New Geary’s Brewer

| Posted in Beer

The Press Herald reports on Geary’s new brewer Ben Rossignol.

When I visit the brewery to talk with Geary and Rossignol there’s a session IPA brewed with Jarrylo hops and American ale yeast on draft at the tasting room. It’s the first beer brewed with American ale yeast since Geary’s opened in 1986. This single-hop IPA has a fruity aroma of pears, bananas and oranges. The flavor is a fruit cocktail mixture that Rossignol says tastes like a “Dole fruit cup.” I agree. And it’s good.

The next experimental beer that will be on tap at the tasting room is a saison brewed with seventy pounds of strawberries from a farm in Limington. A saison? From Geary’s? With strawberries? Yes, yes and yes.

90th Annual St. Peter’s Bazaar

| Posted in Events

The Bangor Daily News has a report on the 90th Annual St. Peter’s Bazaar taking place this weekend.

Volunteers from the parish, from teenagers to longtime parishioners over the age of 90, gathered to mix, shape, bake, decorate and package around 7,000 cookies to be sold at the bazaar. More than 70 dozen eggs were used to prepare the Italian cookies, all carefully loaded in and out of large pizza ovens by Sam Marcisso, a longtime volunteer at the event. Completing the incredible scene were rows of volunteers sitting at tables diligently performing various tasks.

“The frosting and sprinkling is going well,” said Josephine Dulac, a parishioner at St. Peter Church for nearly eight decades. “We are packaging them up, ready to go!”

Inside Outside Above Below

| Posted in Events

According to a report from Urban Eye, artists Lauren Fensterstock & Aaron Stephan are teaming up with Masa Miyake on a set of interesting events that will be “exploring the intersection of food, making, and conversation”.

According to the artist statement,

Each performance involves local artists, builders, and cooks.  The events will take place in a physical structure designed and built specifically for this event in which a meal will be prepared and served. INSIDE OUTSIDE ABOVE BELOWwill question normative ways of eating and interacting within one’s community by creating correlations between construction, collaboration and consumption.  It will encompass how we eat – what environment we eat in – who we eat with – the historical precedence for these actions – and the potential to instigate a constructive dialogue with these components.

There will be six performances/meals in September, tickets are now on sale at Eventbrite.

Interview with East Ender

| Posted in People

The Portland Phonix interviewed Karl Deuben and Bill Leavy, chef/owners of East Ender, for this week’s edition of the newspaper.

Two worlds collided when East Ender proprietors Bill Leavy and Karl Deuben met while working at Hugo’s 11 years ago. The two grew up in very different areas of the country — Deuben in Denver and Leavy on Staten Island — and were working in education and advertising, respectively, before discovering their culinary passions. Once they got their first taste (pun intended) of the restaurant business, however, they couldn’t stop, and became staples of the Portland dining scene even before founding SmallAxe Food Truck in 2012 and East Ender eight months ago.

Reviews: Bramhall & Portland Patisserie

| Posted in Reviews

The Press Herald has reviewed Bramhall,

But the biggest surprise is the look. Clean and rustic, dark but attractively lit with dozens of candles and antique Edison wall sconces, Bramhall makes you feel like you’ve just entered a secret club.

and also reviewed Portland Patisserie.

But when I opened this sandwich, it looked like someone had ladled a heaping spoonful of onion soup with lots of caramelized onion and melted Gruyere cheese onto the bread.

It was a wet sandwich, but the wonderful crusty baguette held the moisture nicely. My sandwich also came with a little cup of onion soup broth, so I could dunk the sandwich for even more moist flavor.

Jonny St. Laurent

| Posted in People

The Press Herald has published a Where Are They Now article about chef Jonny Saint Laurent, best know for Uncle Billy’s Southside Bar-B-Que and Uncle Billy’s Resto-Bar.

Now the chef is a caterer and restaurant consultant for most of the year. At the summer camp, his hours are filled with making three kinds of meatballs (vegetarian; gluten-free, egg-free and dairy-free; and “normal”), baking 175 homemade cookies a day, experimenting with ways to get girls to eat eggs, and generally trying to please persnickety palates.

Celebrator Beer News

| Posted in Beer

celebratorThe August/September issue of Celebrator Beer News includes a survey of the Portland beer scene (page 21).

 When many people hear “Portland craft beer,” they immediately think of Portland, Ore. But New England’s Portland also has a great deal to offer. For the first few months of this year, I found myself working on a project in our country’s original Portland during its stormiest winter in years.

The article mentions Geary’s, Allagash, Bissell,  Rising Tide, Foundation, Austin Street, Great Lost Bear, Novare, Bunker, Maine Craft Distilling and many more brewers, brewpubs and restaurants.

Women to Watch: Heather Sanborn

| Posted in People

Mainebiz has selected Rising Tide co-owner Heather Sanborn for their 2015 short list of business Women to Watch in Maine. Each year Mainebiz highlights women who “have shown the skill, tenacity and smarts to make a difference not only at their own companies or organizations, but in their particular industries as well.”

If you want to know the movers and shakers behind Maine’s booming beer industry, getting to know Heather Sanborn would be a good first step. And that’s not just because she’s the director of business operations for Rising Tide Brewing Co…Sanborn’s legal expertise has been especially helpful in pushing Maine lawmakers to adopt laws that protect the beer industry and fight off the vestiges of the state’s Prohibition-era regulations. In working with the Maine Brewers’ Guild, Sanborn helped draft three major pieces of legislation that have had a significant impact in improving Maine’s beer culture.