Cookbook author and chef Shannon Bard announced suddenly Wednesday that the Fore Street restaurant Zapoteca she and her husband, Tom, owned in Portland is closed for good.
Shannon Bard
“As our children enter their last years of high school and first year of college, our priorities have changed,” Bard wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday afternoon. The mother of five noted that her children “have sacrificed so much to let us follow our dreams in the restaurant industry” and that she and her husband want to spend more time with them.
The Bards opened Zapoteca six years ago. They still have two restaurants, Toroso, the Spanish tapas place they opened in Kennebunk just last year, and Salud, the bistro in the same building, as well as a cooking school and catering company (also named Salud).
She was unavailable for further comment Wednesday.
Bard published her first cookbook in 2015, “The Gourmet Mexican Kitchen,” which celebrated the Mexican food she prepared at Zapoteca. She made a name for herself with frequent television appearances on shows on the Food Network, including the series “Beat Bobby Flay.” (She did not.)
She cooked at the James Beard House in New York in 2014, and the foundation described Zapoteca then as “an unlikely oasis of vibrant Mexican flavor in the hardy wilds of Maine.”
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