SOUTH PORTLAND – The city has welcomed eight new restaurants in recent months, with six more ready to open by mid-August.
SOUTH PORTLAND – There may be few people more excited about the explosion of new restaurant openings in South Portland than Richard Grotton. That because he’s both a resident of the city’s east end who lives within easy walking distance of many of the new eateries, and president and CEO of the Maine Restaurant Association.
“It’s really a very interesting mix of places and, the great thing is, I get to visit all of them,” Grotton said this week.
Since mid-March, eight new restaurants have opened in South Portland, and licenses have been issued for another six, all slated to open by mid-August. According to City Manager Jim Gailey, South Portland has seen boomlets like that before, but it’s always been in the area of the Maine Mall and inevitably followed by rapid turnover.
“What’s really odd, and really kind of nice, is that a lot of this is going on right here, downtown, with small, owner-operated places,” said Gailey.
In an area that Planning Board member Bill Laidley has taken to calling “Restaurant Row,” Enio’s Mediterranean Eatery opened at 346 Cottage Road in mid-March, while Ruby Thailand began serving at 179 Cottage Road in early May. Both have received rave reviews in local foodie columns, in print and online.
Slated to open at 159 Cottage Road by mid-August is Otto Pizza, already a known and well-respected commodity. Also due this summer, at the 448 Cottage Road address that was once a Pratt-Abbott Cleaners, is Elsemere BBQ and Wood Grill. Barbecue lovers will get their first taste of what Elsemere has to offer at Willard Fest July 13, where the company is signed on to be one of the food vendors.
Then, just past the Legion Square terminus of Cottage Road, at 72 Ocean St., is the Cia cafe?, which tipped the first domino in March by offering fresh brewed coffee with locally sourced pastries and baked goods.
South Portland’s other new restaurants include: Bono’s Pizzeria and Grille, El Grand Rodeo Mexican Restaurant, Evergreen Chinese Restaurant and Orange Leaf Yogurt, all on Western Avenue, as well as Five Guy Burgers and Fries on Maine Mall Road. Soon to come are Gourmaine on Gorham Road and Qdoba Mexican Restaurant on Maine Mall Road, along with Little Bigs and Tony’s, doughnut shops to be located on Main Street and Broadway, respectively.
“I don’t know why it’s happening, but I love it,” said City Councilor Linda Cohen, who doubles as president of the South Portland-Cape Elizabeth Community Chamber. “I’ve lived in the east end of the city for 30 years and there was hardly anything over there. Not to disparage what we had there, but Tim Hortons was the only new thing that came in for the longest time.”
According to Grotton, there are 4,000 restaurant seats within a half-mile of the Maine Mall. The notion that the Portland-South Portland area is home to the second greatest per capita concentration of restaurants outside San Francisco is no mere apocrypha, he says. It’s a fact.
Still, recent activity outpaces any in recent memory.
“This amount of growth for this size of a community is extremely rare,” he said. “There’s no way of getting around it. This is unusual.”
But, Grotton says, while there is a trend toward restaurants moving into the bedroom communities of Maine’s larger suburbs, perhaps explaining some of the activity on Cottage Road, don’t try looking for a single causality in South Portland. There is no diner zero.
“Each one of these openings is almost certainly going to have its own story and I’m not sure there’s much correlation to be found between each of them,” he said. “The one thing I might say is that the Casco Bay Bridge is often thought of as a bridge too far. So, it makes sense they would come over here looking to draw from the greater Cape Elizabeth, Highland Avenue, Cottage Road community.
“And that’s good,” said Grotton, adding, “I think, quite frankly, that other than the mall area, we’ve been sort of underserved for some time.”
Of course, what explodes can just as easily implode. The statistics on restaurant startups are startling. Fully 50 percent of all new restaurants close within two years, Grotton said. Of those that survive, 80 percent will be gone within five years, and half of what remains won’t celebrate 10 years.
The two biggest killers of new restaurants, Grotton says, are “lack of expertise, and lack of capital.”
Fortunately, for most of the new Cottage Road eateries, that doesn’t seem to be a problem.
Enio’s is the brainchild of Bob and Laura Butler, well known for Rachel’s Grille, the restaurant named for Bob’s grandmother that they ran for 15 years, first on Exchange Street and then Woodford’s Corner in Portland. The new restaurant, named for Laura’s father, is an attempt to capture the old flair in a new area.
The Butlers had attempted to retire to Florida, but readily admit they hated it, partly because dining out seemed like a chore for people down there, rather than the communal activity it can often be in Maine, and partly because of the heat.
“After three blistering years, I was happy to come back and shovel show,” said Bob Butler.
