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Restaurant Reviews

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

The chef of Five Fifty-Five bids adieu to summer
With Labor Day weekend behind us, so goes the high tourist season here in Maine. While this means less crowded beaches and the possibility of finding a weekend parking space in the Old Port, it signifies a major transition for restaurateurs around the city.

By LEISCHEN STELTER | September 09, 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

Hot exotic adventure tonight!

Shave cabbage, rub pork ribs, peel yuca, and more
Unless you're a vegetarian or fried-pigskin-intolerant, I have an adventure for you. It requires about three hours. It's exotic, but does not require calling the phone numbers on the next few pages. Depending on who you are, it requires little or a lot of bravery. It's called cooking.

By LINDSAY STERLING | August 26, 2009

Life after the Old Port?

Owners of Rachels L'Osteria share their experience moving to the neighborhood
As the central hub for tourists and locals alike, the Old Port seems like the perfect spot for a restaurant. But sometimes being in the center of the madness can detract from the experience, not only for diners, but also for the owners.

By LEISCHEN STELTER | August 19, 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

A long-ago farm

Exploring the origins of great food
Last week while you were reading here about Portland chef Krista Desjarlais's efforts at Bresca, I was cooking with her mother, Maili Kern, who lives in the West End. She taught me how to make rosolje, an incredible roast beef and root-vegetable salad from Estonia (recipe at immigrantkitchens.blogspot.com ).

By LINDSAY STERLING | July 29, 2009

Full circle

Bresca's new collaborative effort brings intimacy back to dining
For someone who once envisioned herself sequestered in a dusty library somewhere in England reading medieval literature, Krista Desjarlais, executive chef and owner of Bresca, has a life far from quiet and solitude.

By LEISCHEN STELTER | July 22, 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