And with the even newer — the year in Portland food
By Brian Duff | December 22, 2009
A TRULY GRAND OPENING Grace, in the former Chestnut Street Church. |
This year represented a bittersweet end to a miserable decade for the nation. The leadership of a thoughtful, responsible president has been hamstrung by foreign-policy disasters and financial crises that were a decade in the making. In a reversal of sorts, the last year was a bittersweet end to a wonderful decade for eating out in Portland. It was a year when the national food media turned its attention toward Portland's restaurants with a surge of awards and write-ups in prominent magazines and newspapers. Portland was ready for its close-up thanks to a decade of preparation in which talented chefs have persevered in a small market with long, produce-poor, winters.
So that's the sweet. The bitter is in the unfortunate timing of the attention: It came just at the moment when locals and tourists are least likely to splurge on an expensive dinner out. By the time wallets loosen up the fickle media will have moved on to other trends and other cities. There were also signs of a bubble of sorts developing in Portland's food scene. While there was plenty to like in some of 2009's most prominent new restaurants — Grace, The Farmer's Table, The Corner Room, The Salt Exchange, and Paciarino — none of them quite achieved the unambiguous heights reached by Emilitsa or Bresca in the best openings of recent years.
In the meantime, the rise of Asia continues unabated, both in the global economy and in the local food scene. Miyake's prices have crept up, but it has confirmed its place among the city's very best restaurants. Ambitious pan-Asian openings at Shima and Kon were notable, but the whole year saw new Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese ventures spot Portland's food map: Veranda Thai and Veranda Noodle, Saigon, Sabieng (replacing Nakornping), and Boda (from the guys who brought us the Green Elephant) will replace Bangkok Thai. Portland's Asian restaurants continue to offer some of the best dishes at affordable prices.
A churning economy, and a changing commercial rental market, also meant that some established restaurants played musical chairs. Walter's will open a few blocks over from its previous location, and Katahdin is headed out to Forest Avenue. Binga's, continually on the wing, landed in yet another new space, this time the capacious room that used to house the Stadium.
Related:
Photos: Gross Thanksgiving food to avoid, Ghost stories, Winged migration, More 
- Photos: Gross Thanksgiving food to avoid
Thanksgiving is a time for gorging on food and hanging out with family, but really it's mostly about the food. There are some dishes that take it too far, however, and we are here to help you steer clear of those.
- Ghost stories
For all of the excitement that surrounded Wilco on the Maine State Pier or Sufjan Stevens at Port City Music Hall or the various sold-out Ray LaMontagne shows of the past year, there is no question that last Sunday's Phish show at the Cumberland County Civic Center was the biggest thing to hit our fair city in a very long time.
- Winged migration
Since their start in the middle of the decade, Brown Bird have been one of the region's go-to chamber-folk outfits, with a couple of dark and stormy albums earning them a following in various nooks of New England. The release of their latest album, The Devil Dancing , feels like both an ending and a new beginning.
- Being Scrooge
Over the 33 years that Trinity Rep has been staging A Christmas Carol , many actors playing Ebenezer Scrooge have growled and grumped, cantankered, and curmugeoned around the stage.
- Christmas present
Christmases come and Christmases go, as psychedelic wrapping paper gives way to orderly Republican stripes, as sweet little Jimmy grows into gruff Uncle James.
- Hot for teacher
MECA faculty re-imagine the natural world and play with nostalgia
- Wanting more
After its triumphant traversal of the complete Béla Bartók string quartets at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Borromeo Quartet was back for a free 20th- and 21st-century program at Jordan Hall, leading off with an accomplished recent piece by the 24-year-old Egyptian composer Mohammed Fairuz, Lamentation and Satire.
- Injustice for all
Scott Sturgeon loses his train of thought a couple of times during this interview. He's loopy from jet lag — which is unavoidable after a 20-hour flight from New Zealand (halfway around the planet from his non-residency at a squatted apartment building in New York City), where he's just finished a tour with his claim-to-fame band, Leftover Crack.
- Coffeenomics
In 50 states and 49 countries, the experience is the same: a placid sense of place, air suffused with the rich aromatics of fresh-brewed espresso. Customers dollop cream and sprinkle brown sugar into their drinks. Behind the counter, green-clad baristas grind beans and steam milk, smiling as they take orders in a made-up language.
- Group hug
Things aren’t always what they’re called — we know that flying fish don’t fly and starfish aren’t even fish.
- Alternative universe
In the 1930s and '40s, Boston painters developed a moody, mythic realism. They mixed social satire with depictions of street scenes, Biblical scenes, and mystical symbolic narratives, all of it darkened by the shadow of the Great Depression and World War II.
- Less
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