Category: Under Construction

Chris Wilcox, the chef/owner of the former Judy Gibson, has announced plans to launch Flash’s Barbecue (instagram) this summer. Wilcox will be serving Saint Louis-style barbecue.

Meats are cooked high above slow burning embers very slow giving everything a more grilled and less smokey flavor. Growing up in St.Louis, barbecue has always been a love of mine and I’m excited to cook A LOT of it. I’ll be popping up around Portland cooking my take on St.louis style barbecue while still giving everything the same JG touch we strived for in South Portland. Stay tuned for more details!

A new business called Backwoods Burger Shack (facebook, instagram) is under construction in the space formerly occupied by Curbside Comforts at 680 Gray Road in Gorham.

Chef/owner Rick Boyd (linkedin) will be serving a menu (see below) of salads, sandwiches, hand cut fries, and burgers along with milkshakes, beer, wine, cocktails and frozen drinks. Ice cream sandwiches will be available for dessert. The Backwoods menu will be available for takeout or to enjoy on their outdoor seating area.

Boyd hails from East Texas and attended the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont in the early 1990s. He owned and operated several restaurants first in Idaho and then in the Lake Tahoe area before moving to Maine.

Boyd hopes to launch Backwoods Burger in mid-April, and has plans to expand the patio for next year to include an outdoor bar, fire pits, stage and year round seating.

Bowman and Anna Brown have bought the building at 34 Portland Street where they plan to relocate their acclaimed restaurant Elda (website, instagram). A recent instagram post shared,

In the course of the last [CRAZY] six years we have learned so much about our adopted home state. This summer we invite you experience an even more personal and intimate deep-dive into the beauty, bounty, and magic of the woods and waters of Maine. Please stay tuned for info and inspo as we continue to learn, build, and connect. We hope to welcome to the table soon.

The new restaurant will feature an integrated kitchen/dining room on an expanded main floor of the building. Elda will be offering a shorter version of the chef’s tasting menu with a focus on utilizing indigenous ingredients. Diners will have the option of two different beverage pairings: one featuring on reserve wines, and another exploring cider and sake.

34 Portland Street was most recently the home of Candy’s which closed in 2020. The Browns hope complete the buildout of the restaurant in time to launch the new Elda in late summer.

Elda initially opened in Biddeford in December 2017, and moved to its most recent location at 14 Main Street in the summer of 2021. In January the Browns announced the closure of their Scandinavian cafe Jackrabbit.

Brown was a 2011 Food & Wine Best New Chef, and a multi-year Beard Awards semifinalist for Best Chef: Southwest for his former restaurant Forage in Salt Lake City. In addition he was a Best Chef: Northeast Beard Award semifinalist in 2020 and 2022 for Elda. Eater named Elda to their list of the Best New Restaurants in the country in 2018 and the New York Times reported on Elda in the same year.

Shown above are the building that will house the new version of Elda, chef Brown in his kitchen at 14 Main Street in Biddeford from 2023, and a dish served at Elda in October 2021 featuring a Merrit Island oyster, cherrystone clam, lobster ceviche and a smoke mussel.

Huong Le will be launching a vegetarian and vegan Vietnamese takeout restaurant this Sunday called Mama Le’s.

Le is just back from a month long visit to Vietnam and will be folding recent dining experiences from her trip along with her decades of experience in the restaurant experience into the menu for the restaurant. The menu includes appetizers like vegetarian Cha Gio (egg rolls filled with mushrooms, carrot and taro root), a choice of vegan banh mi, and main dishes like Pho Chay (vegana pho) and Mi Xao Rau (lo mein with mixed vegetables).

Mama Le will operate out of the Banh Appetit shop at 171 Cumberland Ave, which is owned and operated by her daughter Snow Thi Le. Mama Le will be open Sunday 11 am – 3 pm, and Monday through Friday 5 – 8 pm.

The Maine Sunday Telegram published a very good feature article about Huong Le this past May. Le opened Portland’s first sit-down Vietnamese restaurant Huong’s Vietnamese Food in 2000. Below is a photo of Huong Le and her three daughters.

