Beard Awards Open Call

| Posted in General News

As in past years, the James Beard Foundation has posted an open call for recommendations from industry professionals and the general public for the awards committee to consider when building the list of semifinalists for 2025.

The entry and recommendation period for the 2025 James Beard Awards…is officially open! We’re looking for chefs, beverage experts, creators, and culinary and food system leaders who could be the next James Beard Award winners…Whether you published a cookbook in the last year, own a restaurant, or advocate for food system change, we encourage you to submit your entries and recommend your talented colleagues.

A notable change from last year is the addition of three new awards categories: Best New Bar, Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service, and Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service. These are in addition to the existing categories of Outstanding Bar and Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program.

The deadline to submit recommendations is Friday, November 29th and if the process follows the pattern from 2023 and 2024 then we can expect to see the semifinalist list come out in late January.

Reference these PDFs for guidelines on the chef and restaurant awards categories, and for insight into the overall awards process. Also check out this list we maintain on Portland Food Map for a list of past award winners, nominees and semifinalists from Maine.

To create an account and submit your recommendations visit: jamesbeardawards.awardsplatform.com

Upcoming Food & Dining Events

| Posted in Events

Monday – The Bitter Ball Negroni Contest is taking place at Via Vecchia, and Anoche is holding their next Paella Night.

Thursday – Wayside Food Programs is holding their annual fundraising event Inside Wayside. Winona’s (instagram) is opening for business in Camden—you can make reservations online. The restaurant is being launched by Hannah Adams and chef Devin Dearden who were part of the team at the highly regarded Alna Store.

Saturday – Oxbow is holding their annual Good from the Woods event in Newcastle. Leisure Time Cocktail Company is holding a Barbeque Party in collaboration with Moonrock BBQ.

Sunday – Dandelion Spring Farm in Bowdoinham is hold their annual Fermentation Fair.

October 10 – Apres is holding their annual Apple Tasting.

October 13 – The 16th Annual Open Creamery Day is taking place. Dandelion Spring Farm is holding a Harvest Dinner. Salt Wharf is holding the 2nd Annual Camden Oyster Festival.

October 18 – Author Corrie Locke-Hardy will be at the Equality Community Center for a reading from their new cookbook The Revolution Will be Well Fed and herbal tea workshop.

October 19 – McDougal Orchards in Springvale is holding their 5th Annual Apple Tasting.

October 20 – Great Maine Apple Day is taking place in Unity.

October 23 – Mrs. Gee Free Living and Sur Lie are collaborating on a gluten-free dinner.

October 24 – The Maine Center for Entrepreneurs is holding the biennial Maine Food Producer Showcase & Golden Fork Awards at Brick South on Thompson’s Point.

October 24-26 – Harvest on the Harbor is taking place.

October 29 – The annual HospitalityMaine summit is taking place at Sugarloaf.

November 5 – Gross Confection Bar is holding a (sold out) pastry baking class.

Planning a wedding, holding a business event, or hosting visitors from away? Our printed guides are a great resource to help your guests explore the Maine restaurant scene.
25-packs of the Portland and Midcoast pocket guides are now available on our online store.

Review of Bread & Friends

| Posted in Reviews

Today’s Maine Sunday Telegram includes a 4 star review of Bread & Friends.

Standout dishes include executive chef Jeremy Broucek’s wood-grilled Broad Arrow Farm pork chop with miso-like rye cream, pickled mustard seeds and lacto-fermented cherries; and a remarkably meaty, braised sunflower blossom plated up with brothy local cranberry beans and capers. Head baker Tanner Rubin gets a turn in the spotlight, too. His dark-and-crusty mini country loaf with homemade cultured dulse butter is a winner, just like his brunch-meets-dessert riff on custardy, house-baked brioche French toast that arrives sticky with Dunn Family Maple syrup and a scoop of smoked rosemary ice cream. Pricey perhaps, but completely worth it.

Coals Closing in Bayside

| Posted in Closings

Coals Pizza (website, instagram) owner Billy Etzel has announced plans to close the Bayside restaurant which has been in operation since 2019.

Sorry folks but after this weekend we’ll be putting Coals Bayside to rest. We’ll be open for regular hours while supplies last. Thanks for the memories!

