Category: Under Construction

The City Council will be voting on Monday to approve the liquor license application for Piccolo. Piccolo will be featuring the cuisine of Calabria and Abruzzi. It will be located at 111 Middle Street in the former home of Bresca.

A draft menu (page 53) and floor plan (page 50) are included in materials provided to the city. Appetizers include options such as a salad of charred chilled calamari, watermelon, bitter greens dressed with olive oil. Meat, seafood and vegetarian entree options will be available such as slow baked sea bass with summer peas, roasted onions and pancetta.

Chefs Damian Sansonetti and wife Ilma Lopez will be running the establishment. Sansonetti is a co-owner of Blue Rooster Food Company and the former executive chef at Bar Boulud in NYC. Until quite recently Lopez was the pastry chef at Grace.

They’re hoping to launch Piccolo sometime in September, serving dinner Tuesday – Sunday, 5-10:30pm.

Maine a la Carte checked in with Harding Lee Smith and he confirmed that the opening of Boone’s is “imminent”.

I went straight to Smith (who told me last spring he was hoping to open June 15) to get an update. He says it won’t be Friday, “as far as I know.”

So, when? “Very soon. Imminent would be a good word.”

Carson Lynch, owner of the Gorham Grind, is working on a project to launch a food truck. The new truck will be called Anywhere Coffee Bar (twitter) is slated to launch in early September. Lynch plans on operating year-round. He’s in the process of leasing a parking space along “a main commuter route in Portland” during the week and hopes to also book catering jobs and event appearances on the weekend.

The Bangor Daily News has published an interview with Massa Miyake and Will Garfield about Miyake Diner which is under construction in the original Miyake location on Spring Street.

It will also have a very different type of menu. It will be an izakaya-style restaurant, which in Japanese translates to something like a gastro-pub, according to Garfield.

In Japan, izakaya joints are places people go after work to have some drinks — mostly sake — and small plates of food. There won’t be any sushi on the menu, nor gyoza, ramen or pork buns.

Miyake, who once worked in a macrobiotic kitchen in New York City, said the menu will be “small plates, largely vegetable focused.”

A floor plan for Kings Head restaurant has been submitted to the Planning Board. Kings Head is a 78-seat restaurant that’s planned for the first floor of the Pierce Atwood building on Commercial Street.

Chef Damian Sansonetti has leased 111 Middle Street, the former location of Bresca, and plans to open a new restaurant called Piccolo. Sansonetti will be serving a menu inspired by cuisine of Calabria and Abruzzi, tapping into the rustic tastes of of the regions where his family hail from. He plans to make some changes to the interior design of the dining room but otherwise leave the overall layout the same, and hopes to open the restaurant in September.

Sansonetti moved to Portland from NYC where he had been the Executive Chef of Bar Boulud. He’s a co-owner of Blue Rooster Food Co. on Dana Street. In addition to Piccolo, he still has plans to open a restaurant in Portland called Sonnet at some point in the future.

A new company called Coastal Root is working to launch a line of locally produced bitters later this summer. Owner Nolan Stewart developed an interest in bitters during his tenure as a bartender at Five Fifty-Five. The first of his bitters has a base of gentian, burdock and dandelion root with sassafras and sarsaparilla playing a leading role. Stewart has a second bitters in the planning stages that will feature hibiscus, jasmine and ginger.

The Coastal Root Facebook page explains, “We are a company dedicated to creating cocktail bitters, and innovative cocktail ingredients in Portland Maine. It is our goal to use local ingredients to give our bitters a Maine identity.”

Portland’s cocktail culture is making some good strides forward. Maine Craft Distilling recently joined New England Distilling to provide locally produced spirits, craft cocktail bar the Portland Hunt & Alpine Club is under construction on Market Street, a mixology shop called Vena’s Fizz House opened last week, and now Coastal Root will be providing a source for locally produced bitters.

Today’s Maine Sunday Telegram includes feature article about 20,000 square foot new facility Coffee by Design has under construction in East Bayside. An earlier report indicated that this new location was solely to serve as a roastery, offices, training facility and equipment store but the new plans incorporate a coffee shop where “connoisseurs will be able to order limited-edition roasts at the coffee bar and choose the brewing technique, including pour-over, French press and espresso.”

While Diamond Street will be a place where people can “geek out” on coffee, Lindemann said it will also cater to artists, blue collar workers, students and others looking for a cup of coffee and place to kick back in a “warm, earthy” environment.

“There is a trend in our industry that is elitist,” Lindemann said. “We want amazing coffee to be available to everybody. …

“Our humble beginnings are still there.”

CBD will be joining, Urban Farm Farmentory, Tandem Coffee, Bunker Brewing, Maine Craft Distilling, and Rising Tide Brewing as well as Pure Pops, Bomb Diggity Bakery, and Eat Local Fish in the East Bayside neighborhood.