Pete Sueltenfuss butchers a pig at Other Side Delicatessen in 2016.
Owners of the Other Side Delicatessen in East Deering announced Tuesday on Facebook that they were closing the deli “effective immediately.”
Other Side owners Peter and Jessica Sueltenfuss opened the deli at 164 Veranda St. in February 2015. They opened a second deli location in the West End in 2017, though it closed in 2021. The duo said they plan to focus their efforts now on their Other Side Diner, which launched at 500 Washington Ave. in April 2019.
“Our intent was not be be this abrupt, but there are factors that are just out of our control,” the post stated in part. “It has been a great journey for us and making this decision was extremely difficult. … We have had many struggles this year and in order to continue to put our best foot forward we have decided to channel all of our energy into the Diner.”
The social media post said the “silver lining” of the deli closing is that the diner will have expanded business hours and new menu offerings, including deli sandwiches. The owners were not available Tuesday for comment.
BREAKFAST GIVEAWAY FOR HOMELESS PEOPLE
A few local food and beverage purveyors plan to provide free breakfast to residents of the Marginal Way homeless encampment this Sunday.
Rose Foods owner Chad Conley, who is coordinating the effort, said it will serve 150 breakfast sandwiches and coffee to homeless people in that area. Conley said he checked with a Preble Street outreach group to make sure the initiative wouldn’t overlap with any other plans underway, and that the amount of food they bring will be able to feed all the people at the encampment.
Food contributions for the initiative have come from Rose, Scratch Bagels and Harbor Fish Market, while Tandem Coffee Roasters will provide the coffee. Encampment residents will be able to choose from three breakfast sandwiches on bagels: cream cheese, smoked salmon and cream cheese, or egg and cheese.
“We wanted to offer the homeless locally made breakfasts, and it made sense for us to do it,” Conley said. “Folks living in tents in Portland are so visible now. It’s in our faces everyday. These people are our neighbors and they need food and we’re in the food business. Our hope is that this could be the start of folks in the food business coming together to support our neighbors who are struggling with a lot right now.”
Conley said Rose Foods made a commitment in recent years to donate at least 1% of its revenue – not profits – to charitable causes. “That’s been a really meaningful process for us, building relationships with the folks we give to,” he said.
Conley hopes also to serve free breakfast to residents of the homeless encampment on Commercial Street in the future. “The goal is to be able to set up a system where we can do this regularly, because there’s just no end to the need,” he said.
HARVEST ON THE HARBOR KICKS OFF
Harvest on the Harbor, four days of food-and-beverage-centered events, kicks off Wednesday evening in downtown Portland.
The festival’s events all take place at O’Maine Studios at 54 Danforth St. The fun gets underway Wednesday from 5:30-7:30 p.m. with the Maine Distillers Guild gathering, Toast!, featuring representatives from about a dozen of the state’s artisan distilleries, handcrafted cocktails and food pairings.
On Saturday, Harvest on the Harbor holds its OysterFest event, coordinated by Maine Oyster Company and held in two sessions, from 1-3 p.m. and from 4-6 p.m. Ticket holders will be able to sample 18 oysters farmed in Maine waters, enjoy a wide variety of beverages and talk with Maine oyster farmers about their products.
Guests mingle at a Harvest on the Harbor tasting event at Portland’s O’Maine Studios in 2022. This year’s Harvest on the Harbor kicks off Wednesday. Courtesy of Harvest on the Harbor
Harvest on the Harbor’s other two ticketed events, Friday afternoon’s Maine Lobster Chef of the Year competition and Gourmet Graze, a tasting of Maine-made cheese and chocolates, already have sold out. Harvest on the Harbor organizer Gillian Britt expects the other events to fill up this week as well, adding that the Lobster Chef tickets sold out sooner than usual, but overall ticket sales are tracking about the same as previous years.
Harvest on the Harbor started in 2007 as a way to showcase Portland’s growing food and beverage scene. “What surprises me is that we’re still seeing people from out of state ordering (tickets) now,” Britt said Tuesday, noting that people from at least 10 states beyond New England will be traveling to the event. “That’s one of the things that makes the event feel different from year to year – it’s different groups of faces.”
Tickets for Toast! are $75 each, and $90 for OysterFest. Tickets must be purchased online in advance; they will not be available at the door.
STRIKE ZONE CLOSING IN OLD ORCHARD BEACH
Longtime Old Orchard Beach eatery Strike Zone Restaurant & Pub will close this month, according to a post on the venue’s Facebook page.
The restaurant’s last day of service will be Sunday. Known for its casual, pub-style food, Strike Zone first opened at 20 Old Orchard St. in 2007.
Staffer Olivia Fillefeul said the venue was closing because its owner, Bob Bouthot, is retiring.
“There are so many of you who have been coming for so long that you have become friends and even our own Strike Zone family,” the Facebook post stated in part. “We will miss seeing every one of you every day and hope that as many of you as possible will be able to pop in and share a smile or even a hug with us during this last week.”
GARDINER WINE BAR LAUNCHES DINNER SERVICE
Following several successful months of serving food on weekends, Gardiner wine bar and retail shop Table Bar has hired a full-time chef to serve dinner nightly at the venue.
Table Bar co-owners Morgan Peirce and Billy Rosser said earlier this year that Maine-based chef Jimmy Leftis – formerly of The Four Horsemen restaurant and wine bar in Brooklyn, New York, the former Drifter’s Wife in Portland and Magnus on Water in Biddeford – saw the shop was hosting chef pop-ups, and asked if they wanted to collaborate.
