The James Beard Foundation has put out a public call for entries for the 2016 Awards.
Is a restaurant you know deserving of consideration from the Beard Foundation? Then fill out this online form and your submission will be considered as the Foundation is putting together the list of semi-final nominees due out in February. The deadline for submissions is December 31st.
In 2014, the Beard Foundations received more than 38,000 entries through this process.
Press Herald food editor Peggy Grodinsky tries out borrowing kitchen equipment from the Maine Tool Library.
The library offers kitchen tools, alongside saws and bolt cutters, which means you may not need to own that Vitamix.
Former Sunday Telegram restaurant critic Nancy Heiser, has written an article about Portland’s small plate restaurant trend for The Boston Globe.
Small plates have taken hold as a culinary craze in many cities, but in Portland, arguably New England’s small city most revered for food, they are hot, and we’re not talking temperature. Several restaurants that have opened to some acclaim are offering only small plates, and most are doing so in small spaces too. Don’t come expecting full-blown entrées with trimmings.
But you will eat well. Very well.
Central Provisions, Lolita, Sur Lie and Bao Bao are all featured.
The Press Herald reports Mirabelle House is delayed pending a zoning appeal.
The ruling by code enforcement office Justin Browns means that the house’s owner, Marc Christensen and his business partners, must delay the beginning of cooking class slated to begin Oct. 10, until the town’s zoning board of appeals meets later that month to consider his application for permits to operate. Brown also ruled out other potential uses for the elegant home, barring the use of the property for weddings, as a production studio, or as a general event venue for corporate retreats or parties, uses that the business’s website had mentioned as possible options.
Both the Press Herald and the Bangor Daily News report claims by staff from the short-lived Pockets eatery in the Old Port that they were unpaid by their former employer.
Employees of a sandwich shop that opened and closed in the Portland’s Old Port this summer say they were never paid for their work.
Pockets, which sold sandwiches 24 hours a day, opened on the corner of Fore and Market streets around the beginning of July and closed last week.
The Press Herald has a report on Vinland chef/owner David Levi’s complaint that Yelp manipulated his restaurant’s reviews on the site when he declined to advertise.
A Portland restaurant owner says Yelp has manipulated reviews of his restaurant after he declined to buy ads, an accusation the online recommendation site has faced before and vigorously denies, saying reviews are ranked by a computer algorithm.
Vinland owner David Levi said he was prompted to speak out Monday after he noticed that Yelp’s local community manager, Steff Deschenes, downgraded her personal review of his restaurant from four stars to three stars a year after posting the review. But Deschenes said she made the change months ago, after reflecting on her experience at Vinland.
There’s a front page report in today’s Maine Sunday Telegram on the serious shortage of qualified cooks to work in the state’s restaurants.
[Troy] Mains, whose kitchen must turn out 150 lunches and 200 dinners a day but is currently four cooks short, said he has interviewed people just out of culinary school who can’t cut an onion or bone a chicken.
“There’s a decline in cooks, not just the amount but the quality,” Mains said. “When I was up and coming in the restaurant business, I can remember a stack of 50 resumes in a folder of people who wanted to work, and now if I hire four cooks, one works out.”
This week’s Portland Phoenix includes an interview with the head chef and owner of The Porthole,
LO: Can you tell me a little bit about the menu?
LC: I’d say that breakfast and lunch is basically “dinerific” sort of food, like high-end sort of diner. We have lobster pancakes … you know, it’s a nicer sort of breakfast for a cheaper price. (For dinner) we use fresh, local seafood. I buy my seafood from Harbor Fish, and we buy our lobsters here on the wharf so it’s very convenient and fresh. They’re in the ocean hours before you’re eating them.
and their annual student guide to cheap eats.
It’s no secret that college students are usually scraping by financially; just look online at the poor college student memes and Tumblr posts and you’ll get the idea. Higher education is expensive, but that doesn’t mean you should sit in your dorm room and eat Ramen every night. With the budget-friendly dining options below, you can afford to hit the town and still have enough money to do laundry.
The Bangor Daily News has a report on Mirabelle House Culinary Vacations, a house in Falmouth that is home to a “full immersion into the Portland foodie and culinary scene”.
Daylong and evening classes are expected to attract local participants from Maine and New England. Though bookings have not yet begun, the concept is designed for “people who have a solid foundation in cooking already and want to go to the next level and have a one on one experience with the chefs,” Howland said, adding that kids classes will be added if there is a demand.
Update: The Portland Phoenix has also published an article about the culinary retreat.
An article on Eater Maine earlier this week brought attention to an online advertisement for a “thriving restaurant” in the 04102 area code. Due to the location and building description rumors had begun to spread online and off that Caiola’s was for sale or possibly was going to close.
I talked this morning with Caiola’s co-owner Lisa Vacarro and she cleared up that there are no plans to close the restaurant. However, they are open to selling the restaurant/building and are cautiously considering the possibilities. A couple of local restaurateurs have expressed interest but there’s no firm plans at this time.