Krista Kern Desjarlais’s new venture in New Gloucester, Bresca and the Honey Bee, opened for business on Saturday with a limited menu of ice cream and drinks. When I stopped by on Sunday she had available a beer-flavored ice cream made with honey porter in honor of Father’s Day.
Krista will be getting the kitchen fully operational over the next few days and will have a full menu ready for Wednesday and the coming weekend.
Bon Appetit calls the meal prepared by Aurora Provision’s Leslie Oster the standout dinner at the Kennebunk Festival.
But it was the cooked dishes that proved chef Oster’s skill. Anyone can give you fresh-from-the-dirt produce and you’ll love it, but Oster followed through, sending out nice seared duck and, later, a slab of pork belly (equally fatty, salty, and sweet) that was as good as I’ve had in a long time. The farm-to-table conceit was cute, but it wasn’t just a stunt. This was a real meal. I can’t wait to see what she (and everyone else) does next year.
Both the Bangor Daily News and Portland Press Herald report that Shucks Maine Lobster is trying to lease space on the Maine State Pier to expand their operation.
Shucks Maine Lobster wants to launch a new processing facility on Portland’s city-owned Maine State Pier, adding jobs and expanding the amount of lobster meat it processes and exports from the state.
Small Axe Truck (website, facebook, twitter, instagram) opened this morning in the parking lot beside Tandem Coffee and Bunker Brewing (aka the Bunker/Tandem Campus). Small Axe is the creation of Karl Deuben and Bill Leavy. It will be very interesting to see how they translate fine dining skills honed at Alinea, Hugo’s, Miyake, Back Bay Grill to a more informal and mobile platform.
After finishing up breakfast, Small Axe will drive around the corner to Rising Tide be the brewery’s featured food truck starting at noon.
The Portland City Council meets Monday when two new restaurants will be asking for approval of their liquor license applications:
The Portland Phoenix has published a review of Little Tap House.
The burger is a good one, the bun a soft sweet brioche with a good dark crust. The juicy burger, ground in-house, had been loosely packed just to that right spot where it holds together but does not get too dense. The terrific Maine potato fries seemed double-fried, and come with a choice of sauces — both in the style now familiar from Duckfat. An entrée of roast chicken was juicy and herby, with a just-crisp skin. The accompanying mashed potatoes and snap peas were quite good, unmarred by a compulsion to jazz up their classic appeal.
According to a report from the Bangor Daily News, Mainely Burgers food truck and the Urban Farm Fermentory were recipients of Entreverge Awards for their “scalable vision for the future and a long term commitment to the people, place and prosperity of Maine”.
The Entreverge awards are about recognizing the entrepreneurial spirit of Portland, Huckel-Bauer said, and are “part of making the city a more attractive place for young people to come and start businesses.”
A new pop-up venture called Cong Tu Bot (Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter) quietly got under way earlier this Spring. The creation of Vien Dobui and Jessica Sheahan, Cong Tu Bot’s specialty has been a type of Vietnamese chicken noodle soup known as Mi Ga.
So far Cong Tu Bot has held a pair of “friends and family” trial runs in April and early June that have mostly remained below the radar, providing the culinary team the chance to scale up their process in preparation for opening to the public.
I’ve been lucky enough to go to both and recommend you take the opportunity when the next pop-up takes place. The broth is well balanced and full bodied and is paired with some really excellent hand-crafted noodles making for a very satisfying meal.
Watch the Cong Tu Bot Tumblr site for more info on upcoming events.
The Blueberry Files has published a review of Dishcrawl and the food the group had at The Porthole, The Thirsty Pig, Blue Rooster and The Salt Exchange.
I enjoyed my experience, and heard from a lot of participants that they were in places they’d never been or never would have thought to try. So Mary is accomplishing the mission of Dishcrawls to connect locals with new restaurants. These tours are aimed at locals, with Dishcrawls being offered more frequently in the winter when the restaurants aren’t as busy.
Chef Damian Sansonetti from Blue Rooster and Andrew Volk from the Portland Hunt & Alpine Club are collaborating on a New England Summer Dinner. The dinner is scheduled for June 27. More info and tickets are available at mainedinner.brownpapertickets.com.