A house fire broke out on North Street early Saturday morning. The blaze has left three local hospitality staff with little more with what they could grab as they left the building. Henry Schroder works at Po’ Boys & Pickles, Tucker Wanzer is the manager of Captain Sam’s Ice Cream, and Megan Lowe works at Mast Landing.
Schroeder’s employer Chris Bettera has established a $20,000 GoFundMe campaign to raise funds to “help them secure a new apartment and replace some of what they lost”.
Today’s Maine Sunday Telegram takes a look at how coffee shops in Southern Maine utilize the coffee grounds produced by their businesses.
After your morning coffee becomes a happy memory, do the spent grounds languish in a landfill, add nitrogen to a garden or transform into energy (and we’re not talking about the coffee drinker’s energy)? It all depends where you get your fix.
Many of Portland’s restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries, bars, diners and cafes will be closed today.
But some are opening on Saturday with regular or reduced hours—we’ll be updating this list throughout the day:
The owners of Yobo announced on Thursday that they’re closing their Forest Ave Korean restaurant. Their plans are to fully direct their efforts into their Brunswick restaurant Maine St. Steak & Oyster.
The Press Herald reports that Som Mantasut and Genko Stanilov are taking over the former Yobo space where they plan to open Nom Cafe (instagram) this April.
Mantasut, who is taking the lead on Nom Cafe, already owns Orchid, a Thai restaurant in Lewiston, and works as a server at Yosaku in Portland. She grew up in Thailand and came to Maine for college, where she studied business. At Nom, she plans to offer coffee, breakfast and lunch food with touches of Thai and Bulgarian cuisine, “so a little bit of everything,” she said; her partner, Stanilov, is from Bulgaria.
The Press Herald has published a report on Maine-produced nonalcoholic beers.
Nonalcoholic beer is currently having, it would seem, a moment. Or, if we look at Maine’s brewing history, a revival. In previous decades, the production of nonalcoholic beer (which legally means a beer with no more than 0.5% ABV) was dominated by brands from multi-national and mass-market breweries. But today, we now have local options that drink much more like craft beer than the infamous O’Doul’s.
The Bangor Daily News reports that Maiz will be opening a second location in Brunswick.
When Martha Leonard took her La Fritanga food truck to Brunswick last year, she found a friendly community and college town open to a new type of food.
The co-owner of Maiz Colombian Street Food in Portland was so impressed with the atmosphere in the midcoast town that she plans to open a second physical restaurant in Brunswick this spring and hire six full-time employees.
Martha Leonard shared with us that the new 20-seat Maiz will be located at 11 Pleasant Street. It will be about twice the size of their Portland location and will incorporate a small market that will sell house-made products for home preparation.
Leonard expects to launch with a similar menu to Portland and then evolve it to fit the unique tastes of their Brunswick customers. She hopes to open the new Maiz in April.
Back before they moved to Portland and opened Cafe Always and went on to found Aurora Provisions and help launch El Rayo, Cheryl Lewis and Norine Kotts were part of the team that opened the Beetle’s Lunch in Allston. Professor Janice Irvine at University of Massachusetts has recorded and published this oral history interview with Kotts and Lewis about those early days.
But first there was Beetle’s Lunch! Before moving to Portland, Lewis and Kotts were two of the four lesbian co-founders of Beetle’s Lunch in 1982, a café in Allston, Massachusetts. Known as a queer-punk space also welcoming of locals, Beetle’s was named the”1983 Best Punk Restaurant” by Boston magazine. I lived a block away from Beetle’s during that time, while a graduate student at Brandeis University, and frequented the café several times. Almost four decades later, I moved to Portland from Massachusetts. Serendipitously, I met Cheryl and Norine at a dinner party. We immediately discovered, and bonded over, our shared history at Beetle’s. As a sociologist, I knew their stories would be those of a radical generation reimagining work, politics, and food. In this oral history, they recount Beetle’s origin story, and the daily pleasures and challenges of launching and running a restaurant (while in their 20s!). More broadly, their stories capture that dynamic historical moment of feminist and queer politics, a nascent food revolution, the emergence of alternative community spaces, and early ‘80s experiments in establishing collective workplaces. This oral history covers the period ca. 1981-83.
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Regards (website, instagram) is scheduled to open this Saturday. It is located at 547 Congress Street in the space formerly occupied by Emilitsa. Regards is being launched by chef/owner Neil Zabriskie and co-owners Kimberly Lund and Cameron Lewin.
The menu includes options like a charcoal roasted beetroot with juniper, blackberry & kumquat and macadamia, and a dish of Spanish mackerel prepared with smoked cream emulsion, aji limo and tatsoi. Zabriskie envisions the menu as the melding of Southern Californian inspiration with local Maine ingredients. The beverage program will feature natural wines and agave-focused cocktails.
You can make reservations for Regards on Resy. Proof of vaccination is required to eat at Regards.
February 10 – The Yard is hold a pre-Valentine’s Day Dueling Pianos event, and Evo is holding a dinner in support of the Dempsey Center with seatings at 5:30 or 7:45.
February 13 – Cocktail Mary is holding a Champagne Brunch.
Valentine’s Day – this list continues to grow as restaurants announce their plans.
February 17 – The Porthole is holding a wine dinner.
March 29 – Maine’s newest cidery the Absolem Cider Company and Oxbow Brewing will collaborating on a beer/cider dinner at the Oxbow Beer Garden in Oxford.
June 13 – 19 – the 5th Annual Portland Wine Week will be taking place.
Luis’ Arepera quietly closed down their restaurant at 948 Forest Ave late last year. They’ve now announced plans to re-open in Gray this summer.
Due to a fire back in September, the Fishermen’s Net, Thai Essan and Paella Seafood had to close. Thai Essan has announced they plan to re-open sometime this summer or early fall. The owners of Paella Seafood and Fishermen’s Net also plan to eventually re-open.