Category: General News

The Press Herald announced the winners of the inaugural Source Awards over the weekend. Among the recipients was The Farm Stand in the Newcomer category.

“Indispensable,” one nominator gushed of our winner for the Source Newcomer Award, for a business or entity established in the last 18 months. Another credited The Farm Stand, the brainchild of Penny Jordan and Ben Slayton of Farmers’ Gate butchery in Wales, with allowing them to “effortlessly integrate” the mission of eating local into their lives.

The Forecaster has published an article on the new owners of Town Landing Market and their plans for the Falmouth business.

MaryBeth Bachman, a school nurse at Falmouth High School, purchased the iconic Town Landing Market on March 31. Bachman will run the store with her daughter, Sara, and two business partners: her brother Arthur Curran, and accountant Dan McCarthy. She said virtually all the staff will be staying on.

“The idea is to keep the old-time feel, but update some of the products,” Bachman said this week.

Aurora Provisions(facebook, twitter, instagram) has applied for a liquor license. Owner Marika Green plans to expand their hours to 7 days a week and serve beer and wine to customers who eat at the popular West End cafe.

The Maine Sunday Telegram reports that the state will soon be making state restaurant inspection reports available online.

The move to open access to inspection reports comes as a Yarmouth lawmaker is pushing to expand the team of state health inspectors so they can get to each restaurant more frequently to check kitchens and look for improperly stored foods. A legislative committee is scheduled to hold a public hearing Monday morning on the bill.

Restaurant inspection reports for Portland are already available on the city’s website.

Chefs Damian Sansonetti from Piccolo and Chris Gould from Central Provisions are nominees in the Food & Wine People’s Best New Chef competition.

Visit the Food & Wine website to cast your vote for one of our home town favorites.

The Maine Sunday Telegram has published an update on the city’s restaurant inspection program,

The paper revealed that many restaurants hadn’t been inspected for years and that, when the city hired its first health inspector in 2011, 19 out of the first 23 restaurants inspected failed – a failure rate of 82.6 percent. Since then, the failure rate has steadily improved. It was 45.5 percent in 2012 (40 out of 88 restaurants), 10.5 percent in 2013 (33 of 314) and just 6.4 percent in 2014 (31 of 482).

and an article on the crack-down on Portland chef’s use of cooking methods such as sous vide.

In recent months, hundreds of pounds of meat have been embargoed by health officials and are waiting in cold storage until restaurants can prove the food is safe. Several restaurants have been ordered to stop vacuum-sealing their meats, cooking sous vide dishes and offering some types of house-cured meats until they develop special hazard plans and in some cases get formal variances from the Maine Food Code.

The nominees have been announced and voting has begun in the Portland Phoenix 2015 Best of Portland Readership Poll.

Portland Food Map is a nominee this year in two categories:

• Best Food Blog/Column category (along with Portland Food Coma, From Away, Eater Maine and The Daily Dish)
• Best Blog category (along with Spinster Jane, Fighting the Tides, Hilly Town, and Knack Factory).

Now is the time to review the full list of categories/nominees  and to vote for your favorites.

Several food trucks are for sale:

• Don’s Lunch in Westbrook is for sale for $25,000. The Press Herald reports that the owner’s heard from about a dozen people interested in the truck.
• The former Small Axe truck, a 1995 “California style” truck is for sale for $50,000. Co-owner Karl Deuben tells me that they’re currently in talks with a couple interested parties.
• The former El Rayo airstream is for sale for $17,500.
• One of the two Wicked Good Truck vehicles is for sale for $30,000.

On the flip side, at least two new food trucks are set to launch this year: Cannoli Joe’s and an, as yet unnamed, Japanese food truck.

Update: the Press Herald reports that Don’s Lunch has been sold.

The Press Herald reports that a deal has been worked out to negate the eviction notice that Mama’s Crowbar had received so the bar can remain open through the end of their lease on October 1, 2015.

The Press Herald has published an article about Mama’s  Crow Bar and the efforts of their landlord to evict the popular East End bar.

Henley finds herself locked in a legal battle with the building’s owners, who she says are trying to evict her. This week she received an eviction notice saying she failed to pay the March rent. Her attorney, John McVeigh, said the owners failed to come and collect the rent check as they have each month over the past two years.

“Why they’ve decided to try this end run when all they have to do is wait six months and they’ll be done with it anyway, I can’t explain,” McVeigh said.