Earlier this year Food & Wine named Cara Stadler from Tao Yuan one of the 2014 Best New Chefs.
The July issue of the magazine has a 1-page profile of Stadler and her recipe for Miso-Roasted Eggplant with Tomato, Dill, Shiso and Black Vinegar.
Stadler has a new restaurant called BaoBao Dumpling House under construction on Spring Street in the old West End Deli.
Knack Factory has published an interview with chef Andrew Taylor from Hugo’s/Eventide.
Is there a secret to running a successful place?
I think the best way to have a successful business is to have worked in successful kitchens and to keep moving up in those roles. I also have only wanted to work in places where people care about food. I have always tried to seek environments where people were as interested in food as I am.
The Huffington Post has published an interview with Kate McCarty, author of Portland Food.
In your opinion, what is it about the Portland food community that inspires so much creativity?
The low cost of entry and accessibility (e.g. rents, prime space) is attractive to many chefs, as well as our abundant local ingredients like produce, cheese, meat, and seafood. Everyone in Maine is into making things, whether it’s cured meats or beer or blueberry jam. All of the chefs I talked to while researching Portland Food mentioned how supportive and collaborative the food and restaurant industry is. We don’t have the same competitiveness in the restaurant industry that they have even just down the road in Boston. All these factors created this incredible restaurant scene for a city of our size.
Today’s Maine Sunday Telegram includes an interview with Kristen Bartlett, the Whole Foods staffer who tracks down locally made foods for the store’s shelves,
Is this a problem for her at parties? Is she swarmed by local farmers, waving organic broccoli and apple butters? Not yet, she says, though she wonders what will happen after her photo is published in Source.
and an article about Uni being declared the “new bacon” by Food & Wine magazine.
High-end restaurants in major cities have been experimenting with uni for a while, Branchina said. What’s more interesting to him is the big jump Browne Trading has seen in retail sales online: a 54 percent increase between 2012 and 2013, and so far in 2014, up 93 percent from the previous January to May.
The latest to Shift Drink interviews from the folks at Knack Factory are out. This time around they interviewed well known bartender and Portland personality Joe Ricchio, and chef and Family Feast creator Thomas Pisha-Duffly.
Eater Maine has published a short interview with Briana Holt, baker at the upcoming West End location of Tandem Coffee.
Do you have a signature dish (or dishes) or plans for limited special items?
The new spot is going to be pretty pie-centric, with a constantly rotating list including seasonal and year-round options. I’m also pretty excited about the chocolate chip cookie, which I hope will cause a ruckus: Traffic jams, people camping out in front of the shop, that sort of thing.
Dobra Tea owners Ray Marcotte and Ellen Kanner are on a research trip to Korea and Japan. You can follow their travels online at dobrateame.tumblr.com. According to a press release,
[They are] seeking to strengthen tea culture in Portland by traveling to meet their tea producers and farmers in Asia and bring their knowledge back home to share. The tea plant – Camelia sinensis – is the focus of this journey. There are six classes of tea including green, white, yellow, oolong, black and pu-er, but the focus of this year’s journey is Korean and Japanese green.
Eater Maine has published an interview with Nathaniel Meiklejohn on his upcoming cocktail bar, The Jewel Box (website, kickstarter).
What are you hoping to bring to the crowded Portland bar scene that we’re missing, or that hasn’t been fully fleshed out yet?
There are millions of mixed drink recipes out there and thousands more [created] every day. There are forever new distilleries, hundreds of new mixing products, and constantly evolving techniques for making drinks. What we are going to do is honor the ever-changing landscape of mixed drinks by changing our drink menu every week. We will base the week’s menu on a theme, an ingredient we love, our current mixing fixations, and/or seasonal ingredients.
The Jewel Box will be located at 644 Congress Street. Meiklejohn hopes to have it open by the end of June.
Shannon Moss interviewed Kate McCarty earlier this week on WLOB about her blog and her upcoming book, Portland Food: the culinary capital of Maine. An archive recording of the session is available on the WLOB website.
Knack Factory has published an interview with Stephen Lanzalotta. In the interview Lanzalotta share details on his upcoming restaurant Slab (instagram) and his early history as a cook and baker.
What about baking specifically?
The way I got into baking was crazy. My ex-wife—my wife at the time—and I had moved to Maine to get back to the land. I built a house out of the trees of the land, cut the Spruce logs down and built a log house. I built all of the furniture. While I was doing this incredible endeavor I needed some carb sustenance so I would make these big piles to burn off the Spruce and when it would get down to ash, I would make very crude breads by burying it in that ash.