Maine food blogger Sharon Kitchens was featured the Boston Globe Magazine this past weekend.

Before opting for a quieter existence in Maine, Kitchens, now 40, worked in the film industry in New York and Los Angeles. In 2008, she moved to a funky factory-turned-loft in Somerville’s Davis Square, where she joined a community-supported agriculture farm-share and a local fish-share and grew vegetables with neighbors on the roof. Finding herself drawn more and more to the idea of sustainable living, Kitchens decided it was time to commit. In 2011, she purchased an 1830s farmhouse with an attached barn and chicken coop on about 2 acres of land in Raymond, Maine, some 20 miles northwest of Portland.

Kitchens is the author of The Root and Delicious Musings. She lives in Raymond where she gardens as well as keeps bees and chickens.

Mainely Burgers (Facebook, Twitter) plans to launch their Portland-based food truck, Mainely Burgers 2.0, next month on Monday May 20. Owners Ben Berman and Jack Barber have two spots already picked out and are continuing to explore other options. They’ll be experimenting with serving breakfast at 108 Saint John Street, outside the building where their production kitchen is located, and have leased a spot in the parking lot of the former Press Herald press building on Pearl Street for service later in the day. The menu of traditional beach truck food will be expanding in Portland because being in the city gives them room to be “a little more adventurous” with new specials making it on to the menu throughout the summer.

The pair founded Mainely Burgers last summer and had a very successful inaugural year operating on the Scarborough State Beach (the beach truck will re-open on Memorial Day weekend). They’re both Cape Elizabeth HS grads and are now attending college in the Boston area. They see running Maine Burgers and managing the 15-=erson staff as a great learning opportunity, and hope their success can serve as an example to others their age who want to launch their own start-ups.

Ben and Jack also tell me they expect to also use the MB 2.0 truck to provide catering for public and corporate events.

Maine Burgers was a nominee in Phoenix Best of Portland readership poll and was one of the Final Four the winner best burgers in the recent Eater Maine burger series.

Festival Warm-up — Shelton Brothers, the primary organizers behind The Festival, will be at the Bier Cellar on Thursday with a selection of beers that will be part of the summer event. Available at the tasting will be “De Struise Pannepot Gran Reserve 2005 and Black Damnation II, Trois Dames Expesso Stout, Panil Barrique, Kerkom Bink Grand Cru, Blaugies D’Arbyste, High & Mighty Beer of the Gods, De La Senne Zinnebier, DeRanke Hop harvest 2012, Het nest Kleverentien, Anchorage Galaxy IPA, Mikkeller I Beat You, 8 Wired Superconducter IPA, Thirez Blonde, Adnams Blond”. The Festival is taking place in Portland June 21 and 22, tickets are available online.

Also on Thursday — the April Latte Art Competition is taking place at Tandem Coffee, food writer Alana Chernila will be speaking at The Telling Room, there will be a wine and cheese tasting at the Public Market House, and the Great Lost Bear is showcasing a select of beers from Long Trail Brewing.

Saturday — the First Deering Oaks Farmers Market of 2013 is taking place.

Sunday — a May Day Celebration is taking place at Broadturn Farm, the Maine Brew Bus will be making a day trip to Oxbow Brewing in Newcastle, and Petite Jacqueline is screening the movie Le Divorce for movie night.

Portland Kitchen Tour — tickets for the Portland Kitchen Tour are now on sale. 6 Portland area kitchens are part of the event, each one will “feature a chef, cookbook author, cooking demo or tasting”.

Taste of the Nation — the 2013 Taste of the Nation is scheduled to take place June 23 at Wolfe’s Neck Farm in Freeport. Tickets are now on sale. The annual event raises money to combat childhood hunger in the Maine. Last year’s sold out Taste of the Nation raised over $170,000.

For more information on these and other upcoming food happenings in the area, visit the event calendar.

If you are holding a food event this week that’s not listed above, publicize it by adding it as a comment to this post.

Linda Greenlaw and Browne Trading are teaming up to offer bluefin tuna charters this summer.

Greenlaw, an Isle au Haut resident, author and world-renowned fisherman, will offer chartered fishing tours for bluefin tuna out of Portland Harbor through Browne Trading Co. on Commercial Street…Trips will be aboard the Hazel Browne, a 46-foot Wesmac owned by Rod Mitchell, the owner of Browne Trading Co.