Blue Lobster Urban Winery (facebook, website, instagram) has announced plans to move their production facility and tasting room to 200 Anderson Street where they’ll be taking over the space that was formerly the Urban Farm Fermentory tasting room.

This will house a larger production space to handle our growth, an expanded tasting room, parking lot and outdoor space. With so much new room for activities, you can expect that we will be introducing new weekly events, an expanded wine cocktail program and other options we hope to announce soon!

Blue Lobster will continue to be open at 219 Anderson Street through March 22nd. Opening date for their new spot is still TBD.

UFF closed their tasting room on February 24th. Blue Lobster launched in 2017 and opened their tasting room in 2018. They have been located since then at 219 Anderson Street in the Rockingham Electric building.

The Twinflower Cafe and Five of Clubs bar are scheduled to open this spring along with the launch of the Longfellow Hotel (website, facebook, instagram) which is under construction at 754 Congress Street.

Twinflower will be a daytime counter service cafe serving breakfast and lunch with a menu that leans into vegetarian, plant-based and gluten-free dishes. Five of Clubs will be the Longfellow’s lobby bar featuring classic cocktails, wines, local beers and NA drinks along with bar snacks like gougeres with chicken liver mousse, a selection of fresh seafood dishes, and larger dishes like a rabbit terrine with black truffles and pistachios.

Wilson Suliveras has been hired as the executive chef at Longfellow. He’s a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America (Hyde Park). His Maine resume includes working at White Barn Inn as the pastry chef and then executive sous chef, and more recently for Bowman Brown as the executive sous chef at Elda/Jackrabbit in Biddeford.

Here’s a look at the draft menus with Twinflower on the left and Five of Clubs on the right.

Mr. Tuna will be taking over the former Solo Cucina market (photo on left) in South Portland. They will be using the space as a production kitchen and headquarters for their mobile food and catering/private events business.

Separately, Mr. Tuna is making good progress on the buildout of their Middle Street restaurant (photo on right). They hope to open sometime in May. The new restaurant will seat 26 overall—a 14-seat bar and banquet table seating in the front windows. Sidewalk outdoor seating will be available as well.

The Mr. Tuna location in Monument Square will be closing in March in anticipation of the move to Middle Street and South Portland.

Solo Cucina was opened by the owners of Solo Italiano on March 25, 2020, and it closed in January 2024.

The Prentice Hospitality Group is working on a new restaurant called Douro (website, instagram) which they hope to open this summer this fall. It will be located on the front corner of the Sun Life Insurance building (110 Thames St) near Twelve.

Douro will be an all-day seafood restaurant with a Portuguese-inspired menu with a large selection of wines by the glass as well as classic cocktails and non-alcoholic drink options. Twelve executive chef Colin Wyatt and pastry chef Georgia Macon are in the early stages of developing a menu so stay tuned for further details.

The 3,300 sq ft restaurant is being designed in a collaboration between Prentice staff and Woodhull Commercial Studio.

The Prentice Hospitality Group also operates Twelve, Evo Kitchen + Bar, The Chebeague Island Inn and is working on relaunching The Good Table in Cape Elizabeth which they bought last year.

To get caught up on all the new restaurants, bars, breweries, bakeries and other hospitality businesses in development visit the Under Construction List.

Taj (website, facebook, instagram) has leased a space in the Clarks Pond Shopping Center where they’re building out a new larger restaurant.

The new spot will seat ~70 people (see floor plan below) with an 11-seat bar, a dedicated area for takeout pick-up, a bigger kitchen as well as a larger space for their lunch buffet. Owner Sai Guntaka has long had a vision for a Indian cocktail program at Taj which will be a new element of the menu at the new restaurant. Jim Baldi will be consulting on the development of the cocktail program.

Guntaka hopes to complete the renovations and kitchen build-out in to for Taj to move to its new location in June. Watch for murals by Mike Rich Design and lighting by Neon Dave to be part of the new interior.

To get caught up on all the new restaurants, bars, breweries, bakeries and other hospitality businesses in development visit the Under Construction List.