Maine Oysters

| Posted in Fisheries

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.

Review of Five Fifty-Five

| Posted in Reviews

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.

2 Reviews of Carmen at the Danforth

| Posted in Reviews

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.

Food Truck Love: Love Cupcake & Teresa Esposito’s On the Go

| Posted in Openings

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.”

Review of Green Elephant

| Posted in Reviews

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!

More Restaurant Inspection Reporting

| Posted in General News

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.

Speckled Ax x Allagash = James Bean

| Posted in Beer

Speckled Ax and Allagash Brewing are collaborating on the production of a bear to be called James Bean. The coffee infused beer combines Allagash Tripel with a blend of Ethiopia Amaro Gayo Natual coffee. According to the Speckled Ax Facebook page,

This batch is headed for bourbon barrels later today, and will be ready for drinking in a few weeks. Subtle, clean coffee and fruit nose, with sweet, yeasty tropical fruit and mild, clean coffee flavor.

Restaurant Inspections Reporting

| Posted in General News

Today’s Press Herald widens their reporting on restaurant health inspections. Based on city documents they found that,

In August 2011, Portland hired its first health inspector devoted to restaurants. Since then, the inspector, Michele Sturgeon, has inspected 49 restaurants and failed 39 of them. Six failed initial follow-up inspections and three failed multiple follow-ups. In general, a restaurant fails if it has more than 13 violations.

There’s a report that the state has criticized “Portland officials Thursday for allowing the owner of [The Porthole] to cook a lobster dinner for a wedding reception in a kitchen that had been closed for health code violations.”