Joe Ricchio has announced he’s moving to Boston.
Why? Well, I’ve accepted a sales position with an established wine company, which is certainly the catalyst for the transition. More importantly though I think it’s important for Food Coma to expand a bit (and really, Boston is closer to Portland than Camden!), and there are few things I enjoy more than drinking and eating my way through a new city, so this seemed like as good a time as any to pull the trigger and get the f[***] out of dodge.
According to a report in today’s Press Herald, the Wok Inn in South Portland is closing as of today.
The closing may seem sudden to its fans, but the restaurant’s owners say that its original purpose, to put the Lee children, graduates of Scarborough High School, through college, was accomplished some years ago…It’s a bittersweet time for the family. They’re looking forward to leaving behind the grueling schedule the restaurant requires, but they’re also saying good-bye to longtime customers who have become friends and regulars, like Munson.
Scratch Baking has published photos (set 1 and set 2) of their intricate gingerbread rendition of the bakery in Willard Square.
The gingerbread house is currently on display in the lobby of the Downtown Residence Inn/Marriott on Fore Street. It’s an entry in a gingerbread house competition raising money for the Ronald McDonald House in Portland.
Photo Credit: Scratch Baking Co.
Travel and Leisure has named Miyake to their list of the Best Sushi Restaurants in the US.
Lobster may come to mind first when you think of Maine. But at Miyake, an elegant restaurant in downtown Portland, chef and owner Masa Miyake serves some of the best sushi along the Atlantic. His menu focuses on local catches: there’s sweet Maine shrimp laced with a spicy mayo and avocado, mini sardines, and even sea urchin roe harvested just up the coast. And yes, there is lobster on the menu, but it’s probably prepared in ways you’ve never tasted.
Earlier this year Bon Appetit had named Miyake one of the 10 best new sushi restaurants in the country.
The Munjoy Hill News has published a report on the Three Buoys Seafood Shanty and Grille which opened earlier this week on Cumberland Ave.
The two business partners behind 3 Buoys are former Legal Seafood officials. Bill Park, chef/owner, directed the test kitchen for it. “I got tired of being a number,” Park said recently. Legal Seafood has 30 restaurants between Boston and Florida. Although they do have growth in mind, the first and highly successful 3 Buoys in York will always be the flagship restaurant for Park. Currently, he’s looking for the right chef to step into his shoes here so Park can return to the larger York restaurant. The other business partner is Bill Holler, formerly vp of purchasing at Legal Seafood, Boston, with his wife Nikole. She’s former employee in the seafood business and is the operations manager at 3 Buoys. Nikole is looking for a few good servers, to fill out the staff. Currently Katie Haggerty is doing that job.
The Golden Dish has published the first review of the new Buck’s Naked BBQ on Wharf Street,
The ribs with the optional peach glaze were excellent—extremely tender and meaty with rich flavors of smoke and spice. The chicken was moist, with a perfect smoke ring of red around the meat sheathed in a beautiful mahogany hued skin.
and Dispatch has published a review of Nosh.
Needless to say, there wasn’t much conversation at our dinner table that night….and it wasn’t because I don’t like my coworker…but because my mouth was too happy to open for anything other than Nosh’s delicious food. I would recommend Nosh to the allergy conscious, burger fanatics, and people who have no idea what they want to eat; because they have everything. Thumbs up!
Dispatch has published an interview with one of my favorite Portland bartenders, Jeremy Sossei at Boda,
Because you were a novice until three years ago, did you find yourself researching drinking history like a mad man?
Oh God, yeah. Absolutely. I still am. I also went around to different bars and tried to watch and see how people made things. I was never much of a cocktail drinker before this job and honestly I don’t drink a lot of cocktails still right now. This job has kind of spoiled me in that I just developed a taste for hard liquor and it’s hard to go back once you get used to it.
and a profile of Dean’s Sweets.
As [owner Dean] Bingham humbly began recounting his journey in chocolate-making, his wife chimed in. “You were making some chocolate truffles and your friends all said ‘You should sell these!’”
“And I tell people that I foolishly believed them!” Bingham playfully countered.
MPBN has aired a piece on the Maine diver scallop fishery and the new harvesting rules being put in place.
It may be that lobster is Maine’s most popular seafood. But there are those who, if forced to choose, would opt instead for the Maine scallop – and more specifically, the diver-harvested scallop. But these delicacies have been under increasing pressure, and landings have been at historic lows in recent years. This week, scallop season opened under a new management system, which sets out a 10-year time-frame designed to restore this highly-valuable fishery.
In this week’s column in the Sun columnist Natalie Ladd writes about the annual Preble Street Resource Center Holiday Party.
“As long as we’ve been operating as a soup kitchen, or in that capacity, about 20 years now, we’ve held a holiday party for our clients,” said development coordinator, Melanie McKean. “We’ve always been blessed with very generous donors and supporters and have over 100 different entities who turn this event into a community project.”
The event is going to take place today at 11:30 am.
Instant Portland has published a review of the Salt Cellar.
But, what with Portland being a foodie town, it is the wall of finishing salts that most will come to try, and it does not disapoint. Carefully labled with suggested uses (and sometimes warnings — you should, for example, believe the note on the Ghost Pepper salt that says that it is HOT), the salts are lined up like works of art in an orderly display, spotlighted, each with a tester so you can shake a few flakes into your palm and sample them. (There is also a thoughfully placed water bubbler nearby, should you find yourself a little oversalted.) It is the samples that turn this from just a display into a sort of a playground.