Category: People

Sharon Kitchens has published this interview with Tandem baker Briana Holt which includes her recipe for Swedish Coconut Cherry Cookies which were a classic Christmas cookie in her household growing up.

One of the most memorable ones for me were these coconut cookies. My nana made them every year. She was Austrian, but she would call them Swedish Coconut Cookies, which the last few years of me looking they kind of are. They are also this very American 1950s like coconut macaroon cookie. The kind you find in bakeries – big hunks of coconut sometimes covered in chocolate. They were my favorite. They were so cute. All the other cookies are different shades of brown, but these were snow white coconut mounds with a bright maraschino cherry in the middle. They stuck out to me and coconut is one of my favorite flavors. I love those so much and make them every year for the staff cookie boxes.

Down East magazine has published an interview with Sean Turley.

By day, Sean Turley is a Portland lawyer. But when he swaps out his business suit for denim overalls, he turns into one of Maine’s foremost apple nerds. His “origin story,” as he puts it, goes back a decade: One autumn day, he was driving through central Maine with his now-wife when they stopped at an orchard. Turley knew a few types of apples from supermarkets — Gala, Golden Delicious, etc. — but at this single orchard, he encountered more than two dozen different apples with names he’d never heard. Awed by the sheer variety, he loaded up his trunk and hauled them home for a tasting with friends.

To learn more from Turley about the world of heirloom apple varieties visit his instagram account, The Righteous Russet.

Today’s Maine Sunday Telegram includes an article about Anthony’s Italian Kitchen and its founder Anthony Barrasso.

“I met (Videoport owner) Bill Duggan. He told me he had 38,000 customers in his computer,” Barrasso recalled, his eyes wide even now at the video store’s enormous customer base. “Then I asked him what he thought of having a pizza parlor next to him. He said it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.”

“What better combination than pizza and a movie? It was very lucrative back in the day,” said Fournier. “If you had a good snowstorm, there would be a line out both of our doors, up the stairs and to the street because everybody wanted to get pizza and movie and go home and hunker down. Those were good times.”

Today’s Press Herald includes an article about René Emilio Peña and the two business he runs: La Bodega Latina in Parkside and Cabana in the Old Port.

“When he speaks about either of his businesses, you can feel how passionate he is,” Cabana general manager Brigid Litster said.

The bodega has provided essential support for the Latino community in Portland for more than two decades and recently passed from Peña’s father to him. The restaurant opened last month and celebrates the diversity of Latin America – and Maine – that has always been visible on the bodega shelves.

Between the two, Peña works long days. But he focuses on the pride, not the struggle.

Sweetgrass Trading has published an interview with chef Joe Robbins at Bissell Brothers. Robbins is tapping into his own native American heritage to bring indigenous food to the menu at the Bissell Brothers location in Milo.

The Press Herald reports on the relationship between downtown restaurants and their Portland HS customers.

“I feel every student should be able to eat,” said Trinh Le-Tran, owner of the Vietnamese kiosk Pho Huong and mother of a 2-year-old daughter. “If someone comes and they don’t have enough money, I’ll still go ahead and make them the meal. It feels better to know they’ve had something to eat during the day.”

Pho Huong’s entrees run between $8 and $14.50. But for the start of the school year, Le-Tran also offers a dozen $6 student specials, including banh mi sandwiches, burritos and pho. She said pad Thai and fried rice are usually the big specials sellers, and bubble tea with its chewy balls of tapioca is a must for the student set.

Today’s Maine Sunday Telegram includes an article about Tender Table, an organization that “celebrates Black and Brown community by connecting and honoring our identities, traditions, joy, resilience, and fight for collective liberation through storytelling and food.”

“I knew this was a space I hadn’t seen or experienced in Portland before that I deeply knew I wanted to be a part of as a biracial person,” added Perez, who works as a sculptor and is now a Tender Table co-organizer with Tran. “Tender Table allowed me to embrace that part of my identity I thought was gone or missing.”

After being introduced to Tran and Tender Table, Perez grew motivated to cook traditional Puerto Rican dishes they remembered their father talking longingly about, like mofongo, a plantain-based dish with plenty of garlic and salt.

Mainebiz has published an interview with Martin Beavers, the chef/owner of Soul Food Paradise at the Maine Mall in South Portland.

Martin Beavers is a self-taught cook who started a food business out of his home before joining Portland’s Fork Food Lab. Later when a space opened up at the Maine Mall Food Court in South Portland, he jumped at the chance to stake a claim. The New York City native shares the story of Soul Food Paradise’s early success and his unexpected route to Maine’s biggest shopping mall.