Category: General News

Type A has a report on 12 Seats, a new monthly cooking collaboration between Krista and Erik Desjarlais. It will be a highly customized event for 12 people and will be held at Bresca’s Middle Street location.

The goal is to create a highly personalized experience. For example there will be dialogue with every guest about dietary restrictions. The dinner will be $120pp, excluding wine.

Erik and Krista plan to secure a phone number over the weekend and will start taking reservations shortly. The first meal will be served on Sunday, October 25th. I’ll update this post when the phone number is available.

About Town is citing “fairly reliable sources” in a report that Trader Joe’s is coming to Portland. A commenter on the blog wrote that the checkout staff at a Trader Joe’s in Saugus said, ” they expected to open a Portland store in the next year to 18 months”.

The new issue of Port City Life is now available at newstands. It includes a special Maine Eats section filled with restaurant recommendations, cool kitchen gadgets and 10 must eat foods in Maine and more. The food articles also spill over in the rest of this issue including a feature article on young organic farmers in Maine entitled Living the Good Life 2.0.
This is the last issue of Port City Life. The magazine was bought earlier this year by the publishers of Maine Home + Design. They’ll be renaming and relaunching the magazine but hopefully the flood of good food coverage will continue.

The now defunct Portland Public Market and its successful spin off the Public Market House make an appearance in this article from GOOD about a national rebirth in public markets.

Across the United States, the public market concept may be undergoing something of a renaissance—coinciding with an increase in farmers’ markets, direct-to-consumer food sales, and smart growth initiatives in downtowns.

This past weekend’s Sunday Magazine in The Boston Globe featured a list of “50 Food Finds”. Included in the list were Allagash, Eve’s, Browne Trading, Standard, Hugo’s, and Five Fifty-Five. Black Dinah Chocolate from Isle au Haut, the Robinhood Free Meeting House in Georgetown and When Pigs Fly in York also made the cut.
Also in The Globe’s food section is an article about Linda Bean’s new venture, Linda Bean’s Perfect Maine Lobster Roll. Bean recently worked with the West End Neighborhood Association to create the 61-foot lobster roll at this year’s Old Port Festival.

The Portland Daily Sun has an update on the status of the Cactus Club. Four months ago the City Council revoked the bar’s liquor license but it’s still operating during the appeals process.

Portland Police, who recommended in February that the council not reissue the bar’s liquor license, said 64 disturbances took place inside or in the immediate vicinity of Cactus Club in 2008, including 19 fights, a shooting, and a bizarre incident where a sport-utility vehicle drove into the side of the building. In addition, the bar was found guilty of two liquor license violations.

Cold River Vodka made an appearance today in the Washington Post blog All We Can Eat.

Unlike Karlsson’s, Cold River is batch-distilled in a copper pot still. In the glass, it’s got a little sweeter taste than Karlsson’s, but it has an equally clean finish. Tasting Karlsson’s and Cold River side by side, you can understand that the idea of a potato vodka having “terroir” is actually not that far-fetched. In the right hands, a potato grown in northernmost Maine is going to make a different vodka from one grown on the southeastern coast of Sweden.

There’s a front page article in today’s Press Herald on how all this rain is impacting Maine farmers.

Last June, Ralph Turner harvested 6,000 peony stems at his Laughing Stock Farm in Freeport. This year, thanks to gray mold, he’ll be lucky to harvest half that number.

Tomato plants are turning black at Broadturn Farm in Scarborough.

Carrots and string beans have failed to sprout at Little River Flower Farm in Buxton.

O’Naturals made it on to the Mother Nature Network’s list of the Top 10 Organic Fast-Food Restaurants.