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BRIAN DUFF

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New and renewed flavors in Portland's food scene
The events of the last decade have spoiled our taste for speculation.

By BRIAN DUFF | December 30, 2009

In with the new

And with the even newer — the year in Portland food
This year represented a bittersweet end to a miserable decade for the nation.

By Brian Duff | December 22, 2009

Busy options

Sampling Kon Asian's broad spectrum
For a place that is largely about performative hibachi dining and Asian kitsch, Kon is very into the Buddha.

By BRIAN DUFF | December 02, 2009

Shima melds tastes, traditions well
A pan-Asian restaurant comes in handy if you are having trouble making a decision. But thanks to several openings in the last year, Portlanders looking for a menu with several Asian cuisines will have to make a choice.

By BRIAN DUFF | November 25, 2009

Triple shot

Visiting three new Portland cafés
As a sign of difficult economic times, a turnover in cafés is a noisy indicator but a significant one.

By BRIAN DUFF | November 04, 2009

Brave new world

Styxx’s management sets an oddly pleasant menu
How many marriages are born or nursed in our city’s bars?

By BRIAN DUFF | October 28, 2009

Solid food, found

Hang on to your dosh -- visit the Lost Coin Café
The Lost Coin Café is unlike any other restaurant in Portland.

By BRIAN DUFF | October 07, 2009

Gustation junction

Flavors mingle at The Corner Room
Since all three of Harding Lee Smith's restaurants are on corners, one wonders why he chose to name his newest one The Corner Room.

By BRIAN DUFF | September 30, 2009

Community appeal

The Café at Pat's is a classic local spot
It is tricky to manage the transition from cult of personality to a rationalized institution.

By BRIAN DUFF | September 16, 2009

Amazing Grace

Sweet tastes, beautiful building, heavenly reward
Few of us bother to go to church, so Mainers must find ways to reuse our houses of worship, just as we do our riverside mills in this post-industrial age. While several restaurants have put mothballed mill buildings to use, Grace Restaurant's repurposing of the Chestnut Street Methodist Church is the most impressive reclamation project yet.

By BRIAN DUFF | September 02, 2009

Outdoor retreat

Twenty Milk's excellent lawn-dining experience
Portland's Old Port is most beautiful just when it is least hospitable — in the bitter cold of winter when the crowds dissipate and Pandora LaCasse's whimsical lights decorate the streets. Recently the Portland Regency Hotel has endeavored to capture some of the charms of winter in warmer months.

By BRIAN DUFF | August 12, 2009

For serious kids

The Salt Exchange experiments with food
In last week's New York Times , David Brooks suggested that for people who are not parents there are "no grand designs..., no high ambitions. Politics becomes insignificant. Even words like justice lose meaning."

By BRIAN DUFF | August 05, 2009

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

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

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

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

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Today's Event Picks

[ART] “New Acquisitions 2009: In Black and White” at Portland Museum of Art