CTN host and Portland Daily Sun editor Curtis Robinson interviewed Karl and Sarah Sutton about their food truck Bite into Maine (website, Facebook, Twitter).

The Suttons have an ongoing Kickstarter campaign to help underwrite the cost of their small operation to participate the Lobster Roll Rumble this summer in NYC.

The Maine Sunday Telegram has published a review of The Frog and Turtle.

The Frog and Turtle ups Westbrook’s foodie street credibility and style. Local music is a treat, and its brunch is a good one. (Try the homemade raspberry jelly doughnuts for a sugar rush; a pint-sized Bloody Mary will bring a rush of a different kind.) For those seeking dinner, make a reservation and consider ordering from the upscale pub menu. A plate of pork wings with fiery tangerine sauce while listening to excellent local music makes for a great evening.

The Portland City Council meets Monday and as part of the agenda will be reviewing the liquor license applications from several new restaurants:

• Empire – in its new guise as a Chinese restaurant, the downstairs of Empire will serve “a menu of traditional Chinese Dim Sum and other authentic dishes” according to letter from the new owner Theresa Chan. The draft menu (page 122) includes items like duck and pan fried duck egg salad, shrimp rice crepes, and foraged conch noodles. Chan plans on using the upstairs as a live music venue and as a space for private events. Chan is hoping to open in May.
  Fun history facts: from 1916 to 1953 a Chinese restaurant called Empire operated in the same building. Portland’s very first Chinese restaurant opened in 1880.
• Boone’s Fish House & Oyster Room – this will be Harding Lee Smith’s fourth restaurant. The draft menu (page 154) includes traditional seafood dishes, a “Snow Island Extreme Lobster Bake”, as well as a selection of oysters “from here and away”.  Smith is hoping to open in June.
  Fun history fact: Boone’s Restaurant operated in this space on Custom House Wharf for more than a century from 1898 to early in the 21st  Century.
• Sypp – Thomas Henderson is opening an “upscale wine/martini bar” at 345 Fore Street in the space most recently occupied by Sebastian’s. The menu is still being worked on but a brief draft menu (page 182) lists “assorted cheese and cracker plates”, olive plate, tuna tartar, antipasto plate. Henderson hopes to open in May.
  Fun history fact: Sypp will be loocated in Boothby Square which was named for Colonel Frederick E. Boothby.

For details on all the food businesses under development in Portland see the Under Construction List.

Rosemont manager and Press Herald wine columnist Joe Appel has authored an article for the new issue of Saveur. The article is entitled Urban Grapes, and in it Appel writes about the urban wineries of Vienna that produce field blended wines.

It’s a tradition that dates back at least to Roman times, when grapevines grew together on family farms. Whereas other cities gradually lost vineyards as they urbanized, an 18th-century decree stipulated that Vienna’s crazy-quilt winemaking districts were to remain in perpetuity.

The article isn’t yet available online but you can pick-up a copy of Saveur at Longfellow Books.

For more of Appel’s writing visit his website, Soul of Wine.

Dispatch reports that Marcy’s reopened earlier this week after a 3-month renovation.

It’s been well worth the wait, though, because the renovations look incredible. They’ve gone and spiffed up the already classic diner look they already had. Everything looks fresh and new, even if it wasn’t completely replaced.

The Golden Dish has published a review of the East Ender.

For main a course my friend had to have the Swedish meatballs served over American-style house-made wide noodles. What a sixties dish, perhaps  better served as a first course in a smaller portion.  Even so, they were beautifully presented and the flavor was intensely rich, the noodles  al dente and the spinach leaves a nice touch.

Not So Hush Hush took place yesterday at Eventide. Portland Hunt & Alpine Club (website, Facebook) owner Andrew Volk produced a menu of excellent drinks while the Eventide kitchen crew sent out a stream of hors d’oeuvres to the packed house. Here’s the cocktail menu for the event, the Winslow Sour was the favorite among those I spoke to:

• Munjoy Punch – lemon juice, green tea, gin and pineapple juice
• Cumberland Punch – lime juice, brandy, rum and cava
• Winslow Sour – bourbon, lemon juice, apple bitters, egg white
• Ebb and Flow – manzanilla sherry, gin, Royal Rose saffron syrup
• Shooter – aquavit, worcestershire sauce, horseradish, oyster

Portland Hunt & Alpine Club recently leased a space on Market Street and plans on opening their craft cocktail bar this July.

For additional photos see the ones posted by Zach Bowen and Sean Thomas.