Coals is well loved for their wings and pizza. The Maine Sunday Telegram gave them 3½ stars and New York Times gave their Bronxville location a rating of Very Good.

Coals is located at 114 Preble Street in the building that had formerly been the home of Portland & Rochester.  Coals currently operates a 2nd location in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Thistle & Grouse Has Closed

| Posted in Closings

Thistle & Grouse (website, facebook, instagram) has permanently closed. Their last day in business was this past weekend. A statement from owners Kimberly Kraus and chef Bobby Will reads in part,

Unfortunately not all things in life are meant to be and this is one of those moments. We set out to Portland from Bar Harbor with a dream of opening a neighborhood gastropub that brought creative comfort food into a warm inviting environment for friends to share libations, laughs and memories.

But a difficult path of remodel met with multiple delays and permitting hurdles, a terrible first winter full of flooded downtowns and snow, combined with a crippling inflation that made it nearly impossible to keep it together, painted a different picture for us.

Will, Kraus and key members of the staff had previously worked together at Kraus’ and Will’s former restaurant Salt and Steel in Bar Harbor.

Thistle & Grouse opened at 10 Cotton Street on December 1, 2023. The restaurant received 3½ stars in a review published by the Maine Sunday Telegram in March. The business is now for sale.

Maine Food & Dining News: Skowhegan, Falmouth, Waterville, South Portland, Damariscotta, Rockland, Hodgdon, Belmont, Winthrop, Alna

| Posted in Maine

New food and dining developments are taking place all across Maine. Here are some recent updates to keep you in the know:

    • Union Bagel Company (instagram) has moved to Falmouth and joined forces with Bernie’s Foreside. Founder Paul Farrell launched Union Bagel in 2013 at 147 Cumberland Avenue. Farrell and Bernie’s owner Adam Shapiro have now built out a bagel bakery in the space adjacent to Bernie’s at 204 Route One where you can get their bagels to go or as a breakfast sandwich to enjoy at the cafe. Union Bagels are also being served at other local establishments like Luna Cafe in Scarborough and Bom Dia on India Street.
    • Food & Wine selected Absolem Cider in Winthrop for a short list of 5 Must-Visit Northeast Cideries.
    • Island Dairy Treat in Skowhegan has gone out of business after the building it is located was sold. The Morning Sentinel has all the details on how the sale led to the closure of the 72 year old local business.
    • A new eatery called Mr. Chickpea (instagram) recently opened at 611 Main Street in South Portland on Route 1. The fast casual restaurant serves a variety of plates and wraps like the lamb kabob plate and chicken kufta wrap as well as smoothies and prepared foods to go.
    • Spice Pizzeria (website, facebook) opened last week at 59 Camden Road (photo on left) in Rockland. The menu features “Thai Food on the Dough” with options like a Pad Thai pizza and a Masaman Curry pizza. The menu also includes some rice and noodle dishes and appetizers like gyoza and chicken wings. They’re open daily 11:30 am – 8:30 pm.
    • A new cafe called Borderlands Coffee Company (instagram) has opened for business in Waterville. They’re located at 93 Main Street and are open Tuesday through Friday 7 am – 3 pm and Sat 8 am – 3 pm. They serve coffee from Three Ships.
    • The Bangor Daily News reports that a new tea shop is under development in Hodgdon. Owner Randi Farrar hopes to launch Randi’s Corner Perk later this fall. The BDN also has published an interesting article about Maine’s cranberry industry and a report that Super Scoop in Belmont is for sale by its owner  Julie Heeter who has operated the shop for 26 years.
    • The owners of the Sterlingtown Public House launched a second location (photo on right) of their burger-centric restaurant The Spot (instagram) in Rockland last weekend. It’s located at 131 North Main Street and is open Wednesday through Monday 11 am – 8 pm. The original The Spot is located in the town of Washington.
    • The New York Times included The Alna Store in the paper’s list of their “50 favorite places in America right now.”
    • The Maine Sunday Telegram published a 3½ star review of River House in Damariscotta.

For a statewide guide to eating and drinking see the Maine Food Map—a growing list of coffee shops, bars, restaurants, bakeries, cafes, and other food and dining businesses in all of Maine’s 16 counties.

