finished construction on the second floor in the Public Market House in Monument Square of a food stall that looks like our food truck. You can find us there Tuesday through Sunday. It is where we bake our cupcakes these days. We will also be offering savory sliders from the market house, which we’ve started selling at the truck out on Outer Congress at the Portland Racket and Fitness Center.

This Week’s Events: Restaurant Impossible, Portland Brew Festival, Labor of Love Dinner, Maine Seaweed Festival

Wednesday — the Food TV Network is airing the episode of Restaurant Impossible filmed at Andy’s Diner in South Portland, The Salt Exchange is holding a wine dinner, and the Monument Square Farmers Market are taking place.

Thursday — there will be a wine and cheese tasting at the Public Market House.

Friday — it’s the first day of the 4th Annual Portland Brew Festival.

Saturday — it’s the last day of the 4th Annual Portland Brew Festival, Vinland is serving the Labor of Love Tasting Dinner, and the Deering Oaks Farmers Market is taking place.

Sunday — the inaugural Maine Seaweed Festival is taking place at SMCC.

For more information on these and other upcoming food happenings in the area, visit the event calendar.

If you are holding a food event this week that’s not listed above, publicize it by adding it as a comment to this post.

Review of Duckfat

The Maine Sunday Telegram has reviewed Duckfat.

I find the fried onions, pork belly and ham (which Ben recently delivered here), delectable eaten straight up with my fingers, while Ben cuts the Sorella’s Bakehouse brioche rolls in half to fill with various combos of ham and fried onions or duck terrine and pickles. His works of art look like the perfect highbrow sandwich, though still providing lowbrow delight.

Review of J’s Oyster Bar

Peter Peter Portland Eater has reviewed J’s Oyster Bar.

J’s has the distinction of being one of the finest dives in Portland – a place where moderately low class and culinary arts class intersect to make a burping, bubbling cauldron of absolute awesome that is as entertaining as it is delicious. Everything about the restaurant says “party like is 1983 and feel free to drink like it’s the prohibition.”

Blue Spoon

Eat Maine has posted a profile of Blue Spoon.

When Iovino opened the doors in 2004, he envisioned a neighborhood meeting place, which is exactly what Blue Spoon has become, especially during its wildly popular version of happy hour, simply called “wine time.” The bistro burger, made with lean ground steak in a Burgundy reduction and topped with caramelized onions, garners an almost cult-like following throughout the city. ­­

Immigrant Kitchens: Russian Beef Tongue

In the latest entry from Immigrant Kitchens, Lindsay Sterling learns how to make Russian Beef Tongue from Yulia Converse and Alla Zagoruyko (read the story, get the recipe and see the photos).

Most animal parts come so deconstructed from the whole that I don’t think of animals at all when I’m cooking. Steak tips are steak tips. Hamburgers are hamburgers. This is perhaps how I’ve lived as a meat eater, in a kind of denial: I’m not eating animals, I’m eating meat. But recently I came face to face with an animal part that threatened my usual delusion. At a recent family reunion, my brother-in-law, Tom, gave me a gift from Vermont: the tongue of his young grass-fed, organic heifer.