Bard Coffee got a shout out in a New Yorker article about the specialty coffee conference that took place last weekend in Boston.

“This is what coffee tasted like in nineteenth century!” Peter Giuliano exclaimed, holding a cup of Bard coffee’s Sumatra Wahana Natural as we talked at a small stand near the entrance of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, where the Specialty Coffee Association of America was holding its twenty-fifth annual exposition this past weekend. “I’ve never tasted anything like it.”

The Press Herald and the Forecaster are reporting that South Portland City Council has voted to allow the farmers market to return to Hinkley Drive in 2013.

City officials had been reluctant to grant the market permission to operate on the site next to Mill Creek Park and a credit union because the busy road would have to be closed for several hours every Thursday.

But after the city’s Planning Board voted last week to give the farmers’ market a special exception permit, councilors voted Wednesday night to allow the road closure.

Maine-based food blogs Sweeter Salt and From Away and chef Mitchell Gerrow from East Ender are participating in the American Lamb Pro-Am:

• Step 1: 12 food bloggers have posted original lamb-centric recipes for us all to vote on. From Away has submitted a recipe for Indonesian Lamb Rendang and Sweeter Salt has proposed a recipe for Caribbean Roast Leg of Lamb
• Step 2: bloggers who authored the top recipes will be paired up with chefs from Boston, Providence and Portland to collaborate on the dish
• Step 3: a public event in Boston on May 19 where the results of the blogger/chef collaborations are available for a public tasting

Krista Kern Desjarlais, chef/owner of Bresca, is working on a new venture which she plans on calling Bresca and the Honey Bee. This week she closed on the purchase of Outlet Beach on Sabbathday Lake in the town of New Gloucester. The property includes docks, boat rentals, a beach and a snack shack (in operation since 1929) which she’ll be converting into her new eatery.

Bresca and the Honey Bee will be open 7 days a week from Memorial Day straight through to Labor Day. The menu “will be picnic inspired with a focus on pastry and ice cream with hamburgers, hotdogs, pizza, salads and snacks.”

I’ve always been a big fan of Bresca and look forward to visiting Krista’s new venture. A trip (or two or three) to New Gloucester this summer are going to be on my calendar.

The Portland Phoenix has published a review of The North Point.

It’s a menu that says: my kitchen is tiny but I care about food — an experience familiar to many New Yorkers. There are lots of cold meats in the form of patés and charcuterie, and a nice selection of cheeses. A pheasant paté was quite good — sweet but peppery with some gaminess, with a texture more meaty than creamy. Even better was a trio of juicy sausages — a spicy-smoky andouille, a sweet and fatty kielbasa, and a peppery rabbit — served with four sauces.

The Press Herald What Ales You column reports that both Shipyard and Allagash made it on to the list of the 50 best selling craft beers in the country.

Shipyard is the No. 15 selling beer in the craft beer category and No. 23 in overall brewers, up from No. 16 in crafts and No. 24 overall last year. Allagash made it to No. 48 on the craft beer list after not appearing on the list last year.

Map & Menu has published a review of Blue Rooster.

The Blue Rooster fills the perfect need in Portland when you don’t want to sit down for long but still want to be wowed with every bite. If you work in the Old Port and don’t make the Blue Rooster a priority for your next lunch day, you’re missing out.

Photo Credit: Map & Menu

Lobster Gal has published a review of the lobster roll at Eventide.

Even fresh picked, tasty lobster on a perfectly grilled grocery hot dog bun can start to seem, dare I say, ho-hum.  Creativity can go wildly wrong with lobster rolls.  I can see why the chef at Eventide is considered a culinary genius.  Don’t question brilliance, just go with it, it just might blow you away.  My only regret is that I didn’t summon up the stomach space to try the warm, rum butter option.  Mmm, can anything be wrong that involves the words “rum butter”?

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald includes an article on GMRI’s partnership with Maine restaurants to increase the use of sustainable fish species on their menu.

Samuel Grimley, sustainable seafood project manager at GMRI, said the institute has been planning Culinary Partners for a little over a year now, and held a couple of feedback meetings with restaurateurs to get their input as the program was developed.

Since February, five Maine restaurants have joined up and set goals for themselves for the coming year. In addition to Five Fifty-Five, the other members are Sonny’s and Local 188 in Portland, Sea Glass at Inn by the Sea in Cape Elizabeth and the Jordan Pond House restaurant on Mount Desert Island.