Category: Reviews

The Vivid Kitchen has published a guide to Portland including recommendations to visit Portland Farmers’ Market, Dutch’s, Marcy’s, Tandem, Bard, Arabica, Holly Donut, Ohno Cafe, Belleville, Standard Baking, The Shop, Duckfat, East Ender, Ruski’s, Sur Lie, Bonobo, The Snug, Maps, Top of the East, Arcadia, Tomaso’s, Hunt & Alpine, LFK, Local 188, Bramhall, Vena’s.

The Maine Sunday Telegram has reviewed the Portland location of Poké Pop.

Named for chef/owner Anusat “Pop” Limsitong, the restaurant is a confusion of fusion, with cross-cultural elements intended to enliven bowls of cubed protein, vegetables and rice. By and large, these tweaks are unnecessary and involve sickly sweet sauces that make Poké Pop’s signature dish a huge letdown. If you must order poké, stick to the tofu bowl and customize your order with a squirt of the soy-based shoyu umami sauce, the least sweet of the restaurant’s offerings. But if it’s sweetness you’re after, Poké Pop has you covered. Its bing soo shaved ice, which is really a Filipino halo halo parfait made with fruit ice cream, shaved milk ice and about a thousand other ingredients, is terrific, even though it takes 15 minutes to prepare each one.

Down East magazine has reviewed Izakaya Minato.

Every dish brings a fresh set of tastes and textures: smoky bacon-wrapped rice cakes, melt-off-the-bone Korean-style barbecue short ribs, spicy kimchi fried rice. The broiled black cod, marinated in sake lees, is nearly the consistency of butter. Fried tofu squares, with jalapeño, soy sauce, and bonito, addictively marry spicy and salty — I suspect I could snack on these all day.

Marie Claire has published a travel guide to Portland.

A trip to Portland, Maine, is much more than flannels and Subarus—although you’ll come across plenty of those, too. Maine’s largest city, surrounded by water, is as picturesque as they come, with quaint cobblestone passageways and Victorian dream homes. Breathe in the fresh New England air while exploring the Old Port, sift through treasures at the vintage shops, and eat your way through the city’s award-winning restaurant scene. More oysters? Don’t mind if I do.

The Maine Sunday Telegram has reviewed the Portland location of Elsmere.

While the menu is letter-for-letter the same at both restaurants, and although several dishes and two of the sauces remain too sweet, the food is a bit better on the north side of the bridge. An extra few square feet of cooking space on Elsmere’s new, as-yet-unnamed, custom-built smoker gives its BBQ meats a little more depth and a lot more smoke. Stick to juicy and fall-apart-tender pulled pork, barbecued chicken thighs and burnt-end chili ladled over a mound of always-crispy tortilla chips as part of the chili nachos appetizer. When you’ve dug yourself out from under all the meat, order a house-made brownie with ice cream and a snow drift of whipped cream. You won’t regret it.

The Evening Standard (UK) has published a travel article about eating in Portland.

This year, the city went from relatively under-the-radar to top the foodie hit-list when it was named Restaurant City of the Year by Bon Appétit, an accolade that’s made more impressive by the fact that the award isn’t given out every year — the only three previous winners are Chicago, San Francisco and Washington DC. Need more evidence? Five of the 2018 James Beard Award semi-finalists (the Oscars of the food world) are based in Portland — not bad for a city of only 65,000 people.

The Maine Sunday Telegram has reviewed Eaux,

Among the po’ boys and jambalaya ($15) are his terrific gloss on maque choux, reinvented here as a spicy, saucy ear of corn covered in thin slices of pickled serrano chile and crumbled Zapp’s potato chips. Don’t miss his buttery Bananas Foster, runny with a brown sugar glaze, and the Southern-yet-not-particularly-Louisianan chicken and waffles that he seasons with a dynamic, fiery spice blend Richardson has been tinkering with since before he was a teen.

The Blueberry Files has reviewed Forage Market, and

The bagel itself is crunchy, thin, and airy, with big holes in the baked dough, in the Montreal style of bagels. But really the minute I saw the black olive cream cheese, I was won over. Forage Market’s bagels moved to the top of my personal leaderboard of bagels.

Did I just say they’re the best bagels in Portland? You’ll have to stop in and see for yourself.

Portland Phoenix has reviewed Simply Vegan by Silly’s.

Recognizing that I myself do not follow a vegan diet, I made a conscious effort across two visits to Simply Vegan to drop any preconceived notion of what “vegan cuisine” is and instead focus on the overall interplay of textures, flavors and seasonings on a basic culinary level. A cup of sweet potato chili with carrot, black bean and millet featured just enough heat, with pleasant warming spices lingering in the background of each bite. Equally satisfying was a breakfast plate cleverly called “I Said Mush,” which topped a warm biscuit with spinach, tomato, veggie tofu and mushroom gravy for what was undoubtedly the best dish tasted at Simply Vegan.

