Brewery Extrava held soft openings Friday and Saturday (they’ll be there until 7 pm Saturday) to introduce their line-up of Belgian style beers. They’ll be back open Friday and Saturday (and perhaps Sunday) next weekend, noon to 8 pm.
The current beer list includes Little Dark (3.8%, dark session ale), a 6% Saison, and B IPA (6.5%, 69 IBU, Belgian IPA).
Brewery Extrava is located at 66 Cove Street in East Bayside. The Grand Opening is scheduled to take place July 19.
The new Dean’sSweets location in East Bayside is scheduled to open today at 2 pm.
The new space provides them additional production capacity and a second retail location. As a special promotion for today, the first 75 people who visit the new shop will get free chocolate-dipped strawberries.
Their new location is located at the corner of Cove and Anderson Streets, just a few doors down from Tandem Coffee. Owners Dean and Kristin Bingham plan to continue to produce and sell their chocolates at 475 Fore Street as well.
Portland’s newest distillery, Three of Strong Spirits (website), launched their business and opened their tasting room earlier this week. They sell a line-up of three rums: a house made white, an imported 12 year old bourbon barrel aged rum from Colombia, and a spirit that’s a blend of those two. They’re also in the process of establishing their own barrel aged program.
The tasting room serves a variety of creative cocktails using their spirits as well as classic rum drinks. I tried the Sleepy Panda (peppered arugula, wormwood, pandan, lime) and the Take Two in the Morning (cold brew coffee, honey, saffron, quinine, bitters). For food they have Baharat hummus, pork tacos, olives, popcorn, key lime pie and flourless chocolate torte, and are working on a more ambitious menu to launch soon.
Three of Strong Spirits is located in East Bayside at 35B Diamond Street. They open today at noon.
They’ll be holding a grand opening party for the distillery on August 17th featuring a pig roast by chef Evan Mallet who is well known for his restaurant Black Trumpet in Portsmouth.
Gross Confection Bar opened their new breakfast pastry and coffee service this morning at 7:30.
Owner Brant Dadaleares and team are serving muffins, cake, scones and ‘pie’ along with a pair of custom roasted coffee blends. The entrance is on Exchange Street.
They plans to be open until today’s supply of baked goods runs out. When you go be sure to get the peach pie with strawberry jam.
Chicago Michelin-starred chef Ryan McCaskey opened his new restaurant Acadia House Provisions (website) in Stonington earlier this week.
Acadia House Provisions is located in the former Aragosta space at 27 Maine Street on the waterfront. The menu has a good mix of appetizers, sandwiches and entrees to address a range of appetites. The wine list at Acadia House was put together under the guidance of Maine’s new Master Sommelier, Scott Tyree. AHP is open Tuesday through Sunday, reservations can be made through OpenTable.
Portland Food Map took a road trip to check it out. You can see the full set of pictures on the PFM instagram account.
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.