Under Construction: Ebb & Flow, Golden Lotus

| Posted in Under Construction

The liquor license application for a pair of new restaurants are scheduled for Monday’s City Council meeting:

  • Ebb & Flow (facebook, twitter) is a Mediterranean seafood restaurant under construction at 100 Commercial Street—former home of Spread, Gaucho’s, Oolong. As reported last month, the restaurant is a collaboration between Nova Seafood owner Angelo Ciocca and chef William D’Auvray. An extensive draft menu for Ebb & Flow was supplied with the application (starts on page 31).
  • Golden Lotus is a new Asian restaurant that will be taking over the spot at 511 Congress Street which currently is the home of Shanghai Tokyo. Chef/owner Joe Tang has 30 years of restaurant experience, mostly in NH. For several years he was part of the staff at Wok Inn before joining the kitchen staff at Empire Chinese Kitchen. A hand-written draft menu (page 69) was supplied with the application.

Review of Becky’s

| Posted in Reviews

Living, Eating and Aging has reviewed Becky’s.

…For food, your basic breakfast is as good as any basic breakfast in town, better than many.  The menu contains all the essentials – eggs, bacon, pancakes, fresh fruit, etc. and not one word on the page is in French. I’m sure many respected foodies might now question my foodie bona fides but I’m gonna just throw it out there: it’s 6:30AM and I’m hungry, I’m going to Becky’s.

Review of Scarborough El Rayo

| Posted in Reviews

The Golden Dish has published a review of the Scarborough El Rayo.

The salsa was made from fire-roasted tomatoes, giving it a rich burnished taste.  The chips were made  from Tortilleria Pachanga tortillas, the local artisanal provider from Bayside.  Also impressive was the restaurant’s listing on the back of the menu of local purveyors, something that you don’t often see on the typical Mexican menu here.

Marshall Wharf Seaweed Brew

| Posted in Beer

NPR has aired a report on Marshall Wharf’s brewing of Sea Belt, a beer that uses Maine sugar kelp as one of its key ingredients.

At Marshall Wharf Brewing Co. on the Belfast, Maine, waterfront, new beers begin their journey into draft lines and pint glasses inside two large tanks. Marshall Wharf has a reputation for making some unconventional beers — a stout with locally sourced oysters, for example, and a wheat-infused kolsch with jalapeno and habanero peppers. A few years ago, David Carlson, the brewing company’s owner, discovered a beer from Scotland, called Kelpie, made with seaweed.

“If there’s seaweed in Maine and it’s a good product,” he says, “why not try putting it in the beer?”

Tasting Table: Portland City Guide

| Posted in Reviews

tastingtableTasting Table has assembled an eating and drinking guide to Portland.

It might not have the cachet of a New York or Chicago, but Portland, Maine has quietly emerged as one of the country’s most progressive dining cities. Farm-to-table is a given here; chefs in this oceanside town savor access to regionally caught fish as well as sustainably raised meat and local produce. Wrestling for attention is the area’s vibrant drinking scene, which spotlights equally local beers and spirits. And it almost goes without saying, but bears repeating: Portland’s lobster rolls simply cannot be beat.

Highlighted are: Bite into Maine, Central Provisions, Duckfat, Empire, Eventide, Fore Street, Great Lost Bear, Hugo’s, Hunt & Alpine, In’finiti, K. Horton’s, Local 188, Lolita, Novare Res, Portland Lobster Company, Salt Cellar, Slab, Standard Baking, Street & Company, Sweetgrass, Vervacious.

Single Item Store Viability

| Posted in General News

In the wake of the high profile bankruptcy of the Crumb cupcake chain in NYC, the Press Herald takes a look at the risks and opportunities associated with running a business focused on a single product type.

“I quit my job, opened a jerky store and people told me I was out of my mind,” DiBenedetto recalled in a phone interview from his business in North Conway, N.H.

But his North Conway House of Jerky store did so well that, five weeks ago, he and some business partners opened a new shop on Exchange Street called the Old Port House of Jerky.

Saveur: Maine’s Stay on the Landers

| Posted in Farming

Saveur has published a feature about the 2nd generation farmers of the Back to the Land movement in Maine.

As the rest of us get a taste for the benefits of eating local and organic, and small-scale farms start to become more viable, some of the sons and daughters of Maine’s Back to the Landers are staying put—literally on the land where they grew up—and dedicating themselves to small-scale farming with renewed vigor, despite the hardships they witnessed growing up, as many of their parents had to give up farming to make ends meet. “Stay on the Landers,” they sometimes call themselves—these kids, like Ben, who are following through on their parents’ dormant dreams, doing tough, rich work that doesn’t make a lot of money.