The Peter Peter Portland Eater has reviewed Eaux, and

We were done and I simultaneously regretted everything and nothing, noting that while I would be required to roll out of the restaurant, I had just basked in exquisite flavors and extraordinary dishes. From our hill of beans and seasonal squash, to the bird and baked batter platter, our food took us to New Orleans and back. And it was a wonderful journey.

the Portland Phoenix has reviewed Maine Craft Distilling.

There is also good food beyond snacking. The MCD salad is filled with soft veggies, chickpea cracker and a tangy-spicy dressing with lemon and sumac. Mexican corn was cool and crisp and spicy with thick mayo. A fried chicken sandwich, with thick slices of bacon and a dense pimento cheese sauce pillowing out one side, was hard to eat but worth the effort.

The Maine Sunday Telegram has reviewed Lio,

Most are inspired by modern European cooking, like a gorgeous lamb loin plated alongside a smoky, creamy Spanish eggplant escalivada; or buttery apple tarte tatin, knocked sideways into funkiness with an almost savory goat cheese ice cream. If the tarte is on the menu when you go, don’t miss it. Other dishes nearly hit their marks, if not for composition problems that make them difficult to eat (intact husk cherries on the otherwise fantastic duck breast) or were tricky to combine together on the fork so that all the flavors work as they should, as in the Melons and Cucumbers, a fragrant, umami-forward vegetable dish made with onions, papalo and garum. Despite the occasional wobble, Stadler and co-head chef Rachel Reynolds’ menu feels like a fresh, exciting take on small plates, one that might just need a little more time to find its perfect equilibrium.

the Portland Phoenix has reviewed Pizzarino, and

Simplicity reigns supreme at Pizzarino, where a Margherita pizza (mozzarella, tomato sauce, extra virgin olive oil, basil) stole the show during a recent visit. Bright and pleasantly acidic with a gentle sweetness, the sauce used as a base for each pizza on the menu is lively and inviting — a welcomed shift away from the deeply caramelized, almost ketchup-like product found on so many pies in southern Maine. The sauce provides much-needed contrast on the almost-too-salty Capricciosa pizza, which layers mushrooms, artichokes and prosciutto cotto ham on the same framework as the Margherita. It is divine and worth the price of admission on its own.

the Press Herald has reviewed Po’ Boys & Pickles.

I was expecting it to arrive on a pita, but instead “The Uptown” was on one of the hefty and delicious po’ boy rolls that the rest of the truly New Orleans-style menu items come on. There were a few thin slices of cucumber and tomato, as well as a red pepper mayonnaise and some shredded lettuce. My friendly server offered me a side of hot sauce, which I happily took.

The Maine Sunday Telegram has reviewed Locally Sauced, and

Locally Sauced’s chef/owner Charlie Ely loves to make sauce. He’s been doing it since he opened his business: first ladling the stuff onto burritos assembled in a tiny food cart, then beginning this May, on a range of Mexican and barbecue dishes he and his wife, general manager/owner Aimee Ely, serve in a high-ceilinged storefront on Thompson’s Point. His best sauces are a sweet-and-smoky blueberry-chipotle and a green chili sauce as fiery as fresh lava. Both work well with the restaurant’s top-notch burritos…

Peter Peter Portland Eater has reviewed Lolita.

Lolita works for me as a place to go when I can’t make a decision about what I want to eat or just when I’m feeling Munjoy Hill is the right area to grab some food. They never disappoint and always have an interesting variety of items like Blistered Shishito Peppers, Heirloom Tomato Casserole, and Grilled Half Game Hen. If you haven’t been yet, I suggest you make a visit there, because I’m sure you’ll be happy you did.

The Portland Phoenix has reviewed Crown Jewel, and

Consider a dish of “fried green things;” flash-fried seasonal green vegetables with apricot harissa and roasted almonds — pound for pound one of the tastiest things in recent memory. Vegetables also shine in chef Rocky Hunter’s carrot lox, a fun take on faux-food substituting ribbons of cured heirloom carrots for smoked salmon, garnished liberally with rye crumbs and everything bagel seasoning. It’s playful, imaginative and — most importantly — actually delicious, showing aptitude and purpose that speak to Hunter’s personal vegan leanings.

The Bollard has reviewed Union.

Though technically too young to be a millennial, my daughter’s friend has a thing for avocado toast, and Union’s version ($14) did not disappoint. The fluffy “shaved” hard-boiled egg, creamy ricotta salata and peppery radish provided a welcome variety of textures and flavors, but it was the tart, salty, preserved lemon emulsion that elevated this dish to a higher plane. Likewise, my wife’s smoked salmon ($17) started with a familiar mix of flavors and transformed into something new. Served on square slices of pumpernickel toast, the combination of shaved egg, pickled onions, briny capers, petite greens and “everything spice” was absolutely delicious, and anything but traditional.