Peirce, Rosser and their partner, Zach Lyons, added a roughly 100-square-foot kitchen to Table Bar for Leftis, who has been cooking Friday and Saturday nights at the roughly 30-seat shop since May.
“He’s doing a lot with a very little kitchen,” Rosser said. “There’s been positive feedback from everyone from the beginning. We’ve been completely floored by the response. I think it’s the uniqueness of doing something like this in a place like Gardiner where it’s not expected. It’s taken people by surprise, and they really like it.”
Table Bar opened in May 2022 as a wine shop. The owners added a wine bar element soon after, then started dabbling in chef pop-ups. “It’s been baby step after baby step, and now it’s almost a full restaurant,” Rosser said.
Dishes from a recent menu include small plates like Squash Gratin with Parmesan and Sage ($12) and Smoked Haddock Vol-Au-Vents ($18), and entrees such as Mussels with White Beans, Leeks and Toasted Bread ($22) and Chicken Ballotine with Braised Little Gems and Bernaise ($25). Leftis will be preparing dinner at Table Bar Wednesday through Saturday from 5-9 p.m. starting in November.
THOMASTON RESTAURANT RAISING FUNDS TO LAUNCH
The owner of Ancho Honey in Tenants Harbor is soliciting public investment for a fried chicken sandwich restaurant he plans to open in Thomaston next year.
Malcom Bedell said he plans to open his new venture, Honey’s Fried Chicken Palace, at 153 New County Road, the former home of China Fortune. Bedell said he is using Mainvest, a Massachusetts-based, small business investment platform, as the fundraising vehicle.
The “Stinger” fried chicken sandwich from Ancho Honey in Tenants Harbor, featuring hot honey BBQ glaze, Alabama white BBQ sauce and jalapeño-Parmesan spread. Owner Malcolm Bedell plans to specialize in sandwiches at his forthcoming Thomaston restaurant, Honey’s Fried Chicken Palace. Photo courtesy of Ancho Honey
Bedell used Kickstarter 10 years ago to raise $25,000 for his ‘Wich, Please food truck. He said Mainvest operates differently from Kickstarter, in that contributions for Honey’s will be repaid by 150%; for example, someone making a $100 contribution would be repaid in quarterly installments by Honey’s until the sum totals $150.
“We can feel really comfortable saying to people, ‘Look, we’re not begging here to start this commercial venture. This really is an investment,’ ” Bedell said, noting that the fundraising has gotten off to a surprisingly strong start.
“We set an initial goal of $50,000 for this, and we met that goal in less than 72 hours,” Bedell said. “So that speaks to me about the passion within my community that people have for this idea, their faith in me as a cook and entrepreneur, and their confidence in our ability to get this off the ground.”
The idea for Honey’s came about after Bedell witnessed the remarkable popularity of Ancho Honey’s Sunday fried chicken sandwich specials. “We only make 100 and we sell out typically within a couple of hours,” he said. “We have people calling on Wednesday to pick up an order on Sunday. So not only is it an insanely popular day for us, it also happens to be our most profitable one. Usually it’s the kind of thing that you have to live in a big city to pull off.”
Bedell said deboned, skin-on chicken thighs set their sandwich apart. “When you taste the battered, crispy skin and the fattiness inherent to a thigh, as compared to a McChicken from McDonald’s, it’s an entirely different creature,” he said.
Bedell tops the fried chicken with out-of-the-box flavor components like teriyaki-buffalo glaze, bacon fat-roasted pineapple, chopped peanuts and Chinese hot mustard aioli on “The Pterodactyl,” and hot honey-barbecue glaze, Alabama white BBQ sauce and jalapeno parmesan spread on “The Stinger.”
Bedell hopes to open Honey’s in the spring, perhaps as early as April 1.
PROPER CUP SELLS RICK’S BREAKFAST SANDWICHES
Rick Wood, chef and co-owner of the former beloved downtown eatery Rick’s Lobby Cafe, is back to cooking hot, fresh breakfast sandwiches, this time at The Proper Cup in Oakdale.
Proper Cup owner Rachel Kreie said her store started selling Wood’s sandwiches Tuesday. Wood was on site, cooking three types of sandwiches on English muffins – egg and cheese; bacon, egg and cheese; and sausage, egg and cheese ($6-$7), with avocado and spinach available for an extra $2. “We sold dozens already today,” Kreie said.
Kreie said Wood is a friend. “When his Lobby Cafe closed in September, he was looking for other things to do, so this was kind of a perfect opportunity,” she said.
Proper Cup will sell Wood’s sandwiches every day, Kreie said. The shop will be closed Mondays starting in November, open Tuesday through Sunday from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Rick’s Lobby Cafe was forced to close in September after the building owners told Wood and his co-owner wife, Molly, that their lease would not be renewed. Wood had run the Lobby Cafe since 2015.
WHEN PIGS FLY STORE OPENS IN PORTLAND
After closing its Freeport location, When Pigs Fly Breads recently transferred the operation to its new retail store in Portland.
The new store, at 65 Hanover St., opened Oct. 18, according to the store’s website. The Bayside store will carry the bakery’s full line of more than two dozen breads, along with various baked goods and pantry items like jam, butter, oil and spreads they recommend pairing with their products.
When Pigs Fly President James Broom said the company chose to close the Freeport store so it wouldn’t “cannibalize” its own business in the Greater Portland area, noting that many of the customers in Freeport were coming from Portland.
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