Category: Profiles

The Bangor Daily News has published an article about Mainely Treats, a new food truck from the owners of Mainely Burgers.

The decadent creation, called The Buckeye, is one of three gourmet ice cream sandwiches being sold on the streets of Portland this week from the city’s newest food truck, Mainely Treats.

Run by childhood friends Jack Barber and Ben Berman of Cape Elizabeth, the ice cream sandwich, sundae and root beer float truck is the third mobile canteen in their fleet.

The Root has posted the first of a three part series on Maine’s distilling industry.

Over the course of the next two months The Root will dip into the subject of Maine’s craft distilled spirits industry by profiling three distillers who are distinguishing themselves using primarily Maine sourced ingredients in the form of grains and/or fruit in the liquor making process. For these three posts, The Root is collaborating with Andrew Volk, a native New Englander, and nationally award-winning bartender who is opening Portland, Maine’s first craft cocktail bar, the Portland Hunt & Alpine Club this summer.

Sweeter Salt has published a piece on last month’s edition of Portland Dishcrawl.

A few months ago I was contacted by Mary from Dishcrawl Portland. Dishcrawl is much like a pub crawl, but with restaurants. At each event, ticket holders visit four restaurants in one night, sampling each restaurant’s specialties and meeting the chefs or owners. They aim to create a community by bringing Portlanders together with chefs and restaurants. Since I love Portland and I love food, I was pretty excited at the opportunity to give it a try. In May I joined the group and had a great time.

The Portland Daily Sun has published an article about Local Sprouts.

Took a while for me to disavow myself of my fondly-held notion that Local Sprouts is the reincarnation of The Gate, the long-haired hippie freak guitar strumming anti-establishment coffeehouse that I frequented in Longfellow Square in the 1960s. The Gate was almost directly across the street from where Local Sprouts is located today, and there are definitely similarities between the two, but there is an essential difference…We came up with a basket full of criticisms but were woefully short of solutions. Coming up with solutions, though, seems to be what Local Sprouts is all about.

The Portside Picnic (facebook, twitter, website) food truck opened for business a couple weeks ago. They’re located in the Back Cove parking lot across the street from Hannaford in space leased from the City of Portland.

Portside Picnic is open 7 days a week, 11 – 4. They source a wide variety of ingredients from local farms and food producers.

Meredith Goad has written about her experience on the inaugural run of Dishcrawl Portland.

Out came the food, a trio of bites designed to give the Dishcrawlers an idea of what’s on the regular menu. There was (from lower left, clockwise) a wild mushroom, goat cheese and truffle oil tartine on crostini; a lamb crepe with curry, cilantro, red wine sauce and vegetables; and a “crepe cake” made with layers of crepes, crab meat, egg, tomato, smoked salmon and shrimp.

Dishcrawl Portland has published a set of 71 photos from Tuesday’s event. The next Dishcrawl is scheduled to take place June 11.

The Boston Globe Tank Away column recently paid a visit to East Bayside. Three Buoys, Silly’s, Tandem Coffee, Rising Tide, Bunker, Maine Beer Tours, Bayside Bowl and Urban Farm Fermentory are all mentioned in the article.

Pulling into Portland’s East Bayside neighborhood, you first notice the earthy aroma of roasted arabica beans mingling with hearty hops. Far from the salty air of the bustling Old Port, this former trucker alley is attracting a new kind of tourist — coffee pilgrims and those seeking craft beer and community…There are no signs to indicate that you’ve arrived in this newly minted enclave, but as Portland becomes known for handcrafted everything, far-flung areas like East Bayside won’t be kept under wraps for long.

Today’s Press Herald Food & Dining section has a feature story on food trucks and some of the regulatory issues that still need to be addressed.

The presence of a few food trucks downtown will be a huge step forward for this food-loving city, which struggled over the regulations and made the whole process way more complicated than it needed to be. We should celebrate the fact that the city has finally embraced an idea that will make life here just a little bit better.

But don’t crack open the Champagne too fast.

The paper also includes a detailed directory of the food trucks now in operation and under development.

The Munjoy Hill News has published an article about Blue Rooster Food Company (website, twitter, facebook).

Location is key to any successful business.  Located at 5 Dana Street, the Rooster is in the epicenter of the bar district in the Old Port and the options for those patrons are somewhat limited.  “We are tryng to fill the need for a good spot for lunch and late night without spending a bundle,” said Damian Sansonsetti, one of the four partners who started the business.