Category: Under Construction

The Longfellow Hotel (website, facebook, instagram) is currently under construction at 754 Congress Street. It’s located next to Tandem and across the Street from The Francis. Both The Francis and Longfellow are operated by Uncommon Hospitality led by Tony and Nate DeLois.

The first floor of the hotel will feature the Twinflower Cafe and Five of Clubs bar. The cafe will be “a wellness focused café serving clean and wholesome breakfast and lunch offerings, as well as espresso drinks and fresh juices” and the bar menu will focus on “classic cocktails, local seafood and charcuterie”. Both establishments will be run by Siobhan & Mike Sindoni the co-owners of the Wayside Tavern.

The Longfellow Hotel is expected to open this summer.

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  Goodfire Brewing (website, facebook, instagram) will be opening their new tasting room and restaurant in Freeport on Saturday. The new location has seating for 75 (including the bar shown above) along with an additional 75 of outdoor seating. The 24-tap draft system will be set-up to serve 12 beer, 6 wines and 6 cocktails.

The kitchen is headed up by Ben Christie along with sous chef Colin Kennedy. The menu (see draft menu below) features “interesting & approachable takes on bar food classics” such as Smoked Ricotta Dip served with tomato confit, olive salad and focaccia,  a Napa Cabbage salad served with a roasted jalapeno and pepita viniagrette, cotija, pickled onions and herbs, and a Fried Pork Cutlet sandwich made with apple mostarda, basil and cabbage slaw. There will be four different styles of wings a kids menu and a selection of desserts that includes a soft pretzel bread pudding.

Christie along with Goodfire Freeport general manager Kevin Nelson are both Big Tree Hospitality alums where Nelson was the general manager of The Honey Paw and Christie was the chef de cuisine at Hugo’s. Kennedy’s resume includes time as the sous chef at Leeward.

Goodfire Freeport features a private dining room that can seat up to 14 and is decorated with a mural (see below) by artist Lydia Jane Brown from October Wilde. A few steps away at the end of the bar Goodfire has built in a pilot system brewing system which they’ll use to produce small batch and experimental one-off beers.

Goodfire Freeport is located at 180 South Freeport Rd, Freeport Maine 04032 which owners David and Julia Redding have been renovating since taking over the space in the summer of 2021. Hours will be Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday noon – 9 pm, Friday and Saturday noon – 10 pm, and open for retail sales only on Monday (1 – 6 pm).

Goodfire Brewing launched their original location on Anderson Street in East Bayside almost exactly five years ago in November 2017.

Owner Garrett Fitzgerald has been renovating his restaurant space on West Commercial Street and expanding the building footprint with prefabricated structures from OpBox. The new complex will be the joint home for Clam Bar (instagram) and the Portland Beer Garden for lunch and dinner, and the Royale Lunch (instagram) for breakfast and lunch service.

Fitzgerald’s Christmas tree business will launch on the property on the day after Thanksgiving. Royale Lunch will likely open this winter and the full ensemble cast to open in the spring.

A new restaurant called Full Turn (instagram) is under construction in the former Baharat space in East Bayside. The launch of Full Turn is being led by Chloe Kessell and Melissa Pappas in collaboration with the owners of Baharat. Josh Lemay will be running the bar program.

Full Turn will be serving seasonal menus that change-up frequently with restaurant concepts that shift with each ‘turn’ of the menu. Pappas and Kessell plan to collaborate with local farms, breweries and other food producers on special items for their menus. They also hope to create opportunities at Full Turn for chef residencies, pop-ups, and special events. While by design the food and concept will change often, the team is aiming for a steady price point, service level and atmosphere.

Kessell has worked in the restaurant industry for 12 years in both Boston and Portland, and most recently was the general manager of Baharat. Pappas comes from a restaurant family and has worked both front and back of house roles most recently the kitchen manager of Baharat. The pair have worked together in the past to organize pop-ups and events and as hospitality consultants through Sate at Home and Sate at Work.

For us, hospitality is about sharing and taking care of each other. Sharing food, sharing drinks, sharing experiences and sharing knowledge, and that care and respect starts in your own house with your own team. We are so fortunate to have a staff of like minded hospitality professionals with incredible skills and ambition. When the opportunity to take this truly collaborative approach both with our staff and the restaurant community came up, we couldn’t turn it down. We’re excited to have the chance and circumstances to make the changes we’ve wanted to see in the industry and get back to the reasons we all love it after such a difficult run. We want to make good food with good people and share it with our great community in an environment focused on the experience and putting locals front of mind.

The owners hope to open Full Turn in December after construction to expand the kitchen and light renovations to the dining room.

Today’s Maine Sunday Telegram includes an article on how supply chain issues are impacting the launch of new restaurants in Portland.

Many of the region’s anticipated restaurant and food shop openings this year have become bogged down by big delays, reflecting the hard reality that Belleville ran into headlong. In sum: Workers everywhere and the things they produce are in short supply and running late.

Vena’s Fizz House (website, facebook, instagram) is making good progress in renovating their new location at 867 Congress Street in Parkside and the owners hope to launch in December.

The former church will be home to the expanded Vena’s cocktail/mocktail bar and mixology shop which will eventually span three floors with seating for 129 people. The main floor with bar and mixology shop and the mezzanine seating area will be open for the relaunch of Vena’s.

The mixology shop will offer a similar mix of products as the old Vena’s with bar tools, books, bitters, mixers, and glassware as well as Vena’s branded products. Vena’s will also be hosting their mixology classes on Congress Street and the space will be available for private events.

The draft menu supplied with their liquor license application includes drinks like the Sea Rose (gin, rose petals, apple, hibiscus, tonic, lime, Vena’s meadow bitters), Mezcalcillin (mezcal, drambuie, ancho chili liquer, ginger, sfumato, Vena’s fiesta bitters) and a the Maine Maple Fire mocktail (maple syrup, apple cider syrup, lemon, ghost pepper, Vena’s aromatic bitters).

Vena’s Fizz House was founded in 2013 and was originally located at the corner of Silver and Fore Streets in the Old Port.

Khanhly Nguyen has applied for a liquor license for the Old Port Noodle House at 245 Commercial Street.

Nguyen is in the process of buying the Veranda Noodle House from family members. He expects to continue to operate the business along the same lines but will rename it as the Old Port Noodle House.

The Veranda Noodle House originally opened in 2015.

A new African restaurant called Merveille is under construction in Woodfords Corner at 683 Forest Ave in the space formerly occupied by the Shawarma & Kebab House.

Owner Liliana Mungongo Da Silva is a recent immigrant who originally hails from Angola. Here’s a bit of her personal history shared in her liquor license application.

Indeed, I embraced commerce, trading and business at an early age in Africa. Coming out from a humble family, armed with a very strong will to succeed in life, my beginning was hard. I endured the hardship from selling water in the street to becoming one of the prominent businesswomen in Luanda, Angola. I became a role-model and led many other women into the field of business, traveled to more than 20 countries around the world; due to political unrest, I finally rested my luggages in the USA.

Da Silva’s goal is for Merveille to be “place where people from different cultures can meet and mingle.” Merveille is intended to be a place where Americans can experience a food culture that may be new to them, and where members of the African immigrant community “can easily find their home foods when going to or coming back from work”.

The draft menu includes some regional dishes like fufu, fumbua, bolino de chuva, kikwanga, plantains and casava leaves along with vegetables, salad, and dishes featuring goat, fish and chicken.

Merveille is a French word that appears to mean a ‘wonder’ or ‘marvel’.