A floor plan for Kings Head restaurant has been submitted to the Planning Board. Kings Head is a 78-seat restaurant that’s planned for the first floor of the Pierce Atwood building on Commercial Street.
Under Construction: Pizza at 158
158 Pickett Street Cafe in South Portland has for many years been a destination for bagels, breakfast and lunch. Starting this Friday they’re adding dinner hours serving a menu of specialty pizza and salads.
To start out the new pizza menu will be available on Friday and Saturday nights; additional days will come online once the fall semester at SMCC (right down the street from 158) is in session.
This Week’s Events: Migratory Fish, Graze, Twilight Dinner, Vinland, Rabelais Book Sale
Tuesday — Dr. Walt Golet will be giving a lecture at GMRI on the migratory nature of tuna and swordfish.
Wednesday — Black Tie will be holding a Graze farm dinner in New Gloucester, and the Monument Square Farmers Market is taking place.
Thursday — Brad Messier & Erin Lynch from Rosemont will be the guest chef at this week’s Twilight Dinner at Turkey Hill Farm, there will be a wine and cheese tasting at the Public Market House, and it’s the last day of Vinland’s Kickstarter campaign which has so far raised $37,060 towards a $40k goal.
Saturday — Rabelais is holding their annual book sale (20-25% off), and the Deering Oaks Farmers Market is taking place.
Portland Brew Festival — the third big beer event taking place in Portland this summer, the Portland Brew Festival, is scheduled for August 30-31.
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.
Brewery Tours: UFF & MBC
The Beer Babe has posted a report on her recent visits to the Urban Farm Fermentory and Maine Beer Company.
We sat, laughing, and sipped our samples while happily lingering in the air conditioning. If you are looking for an easy diversion or a reason to leave your hot apartment, consider Maine Beer Company’s tasting room in Freeport your official reason.
Iced Coffee
The Bangor Daily News has published an article highlighting some of the iced coffee options available in Portland.
At Yordprom Coffee Co., they call it liquid crack. At Tandem Coffee Roasters, regulars go ga-ga over it. And customers at Speckled Ax sip it like a cocktail, slowly with intent.
It’s iced coffee and especially during the recent heat wave, it’s getting some attention.
PM: Supply-side Gastronomics
Portland Magazine featured Coffee by Design, Harbor Fish, Pat’s, Micucci’s, Rosemont, K. Horton’s and Browne Trading in an article about Portland’s “Exotic wholesalers with a genius for retail chart the middle ground”.
Review of Portland & Rochester
The Golden Dish has published a review of the Portland & Rochester Public House.
For entrees we were blown away by the poached salmon. It’s braised in white grape juice and served with intensely crunchy peeky toe crab fritters. The salmon was exceedingly delicate, a soft melt-in-your-mouth morsel of fish.
Interview with Abigail Carroll
The Root has published an interview with Abigail Carroll, the owner of Nonesuch Oysters in Scarborough.
Would you describe the “traditional, environmentally-safe” grow-out method you use.
We buy very small spat, about 1.5 mm in size, and put it into a nursery – an up-weller – where the oysters are contained and fed by water we pump from the estuary. There are no additives; they drink only natural water from the estuary. When the oysters get to be about ¼” we take them to our grow-out site in floating bags where they stay until we harvest. As the farm grows, we hope to do more ground seeding. Our “Free Range” oysters are particularly gorgeous.
Vena’s Fizz House
Thursday’s Portland Daily Sun includes an article on the back story behind Vena’s Fizz House.
Pondering the name, a family member suggested [owner Johanna Corman] name it Vena’s Fizz House. Vena was Johanna’s great-grandmother, who turns out to have been very active in the late 1920s and early ’30s with the Maine Woman’s Christian Temperance Union here in Portland.
Under Construction: Piccolo
Chef Damian Sansonetti has leased 111 Middle Street, the former location of Bresca, and plans to open a new restaurant called Piccolo. Sansonetti will be serving a menu inspired by cuisine of Calabria and Abruzzi, tapping into the rustic tastes of of the regions where his family hail from. He plans to make some changes to the interior design of the dining room but otherwise leave the overall layout the same, and hopes to open the restaurant in September.
Sansonetti moved to Portland from NYC where he had been the Executive Chef of Bar Boulud. He’s a co-owner of Blue Rooster Food Co. on Dana Street. In addition to Piccolo, he still has plans to open a restaurant in Portland called Sonnet at some point in the future.