Lee Farrington is planning to renovate 249 Congress Street, the home of her former restaurant Figa, where she and her wife plan to open a new restaurant called LB Kitchen(instagram). They hope to open LB Kitchen sometime early next year.
The restaurant is billed as “a modern cafe”, but specific details on concept, menu, etc are at present still tbd. It’s great to hear that Farrington will be running another restaurant and that the former Figa location is going back into productive use.
The Hunter’s Bend and The Honey Paw are collaborating on a mushroom dinner later this month. The dinner will feature “eight courses of fantastic vegetarian food highlighting locally foraged, cultivated and imported mushrooms”.
The Hunter’s Bend is a super club/catering operation run by Frank Anderson & Rebecca Ambrosi who are both part of the team launching Jason Loring’s tiki bar, Rhum.
Ticket for the mushroom dinner are on sale on Eventbrite.
The Forecaster has published an article about Foulmouthed Brewing(twitter, instagram) which is under development in South Portland.
A Portland couple unveiled plans this week for the first brewery in Knightville, and only the second in the city.
Pending approval from the Planning Board, which is scheduled to hold its first hearing on the proposal Tuesday, Oct. 13, Craig and Julia Dilger’s Foulmouthed Brewing will open in a building that was once an auto garage at the corner of Ocean and A streets.
The Drink Exchange(facebook) is scheduled to open today. It’s located at 43 Wharf Street in the space formerly occupied by The Merry Table. Owner Tanner Herget also runs 51 Wharf, Dusk and Bonfire—all on Wharf Street.
The Business section in today’s Press Herald features a report titled “Maine’s craft beer boom shows no sign of going flat“.
When it opens, Fore River will be the newest player in Maine’s exploding and intensely local craft beer scene. As of 2014, the state had the sixth-most breweries per capita in the nation, according to the Brewers Association, a national group. In 2013 and 2014, nine new breweries and brewpubs opened in greater Portland alone. There are currently 52 breweries in the state, but that number is set to jump even higher in 2016, and existing breweries are expanding.
The article includes details on Fore River Brewing(twitter, facebook, instagram) which is opening later this year in South Portland.
The Bangor Daily News has published an article on the Maine Malt House, which supplies malted Maine grown grains to brewers in the state.
Aroostook County is not home to the bustling craft breweries that have sprouted up across Maine, New England and other parts of the country. A brewery and pub that opened in Presque Isle in 2004, Slopes Northern Maine Restaurant and Brewing Company, closed for lack of business not long afterward. But, 10 years later, the Buck brothers are not trying to sell beer locally; they want to produce and sell malts across the state through an integrated farm and malthouse business.
Urban Eye has reviewed Lincolns.
Open on Market Street since the spring, the subteranean watering hole unites Portland’s service industry folks, international tech workers and post collegiates from Orono, who gather in close quarters to knock back five dollar drinks like it was 1989.
Today’s Press Herald features an article about the Chefs After Dark monthly gatherings among chefs in Southern Maine and New Hampshire for social networking and good natured competition.
The format of the monthly get-togethers mimics The Food Network’s “Chopped,” where chefs, two in this case versus the reality show’s four, who are well-matched in experience and cooking styles, are pitted against each other and several mystery ingredients. Local suppliers donate the often exotic ingredients, such as chicken feet, curry leaves and bitter cucumber (December 2014 when Franke and Vargas squared off); or cod roe sack, sunflower buds and lamb sweetbreads (August 2015); or blue Hubbard squash, local apples and tripe (late last month).
The menus are now up and ticket are on sale for two dinners at the Jame Beard House in New York being headlined by Portland talent:
MaineBiz has published an article about Leigh Kellis and her company The Holy Donut.
But creating a decadent but wholesome treat “was like a mission from God,” she says. “I love doughnuts and the idea of bringing it to Portland was exciting.”
Once she hit on a winning potato-based recipe, she brought six doughnuts to Coffee By Design’s Washington Avenue store to see if they’d sell. They did and she brought back a dozen the next day. Soon she got orders from Whole Foods Market and Lois’ Natural Marketplace and rented commercial kitchen space. Forty dozen doughnuts a week became 100 dozen. After eight months, she was yearning for a doughnut shop of her own.