Food

Italian escape

The best of Milan in Portland
One of my earliest culinary memories is of my father bringing home a tin of hard, crisp, almondy Italian cookies. As my sisters and I ate, my father dimmed the lights and put a match to the thin paper wrappers. They began to float like enchanted lanterns. I thought these Italians must be magical.

By BRIAN DUFF | July 15, 2009

A beam of light

El Rayo lets the ingredients shine
We live in an era in which we are grateful when people get the big things right, even if the details are off. Too often these days we find the opposite: well-titled books with little insight, an economy that "grows" but produces nothing of actual value, clever people who lack the deeper qualities of character.

By BRIAN DUFF | July 08, 2009

Finding a way

Making Nicaraguan gallo pinto
If it weren't for Nicaragua, Jenny Sanchez and her favorite dish, gallo pinto, wouldn't be here. She's a 75-year-old grandmother. She's short, has wavy dark hair, black eyes. She leans over slightly even when she's standing upright and has a stiff, belabored walk. She lives alone in a neighborhood of single-floor apartments.

By LINDSAY STERLING | July 01, 2009

Outdoor bites

Eve's at the Garden's lovely new happy-hour menu
Nothing democratizes like nature. Rousseau thought all primitives were equal until the moment someone thought to build a hut and move indoors. Nowadays people who would never enjoy similar books, films, or music nonetheless appreciate the beauty of the outdoors in much the same way.

By BRIAN DUFF | June 17, 2009

Ahead of the curve

Rockland's Primo finds the future in past traditions
Popular tastes wax, wane, and wander about, but over the long run people most appreciate those things that are timelessly simple, elegant, and right: Roger Federer's backhand, German-expressionist art, cotton, and the summer here in Maine.

By BRIAN DUFF | June 10, 2009

Spring roll work area

American people under construction
In America, you can make your way through life without cooking. My friend is a Warmer Upper. Her meals are hot dogs and other frozen, jarred, or packaged things you heat up. And yet, she was at my house one afternoon for lessons on how to make fresh spring rolls.

By LINDSAY STERLING | June 03, 2009

In the raw

Exploring GRO Café's uncooked cuisine
The new GRO Café offers a vegan menu on which (almost) nothing has been heated beyond 112 degrees. This is supposed to preserve something raw-foodists call "living enzymes," which they imagine to be important to our health. Technically that is nonsense.

By BRIAN DUFF | May 20, 2009

Tried and true

Where to go for the ultimate summertime burgers
The greasy, informal meals of summer lead to lots of uncouth mouth-cramming and finger-licking. It is best not to look. For this reason, many purveyors of the quintessential summertime burger are set up for shoulder-to-shoulder eating.

By BRIAN DUFF | May 13, 2009

Adventure cooking

Indian prawn curry breaks all the rules
Cooking Indian food by myself for the first time felt like skydiving; it went against all my instincts.

By LINDSAY STERLING | May 06, 2009

A better brunch

If you can't make it out, here's what to do at home
There is no worse fate than the purgatory of Sunday brunch. The scene is almost universally the same: after a night of aggressive drinking and merriment, boozy plans are laid to meet up in the morning for brunch.

By TODD RICHARD | April 29, 2009

Somali equality

Barava's appetizer basket is a glorious find
In trading up for the romantic notoriety of piracy from the ignored tragedy of famine and civil war, Somalis have pulled off the PR coup of the millennium.

By BRIAN DUFF | April 22, 2009

Simpler, but not too much

The Farmer's Table brings comforting cuisine to Commercial Street
In taking over the space recently occupied by Mim's, one of Portland's prissiest restaurants, the owners of the Farmer's Table were wise to choose a name designed to set customers at ease.

By BRIAN DUFF | April 15, 2009