Sisters Closing in Monument Square

| Posted in Closings

Sisters Gourmet Deli has shared plans to close their Portland sandwich shop. Their last day in business will be this Monday September 30th. The announcement on instagram reads in part,

9ish years ago I was a girl with a dream of creating a Sandwich Empire. We have made so many friends in this little shop. We have catered thousands of events. We have won awards. We have supported people through college (me included). I have been invited to incredible places because of sandwiches, and I am forever grateful for the opportunities brought to light because of this place. I also know it’s time to get out while we’re on top.

Sisters opened on May 1, 2016 at 15 Monument Square. They plan to continue operating the Sisters location in Bath which opened in 2019.

The truth is, we’ve outgrown this beautiful little spot, and Bath has very much stolen our hearts. My husband Nick and I have been operating at full throttle for some time now and it’s time for us to make a smart choice by concentrating all of our efforts in Bath.

Rabelais Extended Edition

| Posted in Under Construction

Rabelais Books (website, facebook, instagram) opened their new shop in the Black Box on Washington Ave intending to run the bookstore as a pop-up from July through September.  Engagement with the culinary bookstore has been strong enough that owner Don Lindgren has extended his lease through the end of 2025.

Not only have sales been better than we had hoped, but it’s been a pleasure to be back in Portland, reconnecting with old friends and customers and conversing with many new ones. Since the shop is in a shipping container it is tiny, and customers engage with the material we have in ways very different than they did in the big Biddeford store. I love watching people browse and discover something new, and it seems to happen more frequently here. So we’re going to keep this location for a while longer and see how it stokes our imagination further.

Rabelais will be closed this coming Saturday and Sunday (September 28th and 29th) for a quick break. They’ll reopen Wednesday October 2nd with new hours, 11 am to 5 pm most days with an extended close on Fridays and Saturdays at 6:30 pm. The store is open 6 days a week and is closed Tuesdays.

Rabelais is stocked with printed books, ephemera and manuscripts from the past six centuries, covering a wide range of culinary subjects from mushrooms and mixology to farming and food photography, And, of course, there are cookbooks from nearly every corner of the globe. For more information on Rabelais and Lindgren see this article from June.

NYT 2024 List: The Alna Store

| Posted in Reviews

The New York Times has included The Alna Store in their 2024 restaurant list. The list represents the paper’s “50 favorite places in America right now.”

Over the last 12 months, reporters and editors traveled to nearly every state scouting restaurants for our annual list. This year, it was about spaces as much as places. We ate hyperlocal dishes served out of a trailer in a rural Virginia field, experienced one of America’s most refined seasonal tasting menus in one of San Francisco’s most refined rooms, dined on Creole fare in a strip mall down the road from NASA in Texas and joined a party behind a tattered ranch house in Johns Island, S.C.

With regards to The Alna Store, food reporter and columnist Melissa Clark wrote,

…And in front, an ambitious restaurant serves a thoroughly of-the-moment, local menu that’s full of sophisticated touches without being at all pretentious. The house margarita is made with mezcal; the buttermilk wedge salad is dusted with crispy fried shallots and capers; and the shrimp topping a mound of creamy grits are coated in warm, fragrant spices, then seared until caramelized…

The Alna Store is located in the Midcoast town of Alna. It opened in late December 2022. The Maine Sunday Telegram gave the restaurant a 4½ star rating in a review published last year.

East Bayside Dining Guide

| Posted in Reviews

Boston Magazine has published an article about where to eat and drink in East Bayside.

Perhaps you’ve already spent some time exploring the incredible food and drink scene in Portland, Maine. But one area you may have overlooked is East Bayside—an increasingly delectable neighborhood inside the parameters of Congress Street, Washington Avenue, Route 295, and Franklin Arterial that’s home to young families and a vibrant East African community.

The article highlights The Cheese Shop, Forage, Hardshore, Lil Chippy, Magissa, Maine & Loire, Minato, Moonday Coffee,  Onggi, Quanto Basta, Ramona’s, Red Sea, Rising Tide, and Root Wild, Sticky Sweet, Terlingua, and The Shop.