Category: Openings

Lorne Wine (website, instagram, twitter), a wine bar and shop, opened for business in Biddeford on Friday.

Co-owners Carson James and Erin Sheehan are focusing on “low intervention wines” – organic/biodynamic sustainablely-produced wines made with minimal intervention in the wine making process. The shop also stocks some beer and cider.

Lorne is located in a 1,100 sq ft space at 61 Main Street (next to @dizzybirdsrotisserie and near @timeandtidecoffee).

They’re open Tuesday-Thursday 2-10, Friday/Saturday 12-11 and Sunday 12-6.

Huong’s Vietnamese Restaurant has opened Huong Ice Cream Coffee Shop. The new establishment is located at 261 Saint John Street and it opened on Thursday.

The new ice cream food truck Twist (instagram) is set to launch on July 4th. They’ll be at the corner of Merrill and Congress Streets starting at 2 pm.

Twist is a collaboration between Melissa Lombardi a former manager at Woodford F&B, and Dan Zarin, the longtime writer of the Breakfast Serial column in The Bollard/Mainer. They’ll be serving custom-blended ice cream and shakes made to order, “mixing in everything from Maine blueberries to fruity pebbles to wasabi peas”.

Bánh Appétit (instagram, facebook) has announced plans to open on Saturday.

Owner Tuyet Le leased 171 Cumberland Ave, the former Ten Te Piè location, where she plans to serve “banh mi, banh bao, banh pateso and more”.

A local Maine company called UnaRes Technologies (website, instagram) launched their first product earlier this month. UnaBrew is

…a comprehensive brewery management solution developed in close collaboration with industry experts. We’ve designed a powerful software platform to overcome the challenges of operating a brewery; from consistently brewing top quality beer to scheduling tasting room staff, and everything in between.

The company was founded by Ivan Novikov and Andrew Camarata. The two are longtime friends and avid beer lovers with backgrounds in software development. They’ve developed UnaBrew over the last 10 months, and are now focusing their energies on identifying and adding new features to the program.

Breweries interested in learning more about UnaBrew can reach them via their website or DM on instagram.

Yadie Ting (facebook, instagram), a Jamaican eatery, opened yesterday. They’re located on the 2nd floor of the Public Market House.

Yardie Ting serves “authentic Jamaican dishes with a modern twist , using fresh local ingredients and homemade rubs and spices.” The menu posted on Saturday included jerk chicken, tofu, or pork, and curry stew as a plate or bowl, as well as Jamaican tacos.

They’ll be open on Sunday, 12 – 5.

Owners Katie and Thom Werner opened Island Lobster Company(website, facebook, instagram) earlier this week. It’s located on Peaks Island in the space formerly occupied by Peaks Island House.

The 64-seat establishment is a trap-to-table restaurant, the Werners are serving lobsters that they’ve trapped and hauled in with their own boat. You can sea a copy of their menu on their website.

Coals Pizza (website, instagram, twitter) is scheduled to open today at 5 pm. Coals is located at 114 Preble Street in the former Portland & Rochester space. This is Coal’s only location outside of New York. They specialize in grilled pizza. You can see their full menu online.

A 2015 review in the New York Times sums up Coals this way,

The atmosphere is as quirky and appealing as the food, with a Catskills-meets-Brooklyn vibe from mounted deer antlers and painted country scenes. Sit there long enough and you’ll become aware of the rhythmic sound of the pizza cutter, a guy who wields a huge half moon of a knife that he rocks across the pies as they come out, dividing them into three- or four-bite squares. It’s a kind of siren call — one that should be heeded by all pizza lovers.

Coals was founded in 2004 in the Bronx. Their first two locations are located in Bronxville and Port Chester.

Back Story: Coals owner Billy Etzel was born and raised in NYC, but he’s been visiting Maine since age 3 and always felt connected to the state. Four years ago Etzel’s son began doing some family genealogical research. Etzel himself is adopted, and through the research online they discovered that his biological family was trying to get in contact with him. As it turns out his biological family is from Kittery, just 30 minutes away from where Etzel owns a cabin. It’s as a result of this connection to Maine to Etzel decided to open his latest branch of Coals Pizza here in Portland.

I’m happy to announce the release of the 2019 PFM Printed Pocket Guide. This handy paper reference provides a compact list of the best restaurants, bakeries, breweries, coffee shops, cocktail bars, and cafes in Portland. It also includes highlights of a few places to dine elsewhere in the state worth the drive. Portable, collectible, and always offline, the Pocket Guide helps you narrow down and answer that all important question — “where should I go for my next meal.”

Many thanks to the wonderful Pocket Guide sponsors for their generous support, which enabled Portland Food Map to produce and print this resource:

• The Press Hotel
• Evergreen Credit Union
• The Boulos Company
• Wine Wise
• Maine Food for Thought

While supplies last you can pick-up your very own copy of the guide at these local businesses: Rose Foods, Maine & Loire, Rising Tide, Little Woodfords, Belleville, Giant Cafe, or the Portland Trading Company.

A limited number of pocket guides also are for sale in packs of 25 if you’d like to use them for your business. Whether that’s as a handout to Airbnb guests, to distribute to business clients, or for some other purpose where you need more than one personal copy. Contact anestes@portlandfoodmap.com for details.

The 2019 pocket guide wouldn’t be as good as it is, in fact it wouldn’t exist at all, without help from the extended PFM team of Dawn Hagin from Rare Brick Strategic, and from graphic designer Sofija Razgaitis. My thanks to both of them for all their hard work on the project.

Eighteen Twenty is releasing a new wine in honor of Portland Wine Week. Fête, a 11.5% ABV “off-dry wine with balanced acidity” was produced using rhubarb grown by Spiller Farm in Wells and Doles Orchard in Limington.

The label image is based on the gaff-rigged topsail cutter, The Frances, which operates in Casco Bay with rhubarb leave sails.

You  can try Fête at the Eighteen Twenty tasting room on Anderson Street starting this weekend, and it was also be on the menu for the Women Winemakers Luncheon on June 17th, as well as the Rose Wine Sail taking place on June 21st.