However, Laura Butler notes, Portland seemed “saturated” with restaurants, which made South Portland stand out when they learned a longtime deli, the Buttered Biscuit, was closing.
“It’s great over here, this is where we want to live anyway,” said Laura Butler. “The area was key for us.”
So key, in fact, that soon after signing the lease, they put funds down on a home within walking distance.
At Ruby Thailand, owner Thanop Koonyostying agrees that Portland was “too much.” And echoing, Grotton, he says he wanted his new restaurant to be as near to Cape Elizabeth as possible.
“It is less dense, fewer restaurants, but greater income,” said Koonyostying, pointing up Cottage, toward Cape. “Best to be on the road to the money.”
His partner, Jack Kuenlom, has been in the business for more than a decade, running Thai places in North Conway, N.H., and Wells, as well as Sabieng in Portland, before joining forces with Koonyostying, longtime owner of Sala Thai on Washington Avenue in Portland.
That desire to be where the money is may be less greed than mere survival. The Thai proprietors and the Butlers both agree that the trend in the past decade has been the same number of diners spending the same amount of money, thus eating less as costs drive menu prices upward.
“More plate share, all the time,” said Kuenlom, suggesting the trend will only exacerbate come Oct. 1, when the meals tax jumps from 7 to 8 percent.
At Elsemere, co-owner Adam Powers declined an interview, saying he preferred to wait until closer to opening day before seeking publicity. However, he picked the same building to open in that Koonyostying first looked at for much the same reason “Basically, Portland is full up,” he said.
The owners of Otto, who took the same approach as Powers to publicity, “just in case something happens between now and then,” don’t seem to hurt for capital, with five locations in Maine and Massachusetts, while Portland developer Arthur Girard is rehabilitating the property.
For Cia proprietor Jeannie Dunnigan, her story is almost the opposite of the Butlers, who found a place to open a restaurant then moved home. In her case, she found a home then almost simultaneously opened a restaurant.
A resident of Newburyport, Mass., her husband Bill began to commute when he landed a job with Creative Designs in Scarborough. One day last year, after landing a dingy at the Thomas Knight Park public dock a hidden gem, Dunnigan says she and her husband strolled down Ocean Street. Although torn up and dusty with street construction at the time, Knightville was, in Dunnigan’s eyes, almost the prefect New England village, with everything one could need in easy walking distance.
She and her husband bought one of the Mill Cove Landing condos at 72 Ocean St., then decided to create a “little SoHo” in SoPo, opening Cia pronounced like c-ya, it’s an acronym for coffee, ice cream and art with an emphasis on locally created art to go with locally baked tarts.
Despite a minor kerfuffle over sidewalk seating, the Dunnigans have in their short tenure become some of the leading boosters of Knightville.
“It really is amazing, special place here,” said Dunnigan. “It’s a nice place to be, in proximity to Portland, but with its own special character.”
Dunnigan may have got the ball rolling on the Knightville/Cottage Road resurgence in more ways than one. Not long after Cia opened, Dunnigan was visited by South Portland’s new assistant city manager, Jon Jennings, who stopped in on a tour of downtown businesses.
“He asked what I thought the area needed and I said we really need something like an Otto here, and lo and behold, two months later, Otto was coming to town,” she said. “I don’t know if the two are connected, but I can say he is a true asset to South Portland.”
Although Jennings denies credit, or knowledge of a brewpub rumored to be coming to the area, he did say at the June 17 meeting of the economic development committee that Otto had initially looked at a Knightville location before settling on nearby Cottage Road.
The uptick in restaurants does have a municipal impact, but Gailey said he’s confident the city’s one restaurant inspector, who doubles as an inspector of public swimming pools, can handle the influx of new work. Still, Gailey promised he would “keep an eye on things” over the next year or so and adjust staffing accordingly, if the need arises.
South Portland’s new website, launched this past weekend, may also present the city with a way to post inspection reports online, once other bugs get worked out, he said.
“The city staff was wonderful, every one,” said Bob Butler. “They have all been incredibly helpful. They really made it easy to open up here.”
“Much easier than Portland,” agreed Koonyostying. “Much, much easier that Portland.”
Chef and co-owner Jack Kuenlom prepares ginger chicken in the new kitchen at Ruby Thailand Cuisine Restaurant on Cottage Road in South Portland.
Jeannie Dunnigan is the owner of Cia cafe at 72 Ocean St. in South Portland. Cia – short for coffee, ice cream and art – is part of an explosion in openings in the city’s east end. In all, South Portland has welcomed eight new eateries in recent months, with another six slated to open by mid-August. Photos by Rich Obrey 
Chef Laura Butler prepares a pizza while loaves of fresh bread await slicing at Enio’s Mediterranean Eatery on Cottage Road.
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