According to a report in today’s Press Herald, the City is planning to adjust the restaurant inspection code, increase fees and add more inspectors.
City Manager Mark Rees said he intends to ask for funding in next year’s budget for additional restaurant inspectors and resources. Portland has one full-time inspector, who inspected only 49 of the city’s 800 eating establishments in her first year on the job. She failed 39 of them. State law requires restaurants to be inspected every two years.
The Bangor Daily News has a report on the growth in the Maine beer industry.
From 2009 to 2010, the total output of Maine breweries went up from 4.1 million gallons to 4.9 million gallons, or roughly 20 percent. The following year, from 2010 to 2011, it jumped by another 1.5 million gallons to 6.4 million total, representing an annual increase of 30 percent.
Maine a la Carte reports that Fishbowl Farm will be exiting the Portland Farmers Market at the end of this year.
Once these summer markets close up shop around Thanksgiving, Fishbowl Farm intends to change its business model and focus on wholesale accounts for salad greens. The plan calls for selling greens from early spring through late fall.
Tuesday — Bar Lola’s Tuscan wine dinner was so popular that they’re repeating the event this week.
Wednesday — Calabash in South Portland is holding a cigar dinner, there will be a wine tasting at RSVP, and the Monument Square Farmers Market is taking place.
Thursday — there will be a cheese and organic wine tasting at the Public Market House, there will be a beer/mead/cider/wine tasting at Bier Cellar, Oxbow Brewing will be featured at the Great Lost Beer’s weekly brewery showcase and Bard Coffee is hosting the TNT Latte Art Barista Competition.
Friday — Tandem Coffee is holding a coffee cupping, there will be a beer tasting at the West End Deli, and it’s the first day of Oktoberfest at Novare Res.
Saturday — Bunker Down Fest is raising funds for the Portland Farmers Market, Rising Tide is holding an open house, it’s the second day of Oktoberfest, and the Deering Oaks Farmers Market is taking place. If you’re looking for an excuse to get out of town consider the Maine Lakes Brew Fest in Caso Maine.
Sunday — Cloak & Dagger #7 is taking place, it’s slated to be an 8-course vegetarian dinner.
All This Week — the Cumberland County Fair is taking place in Cumberland Maine.
All This Month — DiMillo’s, East Ender, Five Fifty-Five, Grace and Petite Jacqueline are all participating Share Our Strength’s Dine Out for No Kid Hungry program to raise funds to fight hunger. Check this map for the nature of each restaurant’s program.
Freedom Farm Dinner — Local 188 & Sonny’s are holding a dinner at Freedom Farm in Freedom Maine October 20th to benefit the Portland Farmers Market. The evening will consist of a farm tour followed by a 5-course dinner with pairings. Tickets are $70 per person and are available for sale online.
Le Semaine du Gout — Petite Jacqueline is planning a Week of Taste as “a celebration of dinning, agriculture and education”. Each night Monday through Friday during the week of October 15-19 “will feature a different culinary theme and create a 3-course prix fixe menu”. Call (207) 533-7044 for reservations.
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.
The latest issue of Down East includes a feature article about the Maine oyster industry which ranges from Eventide to oyster farms to sidebars on two better mouse traps for opening the tasty bivalves.
“Oyster are trendy now,” says Jeff “Smokey” McKeen, a co-owner and founder of Pemaquid Oyster Company, which has been growing oysters in the Damariscotta estuary since 1986. “They are way more popular than they were twenty-five years ago, so the market is their for us now. All the Maine oysters have a good reputation in the marketplace. They come out of cold water so they are sweeter, plumper, and crisper than warm water oysters. They stack up against anything out there.”
The latest issue of Down East isn’t online yet but you can pick up an issue at your local newsstand.
Five Fifty-Five received 4½ stars from the review in today’s Maine Sunday Telegram.
Five Fifty-Five earns top rating for menu quality, service, originality and flavor. For those seeking a high-end dining experience that recalls bits of Napa and Manhattan sensibilities with a distinctive eye on its Maine clientele, it does not get better than Five Fifty-Five. While the pricing might prohibit this as an everyday treat, for food lovers, the experience is worth every single penny.
Both Down East and Maine magazines have published reviews of Carmen at the Danforth in the October issues of their respective magazines. Here’s an excerpt from Down East,
Consider that final moment when you’ve had the last morsel of a splendid meal whereupon all of the pleasures of dining well conspire towards perfection. You’ll find that delight at Carmen at the Danforth, a thoroughly captivating dining venue that opened this past summer in the historic Danforth Inn, an 1823 Federal mansion along Portland’s gentrified West End.
and here’s one from Maine.
On my most recent visit to Carmen at The Danforth in Portland, there was a brief moment—while sampling some of the most tender and flavorful grilled baby flower octopus that I have ever tasted—when my mind fell into a vacation-induced trance of sorts, and I completely forgot that just outside the walls of this nineteenth-century mansion my regular day-to-day existence was waiting for me.
The Down East article is not available online yet but you can find a copy at your local newsstand.
The Portland Daily Sun checked in with Love Cupcake after the food truck’s first day of operation.
A year after building their food trailer, the owners of Love Cupcakes finally opened on Commercial Street in Portland this week. On Thursday, early customer response seemed to vindicate the owners’ efforts to navigate city government and gain permission to operate a mobile food trailer.
“It’s been a mix, a lot of tourists, but a lot of local and business people, too,” said Anna Turcotte on Thursday.
The article also reports that there’s a second food truck in operation on Riverside.
“The only other application we are working on is for Teresa Esposito’s On the Go, on private property at the Home Depot parking lot at 245 Riverside Street,” Gardner said.
Esposito has operated a food truck at the location under a “unique agreement” with the city, with a temporary food service license, Gardner said. Now, she has filed an official food truck application.
City spokeswoman Nicole Clegg said, “The task force developed the policies, we put some rules in place, and now we’re in a wait and see mode to see how it goes.”
Eat Maine has published a review of Green Elephant.
The food comes out quickly and we dig into fresh rolls filled with avocado, vermicelli noodles, lettuce, carrots, and mint. The refreshing bundles wrapped in rice paper are crunchy and light on their own, but when dipped into the creamy peanut sauce, the dish is transformed. What makes it so good isn’t the unusual combination of ingredients—hoisin sauce, coconut milk, and peanut butter—but that every morsel comes out tasting even better. I might even consider putting it on ice cream!
The Press Herald has published another article about restaurant inspections in Portland,
[President of the Maine Restaurant Association Dick] Grotton said Portland restaurants, many of which are in old buildings, are being cited for facility issues, such as not having a covered trash recetacle in the ladies room.
Instead of focusing on what are considered non-critical violations, he said, the city should concentrate on critical violations that could lead to illness.
“There are degrees of bad,” he said. “We need to separate what’s really important and what’s just part of the code.”
MPBN also interviewed Groton about the restaurant inspection process,
But Dick Grotton, president of the Maine Restaurant Association, says the records alone don’t provide a complete picture – mainly because some of the violations have nothing to do with food safety. Grotton spoke with MPBN’s Jennifer Mitchell.
The full Maine Food Code is available online on Maine.gov.