Category: Under Construction

Chef David Levi has leased 593 Congress Street for his new “100% local food, zero waste, fine dining restaurant” Vinland (website, Facebook).

593 is located just across the street from the Portland Art Museum and around the corner from the new Westin Hotel. The space has been completely renovated; it had been the long time home of The Kitchen.

Levi has worked at Noma in Denmark, at Faviken in Sweeden. He gave some insight into his approach to cooking when interviewed by the Boston Globe for their article on The New New England Cuisine,

“I want to use what grows in this bioregion,” says Levi. “If I can’t use lemon, I need to replace that acidic element. Obviously I could use vinegar, but the flavor is so strong, so maybe rhubarb, or green fruit, or whey.” To that end, in his Portland kitchen Levi prepares an example: soup made by pureeing farmers’ market turnips with his own homemade yogurt and garnishing the bowls with lightly fermented carrots and fresh herbs and flowers from his small garden plot.

Levi hopes to open Vinland this summer.

Outlier’s Eatery (Facebook, Twitter), the restaurant under construction on York Street, has filed for a liquor license application. The restaurant hopes to open sometime in March. According to owner Peter Verrill’s cover letter,

The menu will consist of locally harvested, organic food. The beer will be almost 100%  from Maine brewers. Whenever possible, we will use Maine distilled liquors. Our coffee will be organic and fair trade. In short, Outlier’s Eatery will be a fine dining bistro offering the West End healthy and sustainable farm to table products.

A draft copy of the menu is available online (page 23). Chef Jonathan Dexter will be running the kitchen, he’s formerly worked at Street & Co. and at Hugo’s.

Tivi Design, which designed and built the bar at Grace has been hired to handle the interior design. Take a look at Outlier’s Facebook page for an extensive set of photos of the restaurant.  Eater Maine has some additional details on the interior design.

The Forecaster has published an interview Bob and Laura Butler about their new restaurant, Enio’s. According to the article, the Butlers hope to open Enio’s sometime next week.

Located in the former Buttered Biscuit, Enio’s is named after Laura Butler’s father. The restaurant, with a Tuscan flair, will be a return to the greater Portland dining scene for the Butlers.

“I’m sure it will be like riding a bike for us,” Laura Butler said. “We were familiar with the building and neighborhood, and I think Portland is saturated.”

The couple operated Rachel’s, first in the Old Port and then on Woodford Street for 15 years.

Chef David Turin tells me he’s working to launch a Kennebunk location of David’s and a David’s Opus Ten. He hopes to have the new restaurants open sometime in May. That will make for a total of five David’s restaurants in three cities.

According to an article in today’s Press Herald, The Porthole is under new management and is scheduled to re-open this spring.

Ken McGowan, whose family owns Custom House Wharf, said he will own and manage the Porthole Restaurant and Pub.

“It will be run to every inch of the health code,” McGowan said Tuesday. “I’m not skimping on anything.”

Two of Portland’s best known restaurateurs continue to extend their reach in the city:

• Jay Villani launched Local 188 in 1999, opened Sonny’s 2010, and has a barbeque restaurant under construction at 915 Congress Street called Salvage BBQ & Smokehouse. He’s now leased 742 Congress Street and is turning the space into a bakery he hopes to open sometime this summer. The space was most recently the Bubble Room Laundrymat.
• Harding Smith’s newest restaurant under development on Custom House Wharf is going in a location that for 107+ years was the home of Boone’s Restaurant. According to an ad in the March issue of Maine magazine, he’s naming it Boone’s Fish House & Oyster Room.

For more details on all the new food businesses under development see the Under Construction List.

Maine a la Carte reports that baseball broadcaster Jerry Remy (aka “RemDawg”) is considering opening a Jerry Remy’s Sports Bar & Grill in Portland.

“We have looked into the Portland area,” he told the radio hosts. “It seems like a natural with the minor league ball club here. We’ll see if we can get some kind of a deal worked out.”

The North Point has published a set of photos of their newly completed interior. They began interviewing potential new staff over the weekend and hope to open in mid-February.

Chef Chris Gould is making progress on the new Portland restaurant he has under development and is aiming for a July 1 opening day. Gould tells me he’s very close to signing a deal for a location in the Old Port. In the meantime he’s spending time lining up contractors, suppliers and key staff so the work of building and fitting out the restaurant can get off to a fast start once the space is secured.

Gould plans on serving a menu of international small plates that will in part draw on his interest in Spanish cuisine. 44 North will be creating a custom blend for the coffee service. The name for the restaurant is still under wraps. Might & Main, the folks who developed the branding for Eventide, have been hired to handle marketing for the restaurant.

Gould is currently working at Eventide with his friend and former colleague chef Andrew Taylor. He moved to Portland last year from Boston where he worked for Ken Orringer’s restaurants Uni and Coppa.

He was the winner of the 2012 Shucks Maine Lobster Chef World Series with a dish of “butter-poached lobster with ragout of sauteed knuckles, roasted fingerling potatoes, cinnamon-roasted carrots, roasted corn and sweet miso puree, and piquillo pepper